King Charles has entered a bitter dispute with Princess Diana’s brother after Earl Spencer claimed the then-Prince said, “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough” following her death.
Buckingham Palace issued an unusually forceful response to Earl Spencer’s forthcoming memoir, which details a deeply painful confrontation he says took place with Charles in the days after Diana died.
In a pointed rebuttal that has reverberated through royal circles, the King’s aides suggested that grief can “cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory.” The wording was widely viewed as an unmistakable echo of the late Queen’s “recollections may vary” response to claims made by Harry and Meghan.
The Palace’s unprecedented criticism followed Our News Outlet’s publication of the first details from Earl Spencer’s emotional memoir. The opening extract is due to appear on dailymail.com at 5pm today.
The revelations have sparked intense debate, with the public and commentators dividing into opposing camps over the claims and the Palace’s response.
One prominent establishment figure, described as a household name, reportedly told friends last night that Earl Spencer “should be horse-whipped across town.”
Royal experts say the unusually direct Palace statement highlights the strength of the King’s anger over Earl Spencer’s account.
Former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said Charles appeared to be “clearly absolutely incandescent” over the allegation that he predicted Diana would soon be forgotten.
Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams branded the allegations “destructive” and “driven by hatred,” adding that the King was “absolutely furious” — and, in his view, with justification.
Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, said Diana herself would likely have been distressed that her brother had made the alleged remark public.
“When I last met her, six weeks before her death, she was adamant that she and Charles really loved each other,” Seward said. “It was so important to her that their children understood that.”
She added: “Diana would have been horrified that he had repeated a comment that might appear to suggest such malice. I am sure it was not intended in that way. However, at the time, the Spencer family and the Royal Family were deeply at odds.”
King Charles is locked in a dispute with Princess Diana’s brother after Earl Spencer made the explosive claim that Charles said, “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”
Experts say the King’s unprecedented response underlines how strongly Earl Spencer’s allegations have angered him.
Charles and Diana pictured during their final official trip together, a visit 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.
Spencer said he insisted Diana would not have wanted William, then aged 15, and Harry, 12, to endure such a public ordeal, telling the then heir to the throne: ‘That’s not going to happen.’
But he claims furious Charles ‘went nuts’ and responded with a ‘stream of anger’ including telling him, just days after the death of the princess that shook the world, that ‘rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough’.
The first full part of the serialisation of the memoir will be published on dailymail.com at 5pm UK time today.
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.
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!”.’
Julian Payne, the King’s former communications secretary between 2016 and 2021, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I just don’t recognise the way the King is characterised in those remarks.
‘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.’
Commentator Richard Fitzwilliams told GB News: ‘I think it is something that the Royal Family obviously have taken very seriously with an extraordinary statement.’
He added that royal observers will now be considering whether the Duke of Sussex will also respond to the book’s contents.
Mr Fitzwilliams said: ‘People will be asking what did Prince Harry know about this book and what its contents are. Will he in fact be speaking about this? Will he be reacting? I sincerely hope so because it’s a scandalous thing to accept to say that his father made these statements.
‘Here you’ve got a situation where it will be interesting to see what Prince Harry says, if anything, about this because he’s been speaking about so many topics linked to the royal family since they’ve stepped down as senior working royals.
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
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.
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.
The exclusive serialisation will begin on dailymail.com later today.
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.
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.
