The Ludgrove Matron

[Radyward]

How awful of him to name this poor woman and discuss her disability and thY He didn't find her "HOT" words fail me . The poor woman. Her poor family. I mean how old is She now. Implicated in this crazy book

As opposed to be a middle aged white man who gained power merely by being born to the future King, hey, Harry? So I self aware.

Perhaps Ludgrove should be putting out a statement as to the treatment of their staff? Why the silence? Of course people will be concerned.

Ludgrove need to make clear if 'Pat' is still working there, does she exist, still alive or is she someone else with a different name? It hardly matters. Harry has been extremely vocal in telling the world about the poor woman's horrific treatment - and as she was employed by the school, they have a duty and are obliged to offer her protection from such cruelty and malice.

Not everyone chooses to continue to work in such terrible conditions, she may have small mouths to feed and a house to run and needed to work, one would think her life was hard enough without the bullying from the children she was paid to care for.

I too am astounded by the minimising on this thread, although I shouldn't be as the Sussex squad are so brainwashed into believing they can do no wrong it's obviously all about the "context"

Quite - though it's noticeable that some of the more balanced defenders haven't posted.
I guess there comes a point where the tinpot idol shows so clearly what they are that there's little to defend any more, at least with any credibility

I'm very, very rarely made angry, but Harry's cruelty on such a subject has managed it

Kids do bad stuff, they don't all have the maturity to understand how harmful it is. He is now a 38 year old man and he has described this woman in a very unflattering way, if he just wanted to tell us he was an obnoxious 13 year old he didn't have to identify her and whatever her name is expupils and staff will know exactly who he means.

I hope he says somewhere that he is ashamed of what he did but that doesn't alter the fact that he has held this woman up to ridicule.

Suspect this is just another example of someone only caring about misogyny when it's aimed at a young, beautiful woman, which is in itself misogynistic.

Quite

If you are nearly forty years old, you are supposed to have developed the emotional intelligence to understand that the bullying of a defenceless and disabled woman was a truly terrible thing to do, at any age. Had he written about it with sadness, contrition and empathy he would have had a different response to the passage.

It was written in glee by a man that has NO IDEA how much damage he has caused and is still causing. He has the emotional intelligence of a Cat 1 psychopath.

I’ve just listened to this section and I’m appalled. He says with no self awareness at all that he goaded her to make everyone laugh. He is a bully. Awful

I’m disabled and don’t have a “normal” gait. I hope people aren’t taking the piss - and especially not recounting those tales in public 25 years on. 😔 In public for the people I know might mean FB/a column in the village paper - not a fucking book!

Sadly not, she has now been identified on Twitter by another ex pupil (who is not impressed with Harry's anecdote).

Oh god I've just googled against my better judgement and it's awful. A 'deviated spine". So scoliosis then. An actual medical condition that causes physical and emotional pain. My DD has it. It's crap. That's done it for me: H is a vile human being.

I'm furious actually.

Harry's cousin has scoliosis too. He's beyond despicable.

Yes. Wonder how Eugenie feels now, considering she is meant to be the cousin still close to H&M.

He is despicable and I think people who try and spin this bit of it in his favour or bleating on about 'context' are deluded.

Difference is, those 13 year olds don't usually write in a book for all the works to see when they're pushing 40.

// Ah but dogbowl don't you see he's telling his truth and being honest and coz he isn't racist anymore it's all ok

Oh fhs have any of you actually read the passage concerned?

Taunting anyone is horrible but please don't do this woman extra harm by presenting her as some sort of victim.

Harry described her as someone whom small boys would be "ill advised to approach with any problem" and that she used to grab fistfuls of small boys and they were "well and truly fucked" if caught by her.

I'm not saying that justifies taunting as it doesn't but please read the passages accurately.

Schools could be pretty rough places back then; they tend to be gentler now.
I know when I was at school there was awful bullying and racism going on and certain teachers were mocked. It wasn't a kind environment. And I am sure that most of you on here have read about how Eton pupils allegedly jeered a group of visiting state school girl recently. This was the reality of Harry's environment when he was nine and he is telling it as he experienced it.

But @Tripofalifetime343 he's not nine anymore. And mocking someone's physical disability isn't a good look these days. People with scoliosis have only just stopped being called hunchbacks. His description blends character and physical disability in a way which is really offensive

Have you read it? Describing someone as mousy and frazzled with greasy hair isn't exactly complimentary is it? He's saying this now not 20 odd years ago. He should be embarrassed that he was so unpleasant then but ashamed that he has described this woman in such a way.

How would you feel if you read that description of yourself? "Tripofalifetime, you know the mousy one who always looks frazzled with greasy hair falling into her tired eyes." Would you be happy with that?

The problem I have with Harry is that he is perfectly content and thinks it within his rights to throw others under the bus. he talks about losing his virginity and then there is massive specualtion about who it was with, with the media camping outside likely candidate's houses. He talks about his 'number' when in the military and this has potentially put alot of people in some jeopardy, as detailed by any number of current and ex military on a variety of fora. He talks about Pat and her physical disabilities and her greay hair and how hot he considers her to be or not and she is then named on twitter. He talks about his family members and gives away details like if they are circumcised or not or that his dad still has a childhood teddy.

Now, leaving aside the fact that the RF have power and money compared with the other people he has shamed in his book, NONE of these people have consented to have this information out there and poured over by the entire world. Harry writes like these things are just fun japes and they have no consequences at all. He is apparently entirely incapable of acknowledging or respecting the dignity and privacy of other people.

For someone who witters on about privacy, about the media, about people saying things in public about him or his family that he does not like... for someone who claims to be mental health campaigner and someone who claims to be about kindess and compassion and anti bullying- well it makes him look like a hypocrite at best.

So yes, at best I think he is a bit thick and a hypocrite. That is the nicest spin I can put on it. He is actually coming across as really very nasty.

@Tripofalifetime343 the paragraphs are posted in full on this very thread. In his own words he says he mocked her.

or are you referring to different paragraphs?

someone this morning said “the word context has been doing some very heavy lifting”.

I'm reading the actual book and so far it's worse than I expected.

50 pages in and he comes across as a rather entitled, unpleasant man who feels that he's hard done by. There is zero empathy for others.

The prose is also hard work.

There is a lot of 'this is my truth', don't really do dates, no idea if this is actually real or I just made it up. And apparently his feelings of what might have happened are just as valid as objective truth... eh?

There are lots of odd errors - apparently Diana bought him an x-box for his birthday in Paris before she died and was delivered to him in person by her sister Sarah. Which is odd as Diana died in 1997 and the first x-box came out in the US in Nov 2001 and didn't reach Europe till the following year. Why wouldn't someone say to him 'hold on, you have remembered this wrong?'... it makes you wonder what else has been remembered wrong.

'Oh fhs have any of you actually read the passage concerned?'

Stop minimisint. Like other desperate supporters bleating on about context 🙄.

The passage has been widely reported so yes we've read the passage. He doesn't say what a little shit he was at school and how they had awful names for teachers he talks as if it it ok to call women 'not hot with crooked spines'.

He really is vile and misguided. All this book has done is give us example after example to confirm this.

I have been wondering whether to buy this book and see for myself if the damning extracts that have been all over the media were indeed taken out of context, but reading that segment about Pat has made me unwilling to do anything that might profit Harry or add to his record breaking sales figures.

I cannot imagine why anyone would think it is good PR to write an account of how you bullied and mocked a disabled woman, without any empathy or regret. Children can be cruel, I get that - but at nearly 40, Harry should have known how cruel his behaviour was, back then - and that it would be doubly cruel to mock Pat again, in a book that will be read by millions.

Harry described her as someone whom small boys would be "ill advised to approach with any problem" and that she used to grab fistfuls of small boys and they were "well and truly fucked" if caught by her

Harry describes a lot of people as a lot of things, but as anyone with sense will have noted they're not necessarily accurate - and that's without the common 12 year old thing of regarding anyone in authority as some sort of bogeyman/woman

Still, it's instructive to know which people on here will seek to defend this sort of thing ... pity about the ability to namechange

It’s indefensible. He should be cringing at the memory.

To me, this episode is by far the most revealing and damning incident in the whole book. I judge people by how they treat those they might consider to be 'little people'. Also, I can forgive many things but not cruelty and bullying. I'm very sceptical about whether bullies can really change...'the child is father of the man' etc.

What vile behaviour in the first place, and then how bone-headedly stupid, insensitive, snobbish and sadistic to repeat it so revealingly for this poor woman to have to live through it all over again (with no hint of remorse - that's the chilling aspect). I bet the press will be making their way to her door if she's still with us.

(Btw - I've worked in a boys' independent school, and most of the boys I worked with were kind and polite - often going out of their way to be helpful, and were keen to work with disabled people in the community. So - please don't blame it on his school - some things are just down to the individual being horrible!)

It betrays the fact that Harry is a bully and perhaps his denial of the bullying accusations against him and Meghan may be due to the fact that he doesn't recognise such behaviour as bullying! After all, they're little people - who are paid to follow orders - surely they don't have the feelings of finer folk like H & M.

It's the same kind of logic/insensitivity which allows Harry to enjoy his shooting and hunting activities, I imagine.