Prince Harry reportedly hated ‘woke nonsense’ before meeting Meghan Markle, a new book has claimed.
The Duke of Sussex, 38, is said to have not been a fan of ‘all that politically correct stuff’ before he first met then-Suits actress Meghan, 41, and enjoyed sharing jokes that ‘we are no longer allowed to make’.
The claims from one of Prince Harry’s ‘Eton contemporaries’ are made in a new biography, Gilded Youth by Tom Quinn, Newsweek reports.
Quinn’s book reportedly quotes the classmate of Harry’s, who is not named, as saying: ‘He was funny, a bit cynical and great company because like the rest of us he made jokes that we are no longer allowed to make.’
The claims come after the Duke of Sussex has been accused of being ‘woke’ as he has championed new causes in recent years.
The unnamed former peer of the Duke of Sussex said the young Harry was not a fan of what he described as ‘woke nonsense’ and wasn’t politically correct before he met the Duchess of Sussex (the couple pictured in Dublin, 2018)
The former Eton pupil is reported to have accused Harry of turning into a ‘Guardian-reading tree hugger’ after meeting the Duchess of Sussex, and suggests the Duchess herself was the person behind his transformation.
He said: ‘He rarely, if ever, spoke about global warming. He was a sort of Tim-Nice-but-Dim character who liked getting p***** with his army and Eton friends, did a bit of shooting and fishing and was otherwise undistinguished.’
Since stepping down as a senior member of the royal family Harry has spoken out about several causes and issues on which he previously rarely commented.
An ‘Eton contemporary’ of Prince Harry has reportedly told biographer Tom Quinn that the Duke of Sussex, now 38, used to make the jokes ‘we are no longer allowed to make’. The unnamed former peer of the Duke, suggested that Meghan Markle was the reason behind Harry’s transformation into a ‘Guardian-reading tree hugger’, as written in new book Gilded Youth
His more recent forays into tackling these issues have led to some people branding the Duke as ‘woke’.
Last year, royal expert Angela Levin claimed Harry & Meghan were ‘trying to create an alternative woke royal family’.
She told FEMAIL: ‘I’ve thought for a long time that Harry and Meghan are trying to create an alternative woke royal family, the grandeur and the pomp and circumstance that surrounds them.’
In his £100 million Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, the Duke discussed how he has tackled his own unconscious bias in recent years and has since encouraged the royal family to do the same.
In an interview to promote his bombshell memoir Spare in January, Harry told former NFL player Michael Strahan the royal family needed to educate themselves on unconscious bias if the monarchy was to modernise and survive.
Harry said he wanted the royals to survive but that understanding race better would be ‘hugely beneficial’ for them.
Harry said: ‘I think the same process that I went through regarding my own unconscious bias would be hugely beneficial to them.
‘It’s not racism, but unconscious bias if not confronted, if not acknowledged, if not learned and grown from, that can then move into racism. And the way that I understand it is that we all want to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.’
Harry has also appeared on panels and in videos for new mental health platforms in which he has spoken about the importance of ‘peak mental fitness’.
Last July he appeared in a video which encouraged people to focus on ‘flexing their minds’ rather than ‘fixing’ them in order to ‘unlock the greatness within them’.
In a film for $4.7 billion mental health start-up project BetterUp, he shared insight into how he maintains his own mental health.
‘We all have greatness within us,’ the father-of-two says at the start of the five-minute short film. ‘Mental fitness helps us unlock it. It’s an ongoing practice, one where you approach your mind as something to flex, not fix.’
Another cause he has thrown his weight behind in recent years is ending global warming, claiming that climate change and mental health are two of the biggest problems facing the world in a series on Apple TV.
Speaking to Oprah Winfrey on The Me You Can’t See: A Path Forward, he said: ‘With kids growing up in today’s world, pretty depressing, right, depending on where you live, your home country is either on fire, it’s either underwater, houses or forests are being flattened.
‘Climate change is really playing a huge part in this as well as social media, and we just don’t – well, I mean, I know lots of people out there are doing as best they can to try and fix these issues – but that whole sort of analogy of walking into the bathroom with a mop when the bath is over-flooding, rather than just turning the tap off.’
Gilded Youth by Tom Quinn published by Biteback, price: £15
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