Earl Spencer has intensified his bitter dispute with King Charles, insisting: “I’m telling the truth.”
As the feud sends fresh shockwaves through the Royal Family, Princess Diana’s brother said he told friends and relatives “straight away” about an alleged remark by the then-Prince of Wales because it was “so monstrous”.
Our News Outlet, which is exclusively serialising the earl’s explosive memoir, revealed this week that, days after Diana’s death in 1997, Charles allegedly told him: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”
The claim prompted an extraordinary statement from the Palace, in which royal aides challenged the accuracy of the earl’s account and suggested that grief can “cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory”.
However, speaking to the BBC last night, the 62-year-old earl firmly defended his account. “I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said,” he declared.
He continued: “I’ve only ever had two calls on the line with Prince Charles at any stage of my life.
“I was hyper alert to what he was saying and those are precisely the words he said and I promise that to you now. Genuinely, that is what he said. I don’t hear him saying he didn’t say that.”
Earl Spencer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg at his Althorp estate ahead of the publication of his memoir
Charles and Diana pictured visiting Venice during their trip to Italy in May 1985
Earl Spencer has insisted he is “telling the truth” about comments allegedly made by the then-Prince Charles after Princess Diana’s death
When Laura Kuenssberg suggested that the Palace’s unprecedented statement showed the King was “plainly furious”, Earl Spencer responded: “Is he furious or is he embarrassed?”
The latest extract from the memoir, published in today’s Mail, also criticises the Royal Family over what the earl describes as a “lack of obvious care” for Prince Harry following Diana’s funeral.
In Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the earl writes that Harry, who was 12 when his mother died, “needed Diana’s hugs” but was instead “allowed to spin out of control”.
He argues that “a more caring hand” during that period could have helped Harry “enormously in the future”. Instead, the young prince “seemed so very alone in his despair and torment”, he writes.
Earl Spencer also discloses that he read his eulogy beside Diana’s coffin in the Chapel Royal, the private chapel at St James’s Palace where her body lay for five days before the funeral.
Recalling the deeply emotional moment, he writes: “In that moment, when fantasy surely took hold of my overloaded senses, I felt that Diana was applauding my words, with soft insistence.”
He describes walking alongside Diana’s sons, William and Harry, Charles and Prince Philip during the funeral procession as “the most harrowing experience of my life” and a form of “mental torture”.
The earl adds: “I could not get over how tiny, and slight, and bereft, Harry looked. Too small to be doing this, I thought, and wondered how on earth this heartbroken child could bear the ordeal of that moment…”
Prince Harry stands between Earl Spencer and Prince Charles outside Westminster Abbey during Princess Diana’s funeral procession on September 6, 1997
Earl Spencer’s explosive memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, is among the year’s most anticipated books and is due to be released next week
A portrait of Diana is on display at Althorp House where her brother Earl Spencer was interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg
The Mail yesterday revealed how the earl claims that immediately after the funeral, as the Spencer family travelled by Royal Train to Althorp for Diana’s private burial, he was told that Queen Elizabeth had offered to restore his sister’s Her Royal Highness title. He rejected the offer.
Now, in today’s extract, he writes that his ‘chief memory of that train journey is of being concerned at the lack of obvious care for Harry, as he decompressed from the ghastliness of the morning’.
Earl Spencer adds: ‘He needed Diana’s hugs, of course, and they would forever be denied him. But instead of calm and nurture, he was allowed to spin out of control.
‘I have often looked back, reckoning that a more caring hand at such points as this would have helped him enormously in the future.’
The latest extract came as Tory leader Kemi Badenoch voiced her support for the King, saying she was ‘always on the side of His Majesty’.
‘I would reiterate exactly what it was that the King himself had said or certainly Buckingham Palace said on his behalf,’ she added.
In a statement released on Wednesday night, 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.’
Buckingham Palace last night declined to comment either on the latest instalment or Earl Spencer’s comments to the BBC.
