Prince Harry has taken aim at Kiwi journalist Dan Wootton in his newly released book Spare, labelling him a "sad little man".
The name-calling is in a section of the book where the Prince wrote about his distrust of the British press and the stories that circulated about him and his wife Meghan Markle.
Prince Harry wrote about the moment he and Markle discovered their imminent move to the United States had been leaked to the press.
"We got word from Sara (Prince Harry and Markle's PR manager) that The Sun was about to run a story saying the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were stepping away from their royal duties to spend more time in Canada," Prince Harry wrote.
When the story was leaked, Wootton, now a presenter on GB News, was The Sun's showbiz editor.
"A sad little man, the newspaper's showbiz editor (Wootton), was said to be the lead reporter on the story."
Prince Harry doubled down in his attack questioning why Wootton "of all people" would break the story.
"Because he'd refashioned himself into some sort of quasi-royal correspondent, largely on the strength of his secret relationship with one particularly close friend of Willy's (Prince William) comms secretary - who fed him trivial (and mostly fake) gossip," the Prince added.
But the Lower Hutt-born journalist Wooton has hit back in a piece on The Daily Mail, labelling Spare "the most pathetic, self-serving and tone-deaf autobiography".
"It's called journalism, mate, something you don't believe in, given the inaccuracies littered throughout your book," Wootton wrote.