Prince Harry knew about Earl Spencer’s forthcoming memoir on Diana, having discussed the project with his uncle during a visit to Althorp with Meghan two months ago, it emerged today.
A bitter dispute has erupted between the King and Princess Diana’s brother after Charles Spencer claimed that Charles told him Diana would soon be “forgotten” following her death in 1997.
Our News Outlet understands that Harry was given advance notice of the explosive book. The first extract is due to be published on the Our News Outlet website and app at 5pm today.
However, a source close to the Duke of Sussex said he has not read the memoir.
Harry and Charles Spencer are said to have discussed the book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, during the Duke’s stay at Althorp in July.
During the visit, Harry made an emotional pilgrimage to Diana’s grave alongside Meghan, Archie and Lilibet at the Northamptonshire estate where she spent her childhood. Meghan later posted an image on Instagram showing the family walking to Diana’s final resting place, with the children carrying bouquets of flowers.
The King has responded angrily to Earl Spencer’s explosive allegation that the then Prince of Wales told him, “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough,” during a heated telephone conversation days after Diana’s death.
Royal aides sharply suggested that grief can “cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory”, while commentators claimed the King was furious over the allegation.
Our News Outlet’s revelations have prompted a fierce public debate, with supporters rallying behind opposing sides of the dispute.
Last night, a senior establishment figure—described as a household name—told friends that Earl Spencer “should be horse-whipped across town”.
Prince Harry stands with Earl Spencer at the 2021 unveiling of a statue of Princess Diana at Kensington Palace. Harry was aware that his uncle was writing a memoir about his mother.
Experts said the King’s unprecedented response through Buckingham Palace showed the depth of his outrage over Earl Spencer’s claims.
In Meghan’s July post about the family’s visit, Lilibet was seen walking at Althorp, Diana’s childhood home, while Harry and Archie appeared further ahead carrying bouquets.
Buckingham Palace issued an extraordinary statement in response, while friends of the King insisted that it was “just not in the King’s nature” to speak about Diana in such terms and said he would not have used “this kind of language”.
The King’s anger and Buckingham Palace’s unprecedented rebuttal came after Our News Outlet published the first details of Earl Spencer’s searing new memoir.
ITV royal editor Chris Ship said he had “not expected” the Palace to respond, adding that its statement made clear “they’re not going to take this one lying down”.
“I know that Harry’s aware of what his uncle has written in this book. And we also know that Harry stayed with Charles Spencer when he was over in the summer and had a big family gathering,” he said.
“They must have spoken about the fact this was going to come out and the things that he was going to say about his father.”
Other sources, however, claimed that Harry, William and Buckingham Palace had not been told what the memoir contained.
Experts said the King’s striking statement disputing Earl Spencer’s account highlighted the depth of his anger, particularly because Buckingham Palace had declined to respond to Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare.
Former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said Charles, who is meeting bosses from some of the world’s leading AI developers in Scotland today, is ‘clearly absolutely incandescent’ over the allegations he said Diana would be quickly forgotten.
Former BBC royal reporter Jennie Bond said: ‘It is incredibly sad and it is, it seems to me, pure war now. We lived through the war of the Waleses – I did – back in the 90s between Charles and Diana.
‘Now we have another war between Diana’s brother and the King and I do not know what purpose it serves. It can only go to hurt, I think, William and Harry who love their father and probably undoubtedly love their uncle as well. To see the family torn apart by this serves no purpose.’
Editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine Ingrid Seward said: ‘I think Diana would be horrified that her brother has revealed this remark by Charles.
‘When I last met her, six weeks before her death, she was adamant that she and Charles really loved each other. It was so important to her that their children knew that.
‘So she would be horrified that he has shared a comment that could appear to show so much malice. I am sure it was not meant like that. But at the time, the Spencers and the Royal Family were at loggerheads.’
Meanwhile Julian Payne, the King’s communications secretary between 2016 and 2021, said the ‘highly unusual’ statement from the Palace displayed the ‘strength of feeling that there must have been for them to feel that they needed to go out there and correct it’.
He said: ‘I just don’t recognise the way the King is characterised in those remarks.’
The King is at war with Princess Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, over his bombshell claim that Charles declared ‘rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough’
Prince Harry stands between Earl Spencer and Prince Charles outside Westminster Abbey during the funeral procession for Princess Diana on September 6, 1997
Charles and Diana on their last official trip together to South Korea in November 1992
In Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the earl tells how in 1997 he clashed with Charles over the idea of Princes William and Harry walking in their mother’s funeral procession.
Earl Spencer, 62, says he has written the memoir to correct ‘untruths’ told about his older sister. The astonishing account of the King’s alleged outburst, almost 30 years ago, is described by the earl over several pages.
He says that one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides had told him, in the days before the funeral, that William and Harry would take part in the procession, which is when he responded that this was not what his sister would have wanted and was ‘not going to happen’.
Minutes later, he recalls, he received a phone call from Prince Charles who questioned the Spencer family’s sense of duty and insisted that, 18 years earlier, he had walked in the funeral procession of Lord Mountbatten, his great-uncle.
The memoir describes how Charles ‘went nuts’ after the earl pointed out that the prince had been 30 at the time of Lord Mountbatten’s funeral in 1979.
In one of the book’s most extraordinary passages, Earl Spencer writes: ‘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!”.’
Earl Spencer said that he was ‘so stunned’ by the alleged remarks that he took a few seconds to reply.
‘”I can’t believe you just said that,” I said flatly, before hanging up,’ he writes.
Last night Buckingham Palace took the highly unusual step of issuing a withering put-down to the incendiary claims about the King.
A Royal spokesman 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 judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.’
The caustic response is being compared to the late Queen Elizabeth’s celebrated remark that ‘recollections may vary’ about Harry and Meghan’s outlandish claims in their Oprah Winfrey interview attacking the Royal Family.
A source close to the King said the comment he is alleged to have made about Diana was ‘just not in his nature and it certainly wasn’t in his nature at that time, when he was a man absolutely grief-stricken’.
They pointed out that the then Prince of Wales was the person who overruled Royal protocol to insist that Diana should have a full state-style ceremonial funeral.
The rebuke was issued by the palace shortly after the Mail revealed claims made by Earl Spencer in his book.
Julian Payne, the King’s former communications secretary between 2016 and 2021, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I personally was working for him during the 20th anniversary of the late princess’s death in 2017 and naturally we ended up discussing her several times during that summer because the media interest was so intense.
‘What I remember was he was very clear that there was never to be any criticism, never to be any pushback on the narratives that were usually highly critical of him – but he was absolutely emphatic that we were to respect her memory and not undermine it in any way.
‘So it seems to me very odd that in the moment itself with the grief of his family and his own shock that he would choose that moment to use those words. It’s just not language that I recognise.’
BBC royal correspondent Sean Coughlan said the Palace see the allegation against Charles as ‘being entirely out of character for a man with a deeply compassionate nature, who at the time was dealing with his own grief and that of their two sons’.
Royal expert Phil Dampier described the palace statement as ‘extraordinary’, adding: ‘The days of never complain never explain have gone… not surprisingly.’
The Earl, Diana and Charles at the Earl’s 21st birthday party in 1985 at the Mirabelle restaurant in London
From left, the Earl, Prince William, Prince Harry and Charles at Diana’s funeral on September 6, 1997
Sky News royal correspondent Laura Bundock said the Palace statement was a ‘really remarkable intervention’ and a ‘very robust response’ which is ‘beyond punchy’.
She added: ‘It is, as they say very unusual for them to make any comment about a book. They normally do not comment on books.’
Ms Bundock also pointed out that the palace did not respond to Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, but the new book is a ‘very different situation’.
She continued: ‘At this point they feel they simply cannot stay silent given who has written the book, Diana’s brother, given the subject of the book, Diana herself, and given the nature of the allegations made.’
Diana’s death on August 31, 1997, aged 36, sparked a global outpouring of grief.
On September 6, 1997, six days after Diana’s death, Earl Spencer delivered a defiant eulogy at her funeral that was later named one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.
His raw oration in Westminster Abbey was delivered after he walked alongside William and Harry, as well as Prince Charles and Prince Philip, behind Diana’s coffin in a funeral procession through central London.
The new book includes a string of further extraordinary claims about Diana’s failed marriage to Charles and the tumultuous aftermath of her tragic death in a car crash in Paris.
The revelations are set to plunge Buckingham Palace into a fresh storm just weeks after the return of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their children to the UK from California.
Described as ‘historic’, Swan Song is due to be published worldwide next Tuesday – in the UK by Penguin Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House.
Police in the Netherlands are still investigating what publishing sources say is the ‘extremely suspicious’ overnight theft of four copies of the book from the back of a parked lorry earlier this week.
Today, several senior Royal Family members will be seen in public carrying out official engagements.
Charles is set to address bosses from some of the world’s leading AI developers – Nvidia, Anthropic and OpenAI – about the future of artificial intelligence.
He is expected to tell a summit at Dumfries House in Scotland that the new technology should be in the ‘service of humanity, community and the natural world’.
Diana’s son William and his wife Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales who also hold the titles of the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay in Scotland, are set to make their first official visit to Isle of Bute.
The day is to include visiting their namesake town of Rothesay and follows their visits to the Isles of Mull and Iona last year.
The Duke of Sussex is also expected to make his first public appearance since returning to the UK – appearing at the inaugural Invictus Spirit Awards ceremony in London.
The Duchess of Edinburgh’s visit to Zambia, to try to celebrate the relationship between Zambia and the UK, is among other royal engagements.
Elsewhere, Princess Anne will attend the opening of a new History Centre at the German Military Cemetery in Staffordshire.
Extracted from Swan Song: Diana, My Sister by Charles Spencer, to be published by Michael Joseph on September 22, £28. © Charles Spencer 2026. To order a copy for £23.80 (offer valid to 10/10/26; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
