Prince Harry giving evidence against Associated Newspapers

After several hours of giving evidence at the High Court on Wednesday, Harry became emotional while talking about Meghan.

The prince told the court his life had been “open season” to be commercialised since he was a teenager and said that having to sit in court and “have them claim I don’t have any right to privacy is disgusting”.

“They continue to come after me, they have made my wife’s life an absolute misery, my Lord,” he said, his voice breaking.

He left the courtroom shortly after.

It was a dramatic end to a day of exhaustive cross-examination of the prince in which he strongly refuted claims that he was friends with journalists and denied that his friends were the cause of leaks about his private life.

“I am not friends with these journalists, I never have been,” he said.

During the hearing he strongly denied that he personally invited Mail on Sunday journalist Katie Nicholl to a party in 2003 at Kensington Palace.

“Miss Nicholl made a career out of turning up at these events” and making it seem like she had these sources, the duke alleges.

Prince Harry said he wouldn’t have been able to complain about stories coming out about him due to the “institution” of the Royal Family.

He said that every time a story came out that cited “sources” his circle of trust decreased “almost immediately”.

He added that he wouldn’t speak about things included in the articles openly again.

Prince Harry’s case rests on 14 articles published between 2001 and 2013.

The articles, mainly written by two journalists Katie Nicholl and Rebecca English, contained information that was gathered unlawfully, the prince claims.

Speaking on Wednesday he said he had spoken to Ms English a number of times as she would often accompany his royal tours.

He said it was difficult working with Ms English, and others, knowing “the kind of stories they had written about me”.

Speaking about another journalist, Barbara Jones, Harry alleged she would turn up “places where no-one could possibly know where I was”.

He claimed that Ms Jones, a former foreign correspondent for the Mail on Sunday, and her colleague Caroline Graham would turn up “everywhere. It felt like full blown stalking and constant surveillance.”

In a witness statement to the court Prince Harry said he has always had an “uneasy relationship” with the press following the death of his mother when he was 12 years old.

He said he was “conditioned to accept it” and didn’t question it until he met his wife Meghan.

“In late 2016, when my relationship with Meghan, my now wife, became public, I started to become increasingly troubled by the approach of not taking action against the press in the wake of vicious persistent attacks on, harassment of and intrusive, sometimes racist articles concerning Meghan.”

Prince Harry is one of seven claimants, (including Liz Hurley, Elton John and Sadie Frost), that accuse Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) of “grave breaches of privacy”.

Publications belonging to ANL have been accused of systematically engaging in “unlawful information gathering”, including tapping phones and intercepting voicemails, between 1993 and 2011.

Associated Newspapers has denied any wrongdoing, describing the claims as “preposterous” and an “affront to the hardworking journalists whose reputations and integrity … are wrongly traduced”.

ANL’s lawyers have said the claimants – including Liz Hurley and Sir Elton John – were “clutching at straws”.

The trial continues.