Buckingham Palace has accused Earl Spencer of allowing grief to cloud his judgment after the Mail disclosed his explosive account of the days following Princess Diana’s death.
In a memoir set to be serialised in Our News Outlet from tomorrow, the Earl alleges that an angry Prince Charles told him, days after Diana died: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”
The Palace broke with its usual practice last night to issue an extraordinary statement. It 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.”
The claims, which threaten to send fresh shockwaves through the Royal Family, appear in Charles Spencer’s explosive memoir and centre on a bitter dispute with the future King over Diana’s funeral arrangements.
The row followed the decision—opposed by Diana’s brother—that Prince William and Prince Harry, then 15 and 12, would walk behind their mother’s coffin during the funeral procession.
The Earl says he told the then Prince of Wales that Diana would never have wanted her young sons exposed to such an intense public ordeal.
According to Spencer, Charles challenged the Spencer family’s commitment to duty before allegedly remarking that his former wife—whose death triggered a worldwide outpouring of grief—would soon be forgotten.
The Prince and Princess of Wales attend a welcome ceremony in Toronto at the beginning of their Canadian tour in October 1991
Charles Spencer, the ninth Earl Spencer, delivers his famously defiant eulogy at his sister’s funeral
The extraordinary account of the alleged outburst, said to have taken place almost 30 years ago, features in Swan Song: Diana, My Sister. Spencer, 62, says he wrote the book to challenge what he describes as “untruths” told about his elder sister.
The exclusive serialisation will begin on dailymail.com later today.
The memoir also contains a series of further claims about Diana’s troubled marriage to Charles and the turbulent period that followed her death in a Paris car crash in 1997.
The revelations are expected to trigger a new crisis for Buckingham Palace, coming just weeks after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their children returned to the UK from California.
On September 6, 1997—six days after Diana was killed—Earl Spencer delivered a fiercely defiant eulogy at her funeral. The speech was later recognised as one of the 20th century’s greatest.
He gave the emotional address at Westminster Abbey after walking alongside William and Harry, Prince Charles and Prince Philip behind Diana’s coffin during the funeral procession through central London.
In his book, Earl Spencer writes that when one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides told him in the days before the funeral that William and Harry would take part in the procession, he responded: ‘That’s not going to happen.’
But minutes later he received a phone call from Prince Charles who insisted that 18 years earlier he had walked in the funeral procession of Lord Mountbatten, his great-uncle.
From left, the Earl, Prince William, Prince Harry and Charles at Diana’s funeral on September 6, 1997
The Earl, Diana and Charles at the Earl’s 21st birthday party in 1985 at the Mirabelle restaurant in London
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.
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 – with Our News Outlet’s exclusive serialisation starting tomorrow.
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.
- Read the first extract from Earl Spencer’s bombshell book on dailymail.com at 5pm UK time on Thursday (12pm in New York, 2am Friday in Sydney)
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.
