Earl Spencer’s bombshell book about his sister, the late Princess Diana, has not been released yet, but the biography is already causing a stir.
Buckingham Palace has pushed back at claims in Swan Song: Diana, My Sister that just days after the Princess of Wales’s death in 1997 Charles told Earl Spencer: “rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough”.
The Palace said: “While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss”.
Here is what we know about Earl Spencer’s book so far.
Who is Earl Spencer?
Earl Charles Spencer, the late Princess of Wales’ younger brother, is a British peer, author, journalist and broadcaster. He succeeded his father as Viscount Althorp in 1992, aged 27, and inherited the family’s ancestral seat in Northamptonshire.
As well as Swan Song, the Earl has written a number of books since 1998. Previous books were about the Althorp estate, the Spencer family, a number of historic books, as well as a memoir about his experience at Maidwell Hall school.
He has been outspoken about his grief after his sister died almost 30 years ago in a car crash as she fled the paparazzi.
Last year, he described the grief he felt over her loss as “an amputation.”
He told Loose Women: “You grow up with these people, they are your flesh and blood, they’re with you forever, and then they’re gone.
“You expect obviously first grandparents and then parents to go, and there’s the awful tragedy you mentioned of children going, but siblings, it’s a really extraordinary thing.
“For years after Diana died, I would think, ‘Oh I must ring her and tell her something’ because we shared the same sense of humour and you just realise of course, that’s not going to happen.”
Inside his bombshell book on Diana
An extract of the memoir, which is being serialised by the Daily Mail, described an alleged argument between the Earl and then-Prince of Wales after one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides told him days before the funeral that William and Harry would take part in the procession.
He received a call from Charles, who insisted that 18 years earlier he had walked in the funeral procession of Lord Mountbatten, his great-uncle. When Earl Spencer pointed out that the future King had been 30 years old when he did that, Charles reportedly expressed his anger at his former brother-in-law.
Earl Spencer wrote, according to the brief extract: “Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped.
“I assumed the pause signalled an effort to bring himself under control, but then he unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death. ‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough!’.”
What’s his relationship with the Royals?
Earl Spencer has maintained a strained relationship with the Windsors over the years since his sister’s highly-publicised divorce from the former Prince of Wales. Speaking at her funeral, he said that Diana was “someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic.”
He criticised the media who “sneered at” her despite her “genuinely good intentions” and said that “of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this – a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.”
The Viscount went on to pledge his protection of his nephews, Prince Harry and Prince William.
“She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate and I do this here Diana on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair,” he said.
He then pledged, as the boys’ blood family, to steer them “so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.
“We fully respect the heritage into which they have both been born and will always respect and encourage them in their royal role but we, like you, recognise the need for them to experience as many different aspects of life as possible to arm them spiritually and emotionally for the years ahead. I know you would have expected nothing less from us.”
In recent years as Prince Harry’s relationship with his family has strained, the Viscount has remained close with his nephew. The Duke of Sussex even visited the Earl earlier this summer as part of a trip to England, prior to his decision to move back to the UK with his wife Meghan Markle and their two children.
