Prince Harry Drove Through Tunnel Where His Mother Died at Same Speed: 'I Want to Go Through It'

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In an exclusive excerpt from Prince Harry's new memoir Spare, PEOPLE reveals for the first time how the royal relived his mother Princess Diana's final moments before her death.

While attending the 2007 Rugby World Cup semifinal in Paris, a then 23-year-old Harry drove through the same tunnel where his mother died 10 years prior. In his new book, out Jan. 10, he recounts the intense pain he felt in his attempt to find closure.

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The World Cup provided me with a driver, and on my first night in the City of Light I asked him if he knew the tunnel where my mother…

I watched his eyes in the rearview, growing large.

The tunnel is called Pont de l'Alma, I told him.

Yes, yes. He knew it.

I want to go through it. 

You want to go through the tunnel? 

At sixty-five miles per hour—to be precise. 

Sixty-five?

Yes.

The exact speed Mummy's car had supposedly been driving, according to police, at the time of the crash. Not 120 miles per hour, as the press originally reported.

The driver looked over at the passenger seat. Billy the Rock nodded gravely. Let's do it. Billy added that if the driver ever revealed to another human that we'd asked him to do this, we'd find him and there would be hell to pay.

The driver gave a solemn nod.

Off we went, weaving through traffic, cruising past the Ritz, where Mummy had her last meal, with her boyfriend, that August night. Then we came to the mouth of the tunnel. We zipped ahead, went over the lip at the tunnel's entrance, the bump that supposedly sent Mummy's Mercedes veering off course.

But the lip was nothing. We barely felt it.

As the car entered the tunnel I leaned forward, watched the light change to a kind of water orange, watched the concrete pillars flicker past. I counted them, counted my heartbeats, and in a few seconds we emerged from the other side.

I sat back. Quietly I said: Is that all of it? It's…nothing. Just a straight tunnel. 

I'd always imagined the tunnel as some treacherous passageway, inherently dangerous, but it was just a short, simple, no-frills tunnel.

No reason anyone should ever die inside it.

The driver and Billy the Rock didn't answer.

I looked out the window: Again.

The driver stared at me in the rearview. Again?

Yes. Please.

We went through again.

That's enough. Thank you.

It had been a very bad idea. I'd had plenty of bad ideas in my twenty-three years, but this one was uniquely ill-conceived. I'd told myself that I wanted closure, but I didn't really. Deep down, I'd hoped to feel in that tunnel what I'd felt when JLP gave me the police files—disbelief. Doubt. Instead, that was the night all doubt fell away.

She's dead, I thought. My God, she's really gone for good. 

I go the closure I was pretending to seek. I got it in spades. And now I'd never be able to get rid of it.

I'd thought driving the tunnel would bring an end, or brief cessation, to the pain, the decade of unrelenting pain. Instead it brought on the start of Pain, Part Deux.

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PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE The book jacket of Prince Harry's memoir 'Spare'

Prince Harry's memoir, which will be released on Jan. 10, is an "intimate" and "heartfelt" look into the "experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him."

For more on Prince Harry's memoir, listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.

In July 2021, Penguin Random House announced that the Duke of Sussex was putting his life story — which covers his childhood in the public eye and his military duty in Afghanistan to becoming a husband to Meghan Markle and father to son Archie, 3, and daughter Lilibet, 1 — into a book.

"I'm writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become," Prince Harry, said. "I've worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story — the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned — I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think."

He continued, "I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what I've learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life that's accurate and wholly truthful."

Karwai Tang/WireImage; Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Prince Harry and Princess Diana

In his book, Harry recalls the unimaginable death of his mother and how his life played out from that point on.

Penguin Random House notes that Spare takes "readers immediately back to one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror."

"As Diana, Princess of Wales was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling — and how their lives would play out from that point on," the publisher said.