Earl Spencer has doubled down on his bombshell claim that King Charles said of Diana, Princess of Wales, “rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough” days after her death, saying he is telling the truth.
The alleged comments, revealed in Charles Spencer’s memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail, prompted Buckingham Palace to issue an extraordinary statement suggesting Diana’s brother had misremembered events, saying “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise”.
In an interview with the BBC, Spencer stood firm in his recollection, telling Laura Kuenssberg: “I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said.”
Responding to the palace’s statement, Spencer said: “Well, is he furious? Is he furious, or is he embarrassed?” When asked about the inference that his memory was coloured, Spencer said: “They’ve sort of smudged that one, haven’t they? They’ve said that recollections may vary.”
Spencer said the call was one of two he had with Charles in his lifetime and said he told his friends and family members at the time about the comment “because it was so monstrous”.
The alleged comment was revealed on Wednesday in an extract from the memoir published in the Daily Mail. The comment by the then prince was allegedly made during a heated argument over funeral arrangements. Spencer says it reflected Charles’s “pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death”, the Daily Mail reported.
Among other claims in the book are that Diana told a friend on the eve of her wedding to Charles that he said he was happy to marry her, but was not actually in love with her.
On Friday, the second extract from the memoir was published. Spencer writes Charles was “polite and formal” on the day of Diana’s funeral and says Prince Philip told him to look ahead while walking in unison alongside his nephews and former brother-in-law.
“It was hellish, entering that tunnel of grief, particularly because we were unable to put a face to it by looking at the individuals in the crowd,” said Spencer of the procession.
In the extract released on Wednesday, Spencer says he insisted to Charles that Diana would not have wanted her sons, Prince William, then 15, and Prince Harry, then 12, to walk in her funeral procession. In the end, her sons walked behind her coffin, which William later called “one of the hardest things I’ve ever done”.
Spencer wrote that when one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides told him in the days before the funeral that William and Harry would take part in the procession, he responded: “That’s not going to happen.”
But minutes later he received a phone call from Charles, who insisted it should. It was during the ensuing argument between the two men that Charles allegedly made the comment, with Spencer writing: “‘Rest assured,’” he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough!’”
Spencer wrote that he was stunned and took a few seconds to reply, writing: “‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ I said flatly, before hanging up.”
Spencer also claimed that Diana “never would have wanted” her sons to walk behind her coffin, to which Charles allegedly replied: “That’s the problem with your family. They’ve got no bloody sense of duty.”
Swan Song is due to be published globally next Tuesday – in the UK by Penguin Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House.
Four copies of the Dutch-language edition were reportedly taken from a truck while it was en route from the Dutch publisher’s printers to their warehouse in the Netherlands.
Diana, who died aged 36 after a car crash in Paris in 1997, would have turned 65 on 1 July this year.
Buckingham Palace did not issue a statement responding to the BBC interview, but on Wednesday a spokesperson 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.”
