J.R. Moehringer was reportedly paid $1m to write Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, but British ghostwriter Ben Jeapes says he would have thought twice before taking on that job. “Three or four times, in fact,” he says. “I have friends who have worked for the Royal Family and even the nice ones, in inverted commas, seem to be so demanding.”

Though that payment is extraordinary – a ghostwriter tends to receive a flat fee of around £10,000 per book – it is not unusual for challenges to arise when working with big names. Yet Shannon Kyle, who has spent the past decade writing for some of the country’s biggest celebrities, agrees that The Duke of Sussex’s book would have been a particularly tricky project from start to finish.

“There are clear questions to be answered, and there is a lot of pressure on the ghost to get those answers,” she says. “But because he is not going to be able to outright slander people, a lot will have to be left unsaid, or just alluded to. I expect that was probably quite frustrating for the ghost.”

Its publisher Penguin maintain that Spare is “unflinching” and “full of insight, revelation and self-examination”, and if the leaks are anything to go by, it seems as though Prince Harry has not held back. As such, the interest in the American Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer behind it has surged. Speculation includes everything from the fact Moehringer was chosen due to his own familial issues (that is to say: a…