‘I do not want to be a single dad’: Harry explains decision to leave the UK with Meghan

Duke of Sussex sat down with ITV host Tom Bradby ahead of the release of his ‘moving’ memoir, Spare

Prince Harry has explained his and wife Meghan Markle’s decision to leave the UK and relocate overseas in his ITV interview with Tom Bradby.

The Duke of Sussex’s conversation with the British presenter was broadcast on Sunday (8 January), two days before the release of his memoir Spare.

The interview began with Harry narrating an excerpt from his book, recounting the night his father Charles, then-Prince of Wales, told him his mother Diana had died.

Harry then told Bradby that he “took myself back to that moment” so he could remember details from that night, when he was 12 years old.

“You know, my father coming in, in his dressing gown and sharing that news with me, only now as part of writing the book, that I really think about how many hours he’d been awake,” the duke said, adding he had “compassion” for Charles having to “break this to my two sons”.

Explaining that was part of the reason “why we are here now”, Harry continued: “I never want to be in that position.

“I don’t want history to repeat itself. I do not want to be a single dad. And I certainly don’t want my children to have a life without a mother or a father.”

Harry and Meghan stepped down as senior members of the royal family in March 2020, and relocated to Montecito, California in the United States.

Excerpts from Harry’s ghostwritten autobiography have been published by the UK press in the run-up to its official launch on 10 January, after it was accidentally put on sale in Spain last week.

A biographer of King Charles has suggested that the book and his rolling dispute with the royal family could “mark the beginning of the end of the monarchy”.

The book’s release is “not just a celebrity knockabout story”, Catherine Mayer warned, arguing that “the status of a significant institution of state” is ultimately at stake – its peril exacerbated by the “layers of secrecy and obfuscation” surrounding the royals.

Harry: The Interview is now available to watch on ITVx. Follow the latest updates here.