The royals may easily dismiss Harry and Meghan, but these charges of racism will linger for ever | Zoe Williams

Look past the sniping and family rivalries, and a new book from biographer Omid Scobie paints a deeply disturbing picture

Omid Scobie is the reporter favoured by Harry and Meghan. In ordinary circumstances, this would be a footnote, but the couple's relationship with the rest of the press is so frosty that Scobie's access looks as unfettered as if he were their medieval scribe or they were all in a thruple. It's for this reason, I suspect, that there are no details in Scobie's new book, Endgame, that would trouble the Sussexes. Given the openness of Harry in Spare, earlier this year, there was arguably not much new news to share.

Yet scandal arrived on its own, via the Dutch publishers, whose translation appeared to name the member of the royal household who allegedly asked what colour Meghan and Harry's son would be when he was born. The book has been pulled from the shelves in the Netherlands, though not before some readers clocked it, so the intelligence is now in the waiting room of the public domain; enough people know it that we'll all know it soon enough.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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