Sales for Prince Harry’s ‘Spare’ indicate Irish interest in the Royals is alive and well

Fiona Frawley

stacks of copies of Prince Harry's book, Spare in a bookshop

It’s been hard not to cast an eye over the drama lately, let’s be honest.

The Irish relationship with Royal drama is a complicated one. There are some of us who fought the urge to tune into The Crown for seasons upon seasons, giving in only when they got to the Diana era and even then, watching late at night under the concealment of darkness, for fear we’d be outed as West Brits.

There are some who are unapologetically invested, and in fairness, who wouldn’t be intrigued by leaked erotic phone calls about tampons, illicit toe-sucking and attempts and failures to cover up family scandals? In my personal opinion, this is a fairly unproblematic way to engage with the Royals – to see them as reality stars, without actually supporting the monarchy or taking issue with anyone trying to bring them down from the inside. On the contrary, that’s exactly the type of drama you live for.

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Whether you fall somewhere in the middle or thoroughly despise the mere mention of the Royals, sadly you probably won’t have been able to avoid them over the last few weeks, as excerpts from Prince Harry’s ‘tell-all’ (some would even say tell-too-much) memoir Spare have been cropping up on Twitter, TikTok and in Whatsapp groups at an alarming rate. You’d think we’d have heard just about enough about his frostbitten ‘todger’ but book sales would indicate otherwise – 10,000 copies of the book were sold on its first day in Ireland alone.

In a tweet on Wednesday, managing director of Penguin Random House in Ireland Michael McLoughlin revealed the book was in the running to beat the best single-week sales of any non-fiction book published in Ireland over the past 20 years.

Sensational sales of over 10,000 copies of Spare by Prince Harry in Ireland yesterday. It’s going to be close, but it looks like the first week’s sales may beat the best single-week sales of every non-fiction book published in Ireland over the past 20 years! pic.twitter.com/QeUoTQI8cf

— Michael McLoughlin (@MichaelPenguin) January 11, 2023

Online discourse would indicate there are a lot of people with zero interest in what Harry has to say (including some Irish journalists who for reasons unknown take great offence at himself and Megan dishing dirt about the Royals – begging the question why an Irish person would defend an institution that caused such irreparable damage in this country) but book sales definitely indicate otherwise.. Is Harry and his inability to stop discussing where he puts Elizabeth Arden balm and how he lost his virginity our nation’s guilty pleasure? Will you be purchasing a copy of the book? Or do you have ‘Harry’, ‘Megan’, ‘frostbitten’ and ‘Spare’ permanently muted on all social platforms? Either way, sales indicate he’ll be hard to avoid over the coming weeks.

Header image via Shutterstock