Copies of Earl Spencer’s explosive memoir about his sister, Princess Diana, have reportedly been taken from a lorry shortly before the book’s exclusive serialisation in Our News Outlet.
Swan Song: Diana, My Sister promises a revealing account of Diana’s profoundly unhappy marriage to the then Prince of Wales.
The book also examines the turmoil that swept through the Royal Family after Diana was killed in a car crash nearly three decades ago.
A publishing insider said last night: ‘After remaining silent for almost 30 years, Earl Spencer has finally addressed the King’s response to Diana’s death – and his account is devastating.’
In a dramatic twist, the Mail can reveal that a lorry carrying thousands of copies of the eagerly awaited memoir was broken into earlier this week while parked overnight at a lay-by in the Netherlands.
Only four copies were taken. They had been concealed beneath black plastic, leading publishing sources to suspect that the theft may have been a bold attempt to obtain one of the year’s most anticipated books before its official release.
Dutch police are examining the break-in. Within the publishing industry, speculation has ranged from an opportunistic group of thieves to a misdirected yet unusually well-informed Royal Family supporter.
‘It is highly suspicious,’ a publishing source said last night. ‘Nothing of this kind has happened before. This is arguably the biggest book of the year, and extraordinary security measures have been put in place to protect it.
Earl Spencer’s explosive new memoir about his sister, Princess Diana, has reportedly been stolen; he is pictured in March.
The cover of Swan Song: Diana, My Sister is shown. The memoir is due to be exclusively serialised in Our News Outlet.
The memoir explores Princess Diana’s deeply unhappy marriage to the then Prince of Wales; Charles and Diana are pictured in 1985.
‘Every reasonable measure has been taken to stop the book being leaked before the serialisation. That is why this unprecedented incident is being treated with the utmost seriousness.’
Swan Song will be released worldwide next Tuesday, with Penguin Michael Joseph, part of Penguin Random House, publishing the UK edition. Before the memoir reaches bookshops, the Mail will run an exclusive serialisation.
Billed as a historic and exceptionally moving work, the memoir offers Earl Spencer’s intimate perspective on his bond with his older sister and the collapse of her marriage.
It also sheds new light on the extraordinary week after Diana’s death in August 1997, when the House of Windsor faced an unprecedented worldwide outpouring of grief and public anger.
Buckingham Palace is understood to be braced for a string of shocking revelations that threaten to reopen the wounds of the former Prince and Princess of Wales’s highly acrimonious split and eventual divorce.
The Mail understands that a lorry with the books left a printing plant in Central Europe on Monday on its way to a warehouse in the Netherlands before copies were distributed to Dutch bookshops.
At some point that evening the driver parked in a lay-by deep in the Dutch countryside to sleep. At around 8am he found the lorry had been broken into but, mysteriously, only a handful of wrapped copies of Swan Song were missing.
Shocked Penguin bosses in London were only told about the break-in at 3.30pm yesterday.
It would not be the first time that a major book has been stolen just before publication. In 2003, a lorry with more than 7,000 copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth in the fantasy series, was stolen from a warehouse on Merseyside.
Ahead of the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death, Earl Spencer has vowed that his book, which will be published around the world and translated into 12 languages, will correct ‘untruths’ that have been told about his sister.
The Earl, 62, delivered a raw and defiant eulogy during Diana’s funeral at Westminster Abbey, which was broadcast to a worldwide audience of 2.5billion.
