When Charles, the ninth Earl Spencer, delivered his blistering eulogy at the funeral of his sister Diana, it felt like the opening salvo in a war of words with the Windsors. Diana’s “blood family”, the Spencers, he said, would do everything they could to ensure that William and Harry were not “simply immersed by duty and tradition”, a clear rebuke to the stultifying palace culture under which his sister had struggled. Stunned silence followed – until a wave of applause broke out from the crowd gathered outside Westminster Abbey.
Thirty years later, Diana’s younger brother, now 62, has lobbed another verbal grenade at the royal family. In his upcoming book Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the 62-year-old reportedly claims that mere days after the Princess of Wales’ untimely death in 1997, her former husband Charles told him: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough!”
