Boris Johnson had a “manly pep talk” with Britain's Prince Harry to try to persuade him not to leave the UK and move to the United States.
According to the then-prime minister, Downing Street and Buckingham Palace asked him to talk to Harry in January 2020, hours after his speech announcing that he and his wife Meghan planned to step away from royal life.
Mr Johnson writes in his forthcoming memoir that there was “a ridiculous business … when they made me try to persuade Harry to stay. Kind of manly pep talk. Totally hopeless”, The Daily Mail reported, ahead of a serialisation of the book.
The men met for 20 minutes on the sidelines of a UK-Africa investment summit in London’s Docklands, according to the newspaper.
The serialisation of his book comes as the Conservative Party conference begins on Sunday, during which the four leadership candidates, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat, Robert Jenrick and James Cleverly, will pitch themselves to the party’s members.
In his memoir, Mr Johnson will set out his views on the “Tory machinations” that brought about his exit from office in 2022 and give his opinions on his successors Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
The book will cover years in politics, including the run-up to the Brexit referendum and negotiations with the EU on the UK’s divorce deal, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Partygate scandal.
Mr Johnson became the first UK prime minister to receive a criminal penalty while in office, over Partygate, before the Chris Pincher scandal brought an avalanche of ministerial resignations and his exit from Downing Street.
In a video clip teasing the release, Mr Johnson said readers could also look forward to discovering “which senior politician looks like a bullock having a thermometer shoved unexpectedly up his rectum” and “how I became obsessed with the weirdly shaped nostrils of a certain prime minister”.
