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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
John Crace

‘And you will be the People’s Earl’ – Charles Spencer’s Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, digested by John Crace

A customer holds a copy of Charles Spencer's memoir about Diana, Princess of Wales with a photo of the brother and sister on the back cover
A customer holds a copy of Swan Song: Diana, My Sister by Charles Spencer at Waterstones Piccadilly in London. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Getty

Cheers were heard up and down the land. Halley’s comet made an unscheduled appearance in the ethereal night sky. In very heaven, angelic choirs rang out. A saviour had been born. A light to lighten the world. But enough about me. For this paragraph at least.

In my universally acclaimed funeral address, I aimed to speak for my sister. The real Diana. For only I truly knew her. She had the heart of a lion. And I had a glut of cliches. Yet when Diana had swept so triumphantly into the arena of royal life, I was but a callow youth awash with hormones and gripped by the self-centredness of adolescence. Nothing much has changed. Yet I know, with all my heart, that Diana would have wanted me to tell our story.

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