The usually Sussex-sympathising New York Times is withering about Omid Scobie’s new book, declaring that Harry and Meghan’s favoured journalist does them ‘no favours’.
In a pithy review of Endgame, the liberal US newspaper claims a chapter on the couple even ‘reads like a press release cooked up by ChatGPT’.
It also says the book, out tomorrow, ‘is not all that different from what Harry presented in “Spare”,’ and ‘is devoted to setting the record straight on petty slights against the Sussexes’.
America’s first review of the book adds: ‘Readers hoping for a final death blow of gossip will be disappointed. We’ve heard much of it before. From Fergie, from Diana, from Charles, from Harry, from Harry, from Harry again’.
It came as the similarly left-leaning Independent news website in the UK claims ‘he paints Meghan and Harry in a relentless saintly light’.
The first reviews of Omid Scobie’s Endgame are out and critics have said it is ‘devoted to setting the record straight on petty slights against the Sussexes’
The New York Times’ pithy review says we’ve heard most of it before
The NYT’s writer Eva Wolchover, who co-hosts its Windsors & Losers royal podcast, is critical of Endgame after receiving an advanced copy.
She says: ‘Whether or not Scobie actively collaborated with Meghan and Harry for this book, he does them no favours. Their chapter reads like a press release cooked up by ChatGPT, and does little to shed light on them as humans.
‘He says the couple — who used to focus on coverage of themselves — now remain blissfully unconcerned. Harry’s next chapter will focus, among other things, on philanthropic efforts in the “military space,” while Meghan (and here Scobie quotes an unnamed source) is “building ‘something more accessible … something rooted in her love of details, curating, hosting, life’s simple pleasures, and family.’”
Ms Wolchover also says of the author’s warnings that the Royal Family faces ‘extinction’: ‘It’s hard not to find Scobie’s dire predictions a tad hyperbolic’.
She writes: ‘Scobie defines the term “endgame” as “the final stages of a chess game after most of the pieces have been removed from the board”, adding: ‘Unless Charles and his heirs act quickly, Scobie underscores, they risk losing the crown, or at the very least, any remaining cultural relevance. But there’s a paradox here: As long as people are buying books like Scobie’s, they’re buying the whole lousy operation’.
The Independent has the first British review of Endgame, giving it three-stars.
Writer Anna Pasternak says that Mr Scobie ‘is unfailingly sympathetic to the Sussexes’.
The New York Times had the first review in the US, and The Independent in the UK. Both are left-leaning press
She writes: ‘He does not hold them accountable for anything – he does not, as I had anticipated, demonise Charles or denounce Camilla. I was expecting something different – him possibly laying into evil monarch King Charles and wicked stepmother, Queen Camilla. The real royal villain here is William’.
Scobie also has choice words for the Princess of Wales. She says: Scobie points out that Kate has had “several rounds of elocution lessons” and now sounds “posher” than her husband. And he waspishly writes out that you’ll be unlikely to read in any British newspaper that Kate has had “five different private secretaries in six years” adding that one found the role “uninspiring and frustrating”.’
She adds: ‘Scobie fully anticipates that he and his book will be discredited in the British media. He is probably right, and he will certainly not be helped by the fact that he paints Meghan and Harry in a relentless saintly light. Harry is very much presented as the happy prince in his happy place “biking and hiking and taking ice-baths”; mornings are “for family only – no staff” and the hands-on parents “take turns in school drop-offs and pick-ups every day”.
‘Scobie’s only criticism is their unwise commercial deals which were made in haste’.