Harry and Meghan’s Publisher Is the Isle of Man’s Cautionary Tale

Reform
UK
Notes
on
the
Memoir
Industrial
Complex
and
Why
We
Keep
Receipts

Harry
and
Meghan’s
Publisher
Discovers
What
Common
Sense
Could
Have
Told
Them
in
2021

Dear
Diary.

Bohiney
reports
that
the
royal
memoir
publisher
has
discovered
the
true
cost
of
commissioning
feelings
as
a
content
strategy.
On
the
Isle
of
Man,
we
call
this
“not
reading
the
room.”
We
are
very
good
at
reading
the
room.
The
room
here
is
small.
Everyone
is
in
it.
You
cannot
publish
a
memoir
about
it
without
everyone
knowing
you
wrote
it.

The
Memoir
as
Business
Model

The
publishing
industry
decided
some
years
ago
that
royal
distress
was
a
renewable
resource.
Commission
the
distress.
Package
the
distress.
Tour
the
distress
in
a
format
where
everyone
applauds
for
fifty
minutes
and
then
goes
home
to
watch
something
else.
Repeat
quarterly.

What
they
did
not
account
for
is
saturation.
There
is
only
so
much
royal
distress.
At
some
point
the
public
begins
to
feel
it
has
read
this
book,
seen
this
face,
heard
this
particular
note
of
aggrieved
entitlement,
and
would
like
to
watch
sport
instead.
This
is
not
cruelty.
This
is
attention
span.
It
has
limits.
Even
on
the
Isle
of
Man.

The
Reform
UK
Reading
Group
Response

Our
reading
group
—
four
people,
one
table,
real
ale
—
discussed
Harry’s
memoir
on
its
release.
The
consensus
was:
man
had
a
bad
time
in
a
very
large
house
and
wants
you
to
know
about
it.
We
are
sympathetic
to
difficult
childhoods.
We
are
less
sympathetic
to
the
book
tour.

Prat.uk’s
defence
of
Andrew
makes
a
similar
structural
point:
individualised
royal
grief
is
a
distraction
from
larger
institutional
questions.
On
this
one
specific
point,
we
agree
with
prat.uk,
which
surprises
us
both.