Prince Harry was put under pressure to foster working relationships with royal correspondents and \u2018forced to perform\u2019 for them, he told his High Court privacy case on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Duke of Sussex<\/a> said he felt he could not complain about articles or Press conduct because of a Royal Family<\/a> policy of \u2018never complain, never explain\u2019, which he had been \u2018conditioned to accept\u2019.<\/p>\n But he said it was \u2018disgusting\u2019 for journalists to behave as though he and his wife Meghan had no right to privacy, adding: \u2018I have never believed that my life is open season to be commercialised by these people.\u2019<\/p>\n Giving evidence in his legal action against Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail and The Mail On Sunday, Harry appeared emotional as he said: \u2018They continue to come after me, they have made my wife\u2019s life an absolute misery.\u2019<\/p>\n Harry, 41, was the first witness in the high-profile court action he has brought against the newspaper group with six other claimants, including Baroness (Doreen) Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence<\/a>, and singer Sir Elton John<\/a>.<\/p>\n Associated Newspaper denies their accusations that its journalists commissioned phone hacking, landline tapping and other unlawful information gathering, branding the claims \u2018preposterous\u2019 and \u2018simply untrue\u2019.<\/p>\n Prince Harry arriving at the Royal Courts of Justice to give his testimony in his trial against the publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail On Sunday<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A court artist’s sketch of the Duke of Sussex in the witness box where he was cross-examined by Associated Newspapers’ barrister<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Harry was shielded from the rain with an umbrella held by his solicitor Callum Galbraith as they arrived at the court<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Harry said he was seeking \u2018an apology and accountability\u2019 and said in his witness statement that he was \u2018motivated by truth, justice and accountability\u2019.<\/p>\n His evidence was interrupted by the trial judge Mr Justice Nicklin, who reminded him to answer questions from Mr White, rather than setting out his case.<\/p>\n Referring to David Sherborne, the barrister for Harry and the other claimants, the judge told him: \u2018You don\u2019t have to bear the burden of arguing this case today. You don\u2019t have to carry that burden, that\u2019s why Mr Sherborne\u2019s here.\u2019<\/p>\n Harry appeared to bristle as he was questioned by Antony White KC, for Associated Newspapers, about whether his friends were \u2018leaky\u2019 and could have been the source of journalists\u2019 information.<\/p>\n And he denied he had ever used a Facebook profile, under the name \u2018Mr Mischief\u2019, to message a Mail on Sunday journalist.<\/p>\n \u2018For the avoidance of doubt, I\u2019m not friends with any of these journalists and never have been,\u2019 he said, adding: \u2018My social circles were not leaky, I want to make that absolutely clear.\u2019<\/p>\n He was quizzed over messages to friends, in which he questioned how information had appeared in Press articles. When it was put to him that a Mail on Sunday journalist visited the same nightclubs as him and his friends, he said: \u2018Good for her\u2019.<\/p>\n And he said he had previously harboured suspicions about leaks within his social circle, saying he had \u2018cut contact\u2019 with people he suspected, but now believed journalists had hacked phones to get information about his private life.<\/p>\n He described how suspicions and the impact of alleged Press intrusion had damaged his relationships with friends and placed additional pressure on relationships with girlfriends.<\/p>\n One former girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, felt \u2018hunted\u2019 and was terrified and shaken by alleged intrusion, he said, and became suspicious of her own friends.<\/p>\n Harry said he now believed information in 14 articles submitted to the court had come from phone hacking or \u2018blagging\u2019, but had not suspected it at the time.<\/p>\n He denied a suggestion that the articles were selected by a \u2018research team\u2019, and said they were chosen \u2018in collaboration with my legal team\u2019.<\/p>\n His witness statement stated he had known of the hacking allegations surrounding the News of the World\u2019s royal editor Clive Goodman, who was arrested in 2006, but had accepted then-Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre\u2019s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry in 2012 that there was no phone hacking at the Mail titles.<\/p>\n Harry said: \u2018If I had known earlier then I would have acted, particularly given Associated\u2019s treatment of Meghan and her claim against it.\u2019<\/p>\n The Duke has previously taken legal action against the publisher of the Daily Mirror in 2023, and last year his privacy case against the publisher of the Sun and the now defunct News of the World was settled for an undisclosed sum.<\/p>\n The case continues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.celebrity.land.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prince Harry was put under pressure to foster working relationships with royal correspondents and \u2018forced to perform\u2019 for them, he told his High Court privacy case on Wednesday. The Duke of Sussex said he felt he could not complain about articles or Press conduct because of a Royal Family policy of \u2018never complain, never explain\u2019, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2244964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[25884,21738],"class_list":["post-2244963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-dailymail","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Prince-Harry-forced-to-perform-for-royal-correspondents-by-palace.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2244963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2244965,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244963\/revisions\/2244965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2244964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2244963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2244963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2244963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2026\/01\/21\/18\/105700407-15485577-image-a-2_1769020568951.jpg\")
<\/div><\/div>\n![\"Harry](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2026\/01\/21\/19\/105700417-15485577-Harry_was_shielded_from_the_rain_with_an_umbrella_held_by_his_so-a-1_1769022436501.jpg\")
<\/div><\/div>\n