Harry and Meghan received ‘gifts worth £3,500,000 including luxury jets’
Harry and Meghan for years enjoyed luxury hotel stays and the use of private jets at the expense of their celebrity friends, according to the authors of Finding Freedom.
The biography, written by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, details the extraordinary acts of generosity – potentially worth up to £3.5 million according to the book – afforded to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex since the start of their relationship in 2016.
Among the gifts and discounts the authors hint the duo received, was a stay in Soho House on London’s Dean Street just as their relationship was blooming, MailOnline reports.
The authors wrote: ‘[Meghan] settled on an outfit and then got started on her make-up in her suite at Soho House’s Dean Street Townhouse property. Meghan had been offered a heavily discounted stay at the five-star Dorchester Hotel but chose the luxurious room secured by Markus [Anderson — Soho House director and Meghan’s friend] instead.
‘As a celebrity and influencer, Meghan was regularly offered free holidays, travel discounts, and the like. But she turned down the Dorchester amid a Hollywood boycott after the hotel chain’s owner, the Sultan of Brunei, introduced sharia law in his country, including death by stoning for those found guilty of gay sex.’
Further during the couple’s courtship, the authors said Markus Anderson ‘put them up’ at a private four-bedroom cottage in the Cotswolds Soho Farmhouse and at the Soho House property at Babington in Somerset, estimated to be worth thousands of pounds per night.
‘He put them up at a private four-bedroom cottage, tucked away from the main members’ Soho Farmhouse,’ the book notes.
‘In Oxfordshire, barely an hour-and-a-half outside of London, it was the perfect retreat from the city. Although the stone house stood on 100 acres of English countryside, they still enjoyed sashimi and other Japanese dishes delivered to their cottage from Pen Yen, one of the restaurants on the property.’
The book touches on the couple’s controversial use of private jets, confirming Elton John lent Harry and Meghan the use of his plane last summer as they flew from Ibiza to Nice.
Harry is said to have ‘regretted’ ignoring advice that flying on private jets would not play well with the public, particularly as he was promoting environmental causes at the time.
In 2018, the authors write actor George Clooney paid for a private jet to take the couple from London to Lake Como after Meghan experienced a public falling out with her father.
The same year they also spent an evening in a luxury Sydney home where they were had a private chef. Meghan’s friend Jessica Mulroney and her TV anchor husband Ben joined them, the book said.
The authors wrote: ‘In Sydney to take on engagements and host the fourth Invictus Games, Harry and Meghan managed to sneak out for an evening off with Jessica and Ben Mulroney, the latter of whom was covering the Games for Canada’s CTV network. The couple had announced Meghan’s pregnancy on this tour.
‘A real-estate billionaire loaned them his home for an intimate and completely secret evening with a five-course meal prepared by a private chef.’
After resigning from royal duties, the book notes Harry and Meghan stayed at the £10.7 million Vancouver mansion between November 2019 and March 2020, at a heavily-discounted rate.
Organised by Ben Mulroney, the Sussexes reportedly stayed at the mansion for a rent ‘well-below market value’.
After hopping over the border to the US, the couple stayed in a vast eight-bedroom mansion owned by studio mogul Tyler Perry – a friend of mutual pal Oprah Winfrey – on Beverley Ridge.
They stayed there for four months while contemplating where to live permanently.
According to the book, in their four years together, the couple may have enjoyed gifts and discounts that amount to a figure approaching £3.5 million.
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