{"id":380541,"date":"2026-01-20T15:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/380541\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T15:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:54:08","slug":"prince-harry-feels-targeted-for-standing-up-to-daily-mail-publisher-court-hears-prince-harry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/380541\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince Harry feels targeted for \u2018standing up\u2019 to Daily Mail publisher, court hears | Prince Harry"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Duke of Sussex believes he has faced a \u201csustained campaign\u201d of attacks for having \u201cthe temerity to stand up\u201d to the publisher of the Daily Mail<\/a>, the high court has heard.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Prince Harry made the claim as they set out 14 articles about him they allege were secured using unlawful information-gathering by Associated Newspapers<\/a> Ltd, which publishes the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.<\/p>\n

David Sherborne, the barrister representing the duke and six other prominent figures in the case, claimed flight details and sensitive information that had serious implications for Harry\u2019s security had been obtained unlawfully.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn his witness statement for the trial, the Duke of Sussex speaks of the impact which this has had on him, the distress, the paranoia and the other feelings that it generated,\u201d Sherborne told the high court in London.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut given what we\u2019ve seen, is it any wonder that he feels that way, or as he explains, that he feels he has endured a sustained campaign of attacks against him for having had the temerity to stand up to Associated in the way that he has so publicly done?\u201d<\/p>\n

The duke\u2019s concern about his treatment emerged as Sherborne set out key parts of the case against the publisher. He highlighted articles he said bore the \u201challmarks of unlawful information gathering\u201d.<\/p>\n

Harry was again in court to hear the case before he gives evidence on Thursday. The 14 articles relating to the duke were published between 2001 and 2013. Most contained the bylines of either Katie Nicholl, a former Mail on Sunday royal correspondent, or Rebecca English, the Daily Mail\u2019s royal editor.<\/p>\n

One article, which cited a \u201cfamily source\u201d, revealed Harry had been chosen as godfather to the child of his former nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke. Sherborne said no one in the wider family had been told, including King Charles.<\/p>\n

Nicholl has said the source could have been Elizabeth Anson, a cousin of the queen who was 40 years older than Legge-Bourke, or the socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, both of whom have since died.<\/p>\n

Other stories contained details of Harry\u2019s relationship with his former girlfriend Chelsy Davy. Sherborne told the court that the private investigator Mike Behr had been paid \u00a3200 in cash by English for a \u201cChelsy tip\u201d, which included Davy\u2019s exact flight details.<\/p>\n

Sherborne said another article published in 2010 contained \u201cspecific and intimate details\u201d of Harry\u2019s private life, including his \u201cpreferences of where he likes to spend the night\u201d. He said that the details could not \u201cconceivably\u201d have come from a legitimate source.<\/p>\n

In a written submission, Sherborne said Nicholl\u2019s evidence was that her indirect source for the information concerning Davy had been the late Garth Gibbs, \u201can elderly retired journalist who lived alone on the Isle of Wight with a cat and who left South Africa in 1966, 20 years before Ms Davy was even born\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the explanation \u201cstretches plausibility and is to be dismissed accordingly\u201d.<\/p>\n

David Sherborne, representing Prince Harry, highlighted articles he said bore the \u2018hallmarks of unlawful information gathering\u2019. Photograph: Phil Lewis\/Sopa Images\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Associated\u2019s legal team said in written submissions that the stories had been obtained \u201centirely legitimately from information variously provided by contacts of the journalists responsible, including individuals in the Duke of Sussex\u2019s social circle, press officers and publicists, freelance journalists, photographers and prior reports\u201d.<\/p>\n

Antony White, leading Associated\u2019s defence, said the duke\u2019s social circle \u201cwas and was known to be a good source of leaks or disclosure of information to the media about what he got up to in his private life\u201d.<\/p>\n

He told the court there had been \u201cwidespread previous coverage\u201d that played into the articles in question. \u201cThese articles don\u2019t appear out of nowhere,\u201d he said. \u201cTo a considerable extent, articles build on what has previously been reported.\u201d<\/p>\n

White said it was striking that Associated had almost a \u201cfull roster\u201d of journalists \u201clining up to give evidence addressing the allegations against them\u201d. He said the fact that so many would appear, including the longtime Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, \u201cspeaks volumes about the culture\u201d at the publisher.<\/p>\n

White said there were \u201cvery serious allegations\u201d made against a series of journalists, who would all have to be lying about their activities and knowledge. He said this was improbable.<\/p>\n

He said prominent figures at Associated would \u201cemphatically reject\u201d that Associated had carried out unlawful activities to obtain stories. White said an effective ban on the use of private investigators was put in place by Dacre in 2007.<\/p>\n

He said the claimants had provided \u201cvery little evidence\u201d about unlawful activities carried out by private investigators paid by Associated\u2019s journalists. He also said \u201cin the majority of cases\u201d, there was nothing linking the payment of a private investigator to either the content of a story or the journalist that wrote it.<\/p>\n

He said the claimants\u2019 case amounted to \u201cguesswork\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also said much of the claimants\u2019 evidence of unlawful activities was drawn from evidence in previous cases against the publishers of the Daily Mirror and the Sun. He said the evidence should not be permissible in the case against Associated Newspapers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the claimants, Sherborne also attempted to deal with a claim from Associated Newspapers that they had waited too long to make the claims, stating each had found out they had a serious case against the publisher after October 2016 \u2013 the cutoff date for legal action.<\/p>\n

He also said the allegation that the claimants\u2019 legal team had engineered \u201cwatershed moments\u201d to ensure the action could be brought was as \u201coffensive as it is misconceived and untrue\u201d.<\/p>\n

The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Duke of Sussex believes he has faced a \u201csustained campaign\u201d of attacks for having \u201cthe temerity to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-380541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}