Prince Harry v Daily Mail: A huge day, but a surprisingly short time on the stand in his case against Associated Newspapers

This was billed as a huge day for Prince Harry, the emotional enormity of it all immediately clear as he gave his evidence, from his visible frustration to his audible final moment of upset.

Since he left the Royal Family we’ve heard a lot from him about his feelings about the press and, importantly, his personal crusade to hold the tabloids to account.

But this was finally his time to confront in court the publishers of the Daily Mail, “the most influential newspaper” as he described them in his witness statement.

In the end, we were all surprised to see that he was only questioned for two and a half hours, a fraction of the time he was in the witness box for his case against the Mirror group, when he faced more than a day of questioning.

The barrister for Associated Newspapers only asked him about two of the 14 articles that make up the case, both aimed at landing their point that the sources of the stories were his own friends, legitimate sources or from within the palace.

They are adamant that unlawful methods weren’t used.

Social group ‘not leaky’

Prince Harry fought back, insisting his social group wasn’t leaky and denying claims that he had been overly friendly with journalists.

Clearly getting annoyed that he wasn’t allowed to land the points he wanted to make, he tried to steer proceedings on to the emotional toll it has taken on him and the other claimants, only for the judge to gently steer him back to answering the questions put to him, saying his barrister would do the rest of the work in the coming weeks.

There was also his written statement, including a more detailed explanation of how he was unable to fight this before because of the “never complain, never explain” mentality of palace life.

It also contained a wider explanation of why he feels it is his duty to pursue this.

A ‘public duty’ to take action

Describing the “social element” of his fight, he says it is “of national concern that these organisations believe they own people’s privacy. That they’ve turned what should be none of their business into very much their business”.

He said it was “part of the concept of public duty, which I genuinely believe is one of the most important roles that I have to perform, and something which my mother instilled in me”.

In the final moments, his voice cracked as he said: “They continue to come after me, they have made my wife’s life a misery”.

His moment to publicly call out what he described as the “creepy” and “disgusting” intrusion into his private life was over.

Now he will have to wait for the rest of the trial to play out over the next couple of months, and even longer for the final judgement, as Associated Newspapers continues to deny any wrongdoing.

‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’

‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source news.sky.com ’