Harry brands 'dangerous' Camilla the 'villain' in fresh TV interview attack on stepmother

Prince Harry has called the Queen Consort "the villain" and "dangerous" in his latest TV interview.

The Duke of Sussex launched his fiercest criticism yet of his stepmother in an interview with CBS show 60 Minutes in the US ahead of the official release of his memoir, Spare.

In his autobiography, Harry writes that Camilla “sacrificed me on her personal PR altar”.

In his 60 Minutes interview, broadcast on Sunday, he discussed the perception of his stepmother with presenter Anderson Cooper: “She was the villain, she was a third person in the marriage, she needed to rehabilitate her image.

“The need for her to rehabilitate her image... that made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press.

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“And there was open willingness on both sides to trade information and with a family built on hierarchy, and with her on the way to being Queen Consort, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street because of that.”

In a separate TV interview with ITV's Tom Bradby, broadcast in the UK on Sunday evening, Harry accused Camilla of leaking the details of private talks with his brother, William, Prince of Wales, in a "long game" campaign to become Queen.

The TV interviews are the first of four given by Harry to coincide with the launch of his book, which has sent shockwaves through the Royal Family.

Read more: Harry describes 'heartbreaking' moment William used 'secret, three-word code' about Diana

Harry writes in his memoir how he and William begged their father, King Charles, not to marry Camilla, and he told Cooper: “We didn’t think it was necessary. We thought it would do more harm than good.”

In the ITV interview, Harry denied he was "scathing" towards his stepmother, but accused her of colluding with newspapers, leaking details of conversations with his brother.

Charles married Camilla in a civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall in April 2005.

Quoting an excerpt from the book, which is due to be published on Tuesday but has been extensively leaked, he claimed he and his brother told their father not to marry Camilla.

He wrote: '"We support you,” we said. “We endorse Camilla,” we said. “Just please don’t marry her, just be together, Pa. He didn’t answer. But she answered. Straight away.'

Harry also wrote: "Shortly after our private summits with her, she began to play the long game. A campaign aimed [at] marriage, and eventually the Crown, with Pa’s blessing we presumed.

Read more: How friendly is Tom Bradby with Prince Harry?

"Stories began to appear everywhere in all the papers about her private conversation with Willie, stories that contained pinpoint accurate details, none of which had come from Willie, of course.

"They could only have been leaked by the other one other person present."

However, some royal sources have insisted that leaked details of Camilla's first meeting with William were done so inadvertently. According to sources speaking to the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, Camilla shared the conversation with her personal assistant, who told her husband. He then told someone who worked in the media who subsequently shared the story with a newspaper. It is believed Camilla's private secretary immediately resigned when the story came to light.

However, later in the ITV interview, Harry goes on to accuse Charles and Camilla's office of leaking negative stories to the press following William and Kate's wedding.

He said: "Just as much as William and Kate suffered from my father and stepmother, or their office... because the moment William married Kate they went through a large portion of the same things that Meg and I went through.

"But then I always believed that – well I’m the spare, I’m no competition to my father, no competition to my brother, I think this will be absolutely fine. How wrong I was. The very thing that William and Kate had experienced from Pa and Camilla happened to us, and happened from William and Kate’s office as well."

But Harry told Bradby: "There’s no part of any of the things that I’ve said are scathing towards any member of my family, especially not my stepmother."

Elsewhere in the interview, he said he loved his father and brother, adding: "Nothing of what I’ve done in this book or otherwise has ever been any intention to harm them or hurt them."

But he accused his family of "getting into bed with the devil" – the press – to rehabilitate their image, saying they had been "complicit" in conflict he said was created by the British media.

"The saddest part of that is certain members of my family and the people that work for them are complicit in that conflict," he said.

Neither Buckingham Palace nor Kensington Palace have commented on the contents of Harry's book or interviews he has given to the media.

Watch: Harry accuses royals of 'getting into bed with the devil'