Diana ‘Still Deeply Resented’ in Buckingham Palace: Dimbleby

Veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby has said Princess Diana remains “deeply resented” in Buckingham Palace, as the dispute surrounding Earl Spencer’s memoir claims continues to intensify.

In his new book, serialised exclusively by Our News Outlet, Diana’s brother alleges that Prince Charles told him, “we’ll forget her [Diana] soon enough,” during a disagreement about William and Harry’s role in their mother’s funeral.

Buckingham Palace responded in unusually forceful terms, implying that grief had affected the Earl’s “reason, judgment and memory”.

But Earl Spencer stood by his version of events from Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, declaring: “I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said.” His firm denial has kept the royal controversy in the headlines.

Mr Dimbleby, who has spent decades reporting on the Royal Family, has now suggested that Diana remains an uncomfortable figure within the Palace nearly three decades after her death.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said Diana stood apart from traditional royal expectations and connected with the public in a way the institution had not seen before.

“Diana was the prime example of someone who didn’t act like the rest of the Royal Family — she was fresh, new and exciting to the public and they really adored her,” he said.

“And that was deeply resented in the Palace. And still is. This kind of tit for tat over who said what — when only two people know what was actually said — simply reignites all of that.”

“And I think that’s the real problem,” Mr Dimbleby added. “The monarchy is still not facing up to the biggest issues we dealt with [in the documentary].”

He pointed to questions surrounding royal wealth, tax arrangements and privilege, arguing that although these subjects are repeatedly discussed, meaningful action has yet to follow.

Mr Dimbleby described the Royal Family as resembling “a bit of a soap opera”, while warning that the monarchy must avoid becoming consumed by a never-ending cycle of speculation and personal drama.

“People are fascinated, and I think whenever any tittle-tattle reaches the public domain, people sort of think about it in terms of their own families,” he said.

“They all have problems and then suddenly this family, which is placed on a pedestal as the country’s leaders, has problems too.”

On Friday, Earl Spencer again insisted that he was telling the truth about his account of a telephone conversation with Prince Charles in the days after Diana’s death.

Speaking from his Althorp estate in Northamptonshire, he questioned whether the Palace’s unusually strong statement revealed that the King felt embarrassed by the allegation.

Asked whether he could produce evidence to support his claim, Earl Spencer said he had repeated the alleged remark to relatives and friends at the time because he considered it “so monstrous”.

“I’ve only ever had two calls on the line with Prince Charles at any stage of my life,” he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

“I was hyper-alert to what he was saying, and those are precisely the words that he said. I promise that to you now.”

Alluding to the Palace’s statement, he added: ‘Genuinely, that is what he said. I don’t hear him saying he didn’t say that.’

The Earl claims Charles ‘went ballistic’ and ‘ranted for a while’ after he tried to tell the future King that Diana would not have wanted William and Harry to walk in her procession.

‘And then he stopped and I thought, oh now, now he’s gonna pull himself together and say something more appropriate,’ he said.

‘And then, he said, “We’ll forget her soon enough.”‘

Earl Spencer added that the remark ‘stunned’ him, and that he hung up.

The book’s first astonishing extract made headlines around the world and is splitting society, with rival camps backing either side.

A second extract was published on DailyMail.com on Friday afternoon, in which the Earl alleges the Royals allowed a tormented Prince Harry to ‘spin out of control’ after his mother’s death.

Speaking of the day of the funeral, he writes: ‘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, or how he could possibly be expected to deal with the agony that the day ahead would insist upon.’

The Earl also gives a heartbreaking account of how a friend drove him to Chapel Royal – a small place of worship across the road from St James’s Palace where Diana’s coffin was placed in the days before her funeral.

The passage reads: ‘I had come to sit with Diana, alone.

‘Dappled sunlight from the high stained-glass windows played across the coffin that both formed the focus of the room and presented me with the stark evidence of Diana’s death.

‘I sat down lightly beside it and began to talk to my sister for some time, expressing love and grief, and making promises on her behalf.

‘After a short while, I remembered that I had my eulogy in my pocket, and it occurred to me that I should read it to her.’