A certain book

Mamie

Do you not think a school can do anything about the level of drug taking described at Eton Joseanne?
I would not be a happy parent.
The relevant chapters are quite a read.
Normsndygirl I agree that is an absolute wtf moment. 😮

I think the school I am talking about is Ludgrove Prep., Mamie. That's where this matron worked, didn't she? It would be unusual for there to be any drug taking in the under 13s.
I haven't read the Eton stuff, but no I would not be happy either

Normandygirl

There are so many "dark" moments revealed in this book, but one of the worst ones is how Harry describes how he could have killed Charles but chose not to. It happened when Harry was instructing Typhoons on a military exercise, near Sandringham, before deployment in Afghanistan. Charles drives over to see Harry and tell him how proud he was of him and what a great job he was doing.
He goes on ;
" I loved seeing Pa, loved feeling his pride and I felt buoyed by his praise, but I had to get back to work. I was mid control, couldn't tell the Typhoon to please hold on a moment
Yes,yes, darling boy, back to work
He drove off. As he went down the track I told the Typhoon
New target. Grey Audi. Headed southeast from my position down track towards a big silver barn oriented east-west.
The Typhoon tracked Pa, did a low pass straight over him, nearly shattering the windows of his Audi.
But they ultimately spared him..... on my orders.
It went on to blow the silver barn to smithereens."

I really don't know what to make of this, so many questions.
Was Harry qualified to be " instructing" fighter jet pilots?
Did Charles almost get himself killed?
Why on earth would Harry put this in his book as if he is proud of choosing not to kill his father?
Is this all a fantasy?

Have you read the book? He was training and had to pick pretend targets to practice on. He chose his dad’s car as it moved away - as a joke. He also didn’t blow any barn to smithereens except by pointing at it and saying bang bang.

Honest to god if you are going to accuse him of being a psychopath at least read the bloody book.

And the reason he had to train at Sandringham alone was because the press kept on leaking what he was doing preventing him from being able to go to war (largely because it out others at risk - that was a more of a concern for the army than his risk).

Yes that was Eton Joseanne. I thought some of the Ludgrove stuff sounded a bit bizarre.

Is this all a fantasy?

Harry wasn't flying Typhoons, but he did train and work as a forward air controller. Ordering a Typhoon pilot to target a civilian car does sound fanciful. Perhaps he did.
He learnt how to fly helicopters later on but reports state that he usually went out as co-pilot and gunner.

Have you read the book? He was training and had to pick pretend targets to practice on. He chose his dad’s car as it moved away - as a joke. He also didn’t blow any barn to smithereens except by pointing at it and saying bang bang.

He never trained as a Typhoon jet pilot.

It couldn't be possible that Harry has been telling porkies again could it?

What a hypocrite he is. Wails and moans that the British press give him and his missus no privacy and how that's adversely affected his mental health but has no such qualms in publishing private text messages, phone calls, conversations and emails from friends and family members to the world.
Squeals with outrage that his wife has been criticised and mocked by the press but is perfectly comfortable in publicly mocking and mimicking a matron at his school.
Whines interminably that his father was cold and remote but sneers and fantatises that he could kill him when he's visited by Charles and reassured of his love and pride for him.

Thank God he's not my son.

I bet the whole lot of them thought him targeting his father's car was hilarious.

PH finished his army career as a Captain (Blues and Royals)

Typhoons are Air Force, why would a trainee soldier be giving a Typhoon pilot orders of any sort, even on a training exercise?

Glorianny

I bet the whole lot of them thought him targeting his father's car was hilarious.

It never happened

volver

I posted that picture LondonMzFitz but it was just ignored. Doesn't fit the story, you see.

So the conversation has rather gone like this, hasn't it...?

"It'll never sell, it'll be in the remainder bin, 3 for £1, I bet the publisher regrets it."

400,000 sales in the UK on the first day, fastest selling non-fiction book ever. Top of Amazon and Barnes and Noble pre-order lists in the US.

But there were no queues!! (Try Amazon. Try audio books... 🤦🏼)

Try asking Volver to precis it like she does everything else.

As an aside, for a bit of a comparison and a laugh, (if anyone is remotely interested);
A friend of mine at uni studied a rather famous French/Irish writer for her dissertation and visited him in his flat in Paris(14) to talk about his famous work. (Along the lines of 2 blokes waiting under a tree for someone or something that never came.) It was a play full of nonsence, dreamscapes, fantasies, a load of rubbish really. Anyway, to get to the point, she asked him if he was just having his readership/audience on, pulling their legs, having a laugh at their expense. To which he replied with a wry smile! 😉
Maybe Harry is doing just that, but I think he will have to up his game to won a Nobel Prize in Literature!

The only award he deserves is this one

Nezumi65, Have you read the book? He was training and had to pick pretend targets to practice on. He chose his dad’s car as it moved away - as a joke. He also didn’t blow any barn to smithereens except by pointing at it and saying bang bang.

And the reason he had to train at Sandringham alone was because the press kept on leaking what he was doing preventing him from being able to go to war (largely because it out others at risk - that was a more of a concern for the army than his risk).

Honest to god if you are going to accuse him of being a psychopath at least read the bloody book.

Brother says the same, it's military man humour, a big joke. Harry was in the Army, but training occurs all over. RAF could be put into a training mission, and they/he would work together. For the military (all Forces) it was important to get him trained/done. Potentially, RAF fly training over the restricted Sandringham airspace. He as a FAC trainee points to targets on his computer. Bingo. Nobody was shooting real bullets or anything, it was training.

Army humour.

GrannyGravy13

PH finished his army career as a Captain (Blues and Royals)

Typhoons are Air Force, why would a trainee soldier be giving a Typhoon pilot orders of any sort, even on a training exercise?

Never heard of Joint Operations??

Read book from a free download (defo wouldn’t pay for)! Poor Harry, so understandably traumatised by his mothers death and the harrowing press. But what is he to gain from publishing this book other than millions of dollars #don’t air your dirty washing in public.
From a literacy point of view it’s so badly written and the host writer was paid £820k!

Glorianny

GrannyGravy13

PH finished his army career as a Captain (Blues and Royals)

Typhoons are Air Force, why would a trainee soldier be giving a Typhoon pilot orders of any sort, even on a training exercise?

Never heard of Joint Operations??

That seems to be the point.

Army soldiers are no different to RAF pilots of same officer rank.

Glorianny

GrannyGravy13

PH finished his army career as a Captain (Blues and Royals)

Typhoons are Air Force, why would a trainee soldier be giving a Typhoon pilot orders of any sort, even on a training exercise?

Never heard of Joint Operations??

I think he was training on a simulator, nowhere near any real aircraft, let alone a Typhoon!

Glorianny

GrannyGravy13

PH finished his army career as a Captain (Blues and Royals)

Typhoons are Air Force, why would a trainee soldier be giving a Typhoon pilot orders of any sort, even on a training exercise?

Never heard of Joint Operations??

Oh yes.

AC was Officer Commanding of numerous joint operations.

Never heard of Joint Operations??

He was training, not on exercise.

He did, later, train as a helicopter pilot and was a co-pilot but I doubt he ever got his hands on the controls of a Typhoon, not with the engines turned on, anyway.

GrannyGravy13

Glorianny

GrannyGravy13

PH finished his army career as a Captain (Blues and Royals)

Typhoons are Air Force, why would a trainee soldier be giving a Typhoon pilot orders of any sort, even on a training exercise?

Never heard of Joint Operations??

Oh yes.

AC was Officer Commanding of numerous joint operations.

Thought you might have done, GrannyGravy 🙂

Callistemon21

^Never heard of Joint Operations??^

He was training, not on exercise.

He did, later, train as a helicopter pilot and was a co-pilot but I doubt he ever got his hands on the controls of a Typhoon, not with the engines turned on, anyway.

As I follow, he was training to be a FAC and the typhoons were his training targets.

Not in a typhoon. On the ground FAC.

Not in a typhoon. On the ground FAC.

Nor directing a real exercise.
On a simulator?

GrannyGravy13

Glorianny

I bet the whole lot of them thought him targeting his father's car was hilarious.

It never happened

Like most of the stories he comes out with then.

GrannyGravy13

Glorianny

I bet the whole lot of them thought him targeting his father's car was hilarious.

It never happened

No, they wouldn't have thought it was hilarious at all.

And, as GrannyGravy says, it never happened.

He was playing around on his simulator.
Great fun. 🤔

2 new reviews of the book available. One by Jeremy Paxman in the Independent and the other by Rachel Cooke in the Guardian. Both are scathing.