THE MAN BEHIND THE BOOK

He's the ghost writer of Harry's controversial memoir - and JR Moehringer's own story has been made into a Hollywood movie

- DENNIS CAVERNELIS

IT'S the best-selling non-fiction book of all time and the most spoken about and controversial memoir to grace the globe in decades.

Thanks to Spare, we know all about Harry's frostbitten "todger", how he lost his virginity and his fractious relationship with his famous family.

It's Harry's book about Harry's escapades and Harry's deepest, darkest thoughts but the truth is he didn't write it.

That accolade goes to JR Moehringer, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and one of the most respected ghost writers in the business. And a ghost he all but remains when it comes to Spare.

When publisher Penguin Random House announced the memoir was forthcoming, there was one name "conspicuously" left off the press release, writer Rachel Deahl says in Publishers Weekly, a magazine focusing on the publishing trade.

"But those in the industry know that Moehringer will be an essential component in the royal's book - even if his name never appears on the final product.

In fact, JR's name appears in Spare only once: in the acknowledgements where Harry writes, "Thanks to my collaborator and friend, confessor and sometime sparring partner JR Moehringer, who spoke to me so often and with such deep conviction about the beauty (and sacred obligation) of Memoir." JR was determined to keep his name out of it because a memoir belongs to the person the book is about, he says.

"The midwife doesn't go home with the baby," he remarked after ghost-writing tennis star Andre Agassi's 2009 book, Open.

"It's his memoir, not our memoir, not a memoir 'as told to'. It's his accomplishment, and he made the final choices."

Most reviewers have praised the writing in Spare. "It's a shame the book will be remembered more for the leaks about Meghan and Kate squabbling about bridesmaids' dresses than for its lovely prose, one says.