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Introduction

      Meghan Markle looked up, wide-eyed, lips quivering and said her now-famous words: ‘It’s not enough to survive something, right; that’s not the point of life. You’ve got to thrive; you’ve got to feel happy …’

      Like thousands of others I probably only watched Harry and Meghan: An African Journey because of all the advance publicity the programme had received, the headlines written and the opinions voiced about Meghan’s decision to sue the Mail on Sunday.

      The documentary by broadcaster Tom Bradby, a long-time friend of Prince Harry, was riveting as it lurched between triumph and despair – the jubilation of Meghan dancing with young African girls being given the chance of a better life thanks to wonderful local charities, and the darker, private moments of introspection, admitting that while she never thought her new life would be easy, she had thought it would at least be fair.

      I decided then and there to write a book about Meghan, chronicling her journey up to this point in her life – little realising that within three months she, Harry and their baby, Archie, would leave the UK, perhaps never to return.

Up until the moment the couple announced that Meghan was taking legal action against the newspaper for publishing part of a private letter to her father, the trip to Africa had been described as a ‘textbook royal tour’, full of waving and cheering as a posse of royal reporters and photographers enjoyed an expenses-paid escape from a dull British autumn.

      There was plenty to fill the pages of the newspapers and dominate the news channels back home. Meghan gave an empowering speech to the women of the Nyanga township in Cape Town, which ended in stirring fashion: ‘I am here with you as a mother, as a wife, as a woman, as a woman of colour and as your sister. I am here with you and I am here for you …’

      For the first time the world was introduced properly to Archie; not in the dull, traditional way of posed pictures of tired mum and baby leaving hospital, but in a gloriously uplifting meeting between the new parents and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the legendary figures of South African history alongside Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid activist assassinated in 1977.

      Meghan and Harry chatted with the Archbishop for half an hour at the headquarters of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town. They met at the Old Granary, a beautifully restored building in Buitenkant Street that was originally built by slaves in the early nineteenth century. It used to be a symbol of colonial expansion but now houses a collection chronicling the acclaimed cleric’s life.

      Meghan explained, ‘It’s not lost on us what a huge and significant moment this is.’

      Archbishop Tutu, approaching his eighty-eighth birthday, could not conceal his delight at meeting five-month-old Archie and planted a kiss on his forehead. Meghan said proudly, ‘I think Archie will look back in so many years and understand that right at the beginning of his life, he was fortunate enough to have this moment with one of the best and most impactful leaders of our time.’

An African Journey tellingly contrasted the affluent present-day, largely white suburbs of Cape Town with the black township of Nyanga, where women face a daily threat of violence and rape and more than three hundred murders a year, making it one of the most dangerous places to live in the world. Meghan and Harry visited an initiative run by The Justice Desk, a human rights charity in southern Africa, where they saw for themselves young women being trained to defend themselves.

      Harry, perhaps understandably, was a little overshadowed on the tour by the megawatt star quality of his wife (and son!), but he has charm and charisma in his own right. He is also undeniably sensitive and endures private inner struggles, which he movingly admitted to Tom on a solo trip to Botswana and Angola, countries that brought back sad memories of his mother. Harry strolled purposefully through a minefield in Angola, retracing Diana’s steps for a photographic opportunity, although the actual field through which she famously walked is now a paved street in the middle of a new development.

      Behind those poignant pictures was the painful story of Harry’s reality, as he revealed to Tom how he really felt about photographers: ‘Every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash, it takes me straight back.’ His mother’s death is a wound that will not heal. The photographers are still the ‘worst reminders of her life’ and, presumably, her death. He openly discussed his mental health issues with Tom, who has also been candid about his own need to take five months off work in 2018 because of severe insomnia.

Meghan had stayed behind in Cape Town with Archie. While Tom and his camera crew and most of the press corps were following Harry, his wife paid a visit that would have been high on Diana’s list of things to do. She took a bag of baby clothes that Archie had already outgrown to a mothers2mothers centre, a charity that offers counsel and mentoring to young mums living with HIV.

      On another occasion, Meghan quietly visited the memorial for the murdered 19-year-old South African student Uyinene Mrwetyana. She had been raped, tortured and killed at Cape Town’s Clareinch Post Office in August 2019. Her brutal death sparked demonstrations throughout the country against gender-based crimes of violence in South Africa. Meghan tied a yellow ribbon there that bore the message ‘we stand together in this moment’, written in the local language of Xhosa as a further mark of respect.

      Meghan expressed her concerns for women and her desire to encourage change and progress: she said, ‘In a world that can seem so aggressive, confrontational and dangerous, you should know that you have the power to change it.’ In particular, she made a connection with people of colour in a way that nobody else in the Royal Family could. She had a natural ease with everyone, whether giving a warm hug to a young African boy in the crowd or having a laugh with Graça Machel, the widow of Nelson Mandela. Only Harry came close to demonstrating such rapport.

      So much positivity turned to dust, however, when she was reunited with Harry in Johannesburg. His return coincided with their announcement about her legal suit and the unequivocal statement from Harry released on their website in which he said his wife had become ‘one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences.’

The legal action, he explained, involved the ‘contents of a private letter’ being ‘published unlawfully in an intentionally destructive manner’. He also referenced Princess Diana: ‘I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.’

      It was strong stuff but it did not seem to be met with anything resembling contrition or apology from those ‘powerful forces’ – far from it. The general consensus was that Harry’s outburst, for that was how it was viewed, had ruined the tour. The couple had made it all about them. The wish-you-were-here postcards home, designed to depict a wholly varnished scene of local life and typify the self-congratulatory royal tours around the old Empire had been replaced with a giant slice of bitter reality.

      Meghan, it seemed, was not playing the game as the media wanted her to do. But who are the so-called royal experts and columnists shouting the odds about how she should behave at every opportunity? And what exactly is this media invention of a ‘royal expert’ – someone who knows the correct way to bow or curtsy when you meet the Queen? It strikes me as a truly meaningless label, especially since Harry and Meghan were shining a light on such important global issues.

      What, I wondered, had Meghan done to deserve all the negativity – the ‘bullying’, as Harry called it – that surrounds her? Was she really a victim of rampant racism, sexism and xenophobia because she’s American, or was it just old-fashioned British snobbery at her being an actress?

When

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