**A Wall Street Journal bestseller**

An updated edition of this blockbuster narrative provides the first behind-the-scenes, authoritative account of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s marriage, by the New York Times bestselling author of Diana in Private.

Meghan and Harry: The Real Story: Persecutors or Victims presents the reader with a strikingly forthright analysis of what happens when a vulnerable male, raised in the traditions of the Old World and protected by a lifetime of privilege, falls head over heels in love with a steely and ambitious doyenne of the New, who is careless of tradition, ignorant of its purpose, contemptuous of its consequences, and convinced that her own way is the best way even as the evidence to the contrary mounts.

Exposing as she does a titanic clash of two civilisations, mores, and attitudes divided by a common language, Sunday Times best-selling author Lady Colin Campbell scrutinizes with insight, clarity, and precision the evidence of the circumstances, actions, and motives of Meghan and Harry with an impeccable and aristocratically experienced vision honed by five decades in the public eye. She catalogues in depth how this apparently brilliantly-favoured couple came to lose their way, how they exhibited profound contemptuousness for practices built up by a treasured institution over a millennium, and how they were unable to understand the potential benefits of their destiny to such an extent that they managed to turn their fate on its head.

Contrary to their statements, Meghan and Harry prove through their own actions that they are ill-judged characters, unable to bring the dynamism of the New to the Old or represent the dignity of the Old to the New. Falling between these two stools, they conspire time and again against themselves and others, inviting nothing but unnecessary controversy and unintended failure, despite the fact that the vast majority of onlookers, who would ultimately become critics, originally wished them well and hoped they would successfully forge a unique way forward in their ground-breaking union. Lady Colin’s pen allows the couple no escape from the consequences of their actions, whether these be royal and aristocratic customs governed by tradition, precedence, and conservation; the racial furore they unleashed and the damage they wrought throughout the Commonwealth; the speculation they engendered with regards even to something as straightforward as pregnancy; the very different laws on each side of the Atlantic and how these affect inheritance as well as other important factors; the differing attitudes to money of those who have had it for many a year and those for whom it is newly minted; the merits of position versus celebrity; the benefits of freedom of the press and the efforts of the couple to curtail them; the dangers of suppression of civil liberties or even simply the choice of everyday activities which Meghan and Harry have shown time and again will involve themselves and onlookers in controversy after controversy.

With her unrivalled access to a variety of worlds closed to most writers, Lady Colin Campbell provides the reader with the opinions of diplomatic and political figures from all over the Commonwealth as well as representatives of royalty, aristocracy, functionaries in the political spectrum, and members of the general public to whom she has access through her professional activities as a writer and broadcaster. In the process, she demonstrates how the couple's desire for freedom from accepted restraints allied to ambitions of a very mixed nature have led to the inevitable clashes which have characterized their activities and brought about their descent from being the most popular royal couple at the time of their marriage to the most unpopular now. Meghan may well have brought her Prince in shining armour to a home in Montecito, California, but the author provides the reader with genuine insight into the consequences of the couple's choices through her recognition of what it has taken them to get there, including infuriating the late Queen and jettisoning close family as well as friends and colleagues, and she concludes that Harry and Meghan are truly their own worst enemies: persecutors who present themselves as victims, when a more constructive and positive approach to life would have assured them of an entirely different and more positive outcome.