Dominic Casciani
Legal correspondent, reporting from court

How did The People newspaper conclude that Prince Harry had been "bombarding" Chelsy Davy with calls in an attempt to win her back, asks the prince in his statement.

That relates to an April 2009 story - and he says the reference to calls "feel very suspicious".

"I would not have told anyone if I was calling Chelsy regularly and given the way Chelsy has also been guarded with who she tells information to, I have no idea who the ‘close pal’ could be that the defendant’s journalists are attributing some of the information to."

James Gregory
Reporting from court

The article about Prince Harry's dinner date with the late TV presenter Caroline Flack is the first article in this case which the prince says he recalls at the time it was published.

He alleges that Ikon Pictures, the source of the story, had stalked him for a decade, adding: "It is even more disturbing to know they were there for at least two nights outside my friend Marko Dyer’s house in London."

The publisher's lawyer says Ikon also sold similar photos to the Mail on Sunday.

"And would you agree that if the journalist at The People had known about this story from phone hacking, they wouldn't have paid £2,500 to a journalist for this material?" the lawyer asks.

In response, Harry says: "The story makes it very clear the photographers were there before I got there, they saw me arriving. The evening was specifically between me Caroline who is no longer with us."

Dominic Casciani
Legal correspondent, reporting from court

Image source, Crown

Prince Harry says he particularly remembers one article in The People about a dinner party date with the late TV presenter Caroline Flack and his close confidante Mark Dyer.

In his statement, the prince remembers that paparazzi were hiding underneath a car outside the apartment where they were meeting.

"I was so shocked - and livid - that the two photographers from Ikon Pictures knew where we would be and were already there, waiting for us to arrive.

"Marko and I had exchanged voicemails about the night we had planned," he said. "There’s no way I could have been followed. Only Marko, Caroline and I knew of the plans, there was only a couple of other people invited and I don’t think they knew that Caroline would be joining us."

James Gregory
Reporting from court

Like other articles Prince Harry is complaining about in this case, the publisher's lawyer says information in the Sunday Mirror article (mentioned in the previous post) had already been reported by other media outlets.

"Are you aware that in fact the story of the split and the reasons for it were broken by the News of the World the day before the article by the Sunday Mirror?" the lawyer asks.

"I’m not, but that doesn’t surprise me," Prince Harry responds.

The prince describes the article as "suspicious" because quotes are attributed to friends of the couple, and he also references the "very expensive payments" outlined in his witness statement.

Dominic Casciani
Legal correspondent, reporting from court

The Sunday Mirror reported another split between Prince Harry and his former girlfriend Chelsy Davy in January 2009.

It claimed he loved the Army more than her and they had had “several tense meetings” the week before.

In his witness statement, the prince says: "Other details reported included that I was understood to have spoken to my father about my relationship with Chelsy."

Prince Harry says three suspicious calls were made by journalists from Mirror Group Newspapers to Davy's phone the day before the story.

"Chelsy would not have given her number to any journalist, let alone speak to them," he says.

"Seeing the call data in black and white just makes me realise how much the defendant’s journalists would have heard. It’s violating."

Image source, Crown

Dominic Casciani
Legal correspondent, reporting from court

The Mirror Group's lawyer Andrew Green has spent just a few minutes on a Daily Mirror story from 2008 detailing that Prince Harry's phone was stolen in Lesotho.

The story says the thief was caught two days later and his contacts had not been accessed.

The Mirror Group says the story was legitimately obtained from local officials - and its newspaper had lifted a line from the Telegraph that royal sources had confirmed the phone had been password-protected.

In his statement, the prince says: "I don’t understand how the defendant’s journalists could know that my contacts or texts weren’t accessed. I’m not even sure I knew that, given the phone was missing for a few days."

James Gregory
Reporting from court

In court, Prince Harry is being asked about the article on him dropping his former girlfriend Chelsy Davy off in the car (see our previous post).

The prince says Davy had spent the night with him and he had dropped her off "as close to Kensington High Street without being spotted".

"But to know a photographer was there was incredibly suspicious," he says.

Dominic Casciani
Legal correspondent, reporting from court

We're turning to an article from the Sunday Mirror from December 2007, which has a photograph of Prince Harry's former girlfriend Chelsy Davy walking away from his car in the driveway of Kensington Palace.

The newspaper says the story is "proof" they were back together.

In his written witness statement, the prince says: "There weren’t routinely photographers waiting at this entrance, unless something big was happening.

"The reason I had dropped her off where I did was to avoid any members of the public seeing us by chance, so what are the chances of someone waiting at the archway, at the specific moment I dropped her off, with a camera ready?"

Prince Harry says there is evidence the newspaper received invoices from two investigators which were both billed as "Chelsy watch".

Image source, Crown

Some stories so old Google wasn't even inventedpublished at 12:32 British Summer Time 7 June 2023

12:32 BST 7 June 2023

Sean Coughlan
Royal correspondent, reporting from court

Maybe Prince Harry is used to it now, but it must be a strange thing to be in court talking about news stories from decades ago in your childhood and teenage years.

The issues of privacy and press freedom might be very current, but some of these tabloid stories are like journalistic archaeology.

You could try to look them up, but Google hadn’t been invented when some of them were published.

It’s a reminder of how much the media landscape has been transformed since then, with news now more likely to be consumed on a mobile phone than on a punning tabloid front page.

James Gregory
Reporting from court

Prince Harry says he is suspicious of the article on him being dumped - mentioned in our previous post - because of the attribution of quotes to his friends.

"By this point, myself and Chelsy were not sharing anything with anyone," he says.

Prince Harry says he believes private investigator firm Commercial and Legal Services were commissioned to gather information for the article.

The publisher's lawyer replies that some of the information reported in the Mirror article had already been reported in the Mail on Sunday.

Dominic Casciani
Legal correspondent, reporting from court

The day after the "Hooray Harry's Dumped" story mentioned in the previous post, the Daily Mirror reported Prince Harry was "Down in the Dumped" after Chelsy Davy "reportedly asked for a trial separation in an emotional phone call last week".

The prince says in his written witness statement that the reporter can be shown to have commissioned private investigators.

"It’s not clear to me how the defendant had this information, or why they thought it was necessary to publish it," he writes.

"It was clearly an upsetting time for both of us and I don’t understand where the public interest is in exposing all of these personal and private details."

Image source, Crown

Prince Harry says his closest friends would never have talked to journalists about the state of his relationship.

"Given I was likely to have exchanged voicemails with Chelsy at this time discussing the difficulties in our relationship, I now find this very suspicious."

James Gregory
Reporting from court

Image source, Court

Let's just bring you one final exchange on a story about Prince Harry "drowning his sorrows" in a club after being "dumped" by his former girlfriend.

Prince Harry says the article's headline was "hurtful" because it was a reference to celebrating the demise of his relationship.

But the Mirror Group's lawyer replies that the article's headline was actually a reference to a friend who had become "tired of his hooray lifestyle".

"It’s not celebrating the demise of your relationship," he says.

We've just got our hands on today's first sketch of Prince Harry being cross-examined in court.

Mirror Group lawyer Andrew Green is on the left, questioning the prince about his allegations that journalists illegally gathered information on him for stories.

Image source, Elizabeth Cook

We rely on sketches from court, rather than photos or a video stream, because cameras aren't allowed for most UK court hearings.

James Gregory
Reporting from court

Sticking with the same story about Prince Harry "drowning his sorrows" in a club after being "dumped" by his former girlfriend, the Mirror Group's lawyer puts to Harry that other papers had previously reported the prince's trips to that nightclub.

Prince Harry says he would not have been aware of these reports, but assumes most papers were reporting it.

He says he had been to the Amika club in Mayfair occasionally before, but it was "not pleasant" leaving to a group of paparazzi.

"I’m unsure how the photographers knew I was going to be there - there were no photographers there when I arrived," he says.

He says there were a number of suspicious calls to Paddy Harverson, his father's former communications secretary, the day prior to the publication of the article.

Prince Harry says he believes his phone was hacked in order to obtain information about the trip to the nightclub.

Dominic Casciani
Legal correspondent, reporting from court

The Mirror Group's lawyer has moved on to an article from November 2007 in the Sunday Mirror which reported that Prince Harry went out "drowning his sorrows" after being "dumped" by his former girlfriend Chelsy Davy.

Prince Harry says in his witness statement that the two bylined reporters can be shown in evidence to have bought in private investigators on various occasions.

He believes that the newspaper used unlawful techniques to find out about the state of his relationship with Davy as they followed up reports of his night out.

"How would they have known this?" asks Prince Harry.

Image source, Crown

He says the evidence in the case shows a payment to an agency for "Project Harry" two days earlier.

"The timing of the invoice, and the fact the defendant’s journalists produced such a detailed story in the Sunday edition of the Mirror about a night out that had happened on Friday, makes me believe that they were undertaking unlawful activity to try and uncover personal details about my relationship to include in the article to make more of a story."

Image source, PA Media

Court has just resumed after a brief break (we've managed to grab a biscuit too), and lawyer Andrew Green is continuing his cross-examination of Prince Harry.

The award-winning lawyer, representing Mirror Group Newspapers in this case, specialises in commercial law, and was described by one of his former clients as "a beast in court".

"He is an opponent to be feared, with a punchy and aggressive court style," the testimony on The Legal 500 website says, external.

"Uncompromising and relentless. Particularly at home with cross-examination and an ability to put unruly judges back in their boxes."

Another describes him as having "an Eye of Sauron-like focus”.

Image source, PA Media

The court is just taking a quick break - so let's recap the basics of what's going on.

Prince Harry, and three other people, are taking a newspaper publisher to court, alleging information about them was illegally gathered to generate stories.

As part of this illegal gathering, they believe journalists from the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People exploited a security gap to access their voicemails and hear messages left by friends and family.

Mirror Group Newspapers has previously admitted phone hacking took place, but says it didn’t in these cases.

This is a test case - if Harry and the other claimants win, the judge will use it to set the level of damages (amount of money) the publisher could pay in other cases from other celebrities.

Elizabeth Needham-Bennett
Reporting from court

Prince Harry is very different today - more confident, emboldened, and challenging the Mirror Group's lawyer.

What actually is a 'Palace source'?published at 11:43 British Summer Time 7 June 2023

11:43 BST 7 June 2023

Sean Coughlan
Royal correspondent, reporting from court

What is a "Palace source"? That’s come up in the court exchanges, with Prince Harry casting doubt on such mysterious, unnamed sources in news articles.

In royal stories, there are official spokespeople from palaces, such as Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace, and their on-the-record comments will be identified as such.

But it raises the question about how other stories are based, often relying on information from people hiding behind labels such as “royal sources” or “royal insiders” or even more vague, “friends”.

It’s not just royal stories, political journalism is often riddled with the views of “sources close to” and “Whitehall insiders”, remaining anonymous to the public.

James Gregory
Reporting from court

Discussing the same story about his relationship with his former girlfriend Chelsy Davy, Prince Harry says the entirety of the article - headlined "Davy stated" - is suspicious because of its attribution to a "Palace source".

"I never discussed any details with the Palace about my relationship with my girlfriend, so attributing such information to a palace source is incredibly suspicious," Harry says.

He alleges everything attributed to a Palace source is as a result of phone hacking, because the Palace would not know about this information.

The Mirror Group's lawyer says we are in the "land of total speculation about where this information might have come from".

"Not at all, I disagree," Harry responds.