Earl Spencer has said his explosive claims about the King after the death of Princess Diana will not come as a surprise to Prince William and Prince Harry.
The earl indicated today that he had previously told the brothers about an alleged remark by Charles during an argument over Diana’s funeral, in which their mother was said to have been described as someone who would soon be forgotten.
However, William and Harry are understood not to have known what Earl Spencer’s forthcoming memoir about his sister would contain, including the reported comments attributed to the King.
Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, he said: ‘I don’t like to talk about what I’ve been speaking about to William and Harry, but this will not be a surprise to them.
‘I will tell you that these words will not be a surprise to them.’
The Royal Family is facing a series of damaging allegations in the memoir, titled Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, after extracts were published exclusively by the Mail last week.
Earl Spencer’s most inflammatory claim is that, days after Diana’s death in 1997, the then Prince Charles told him: ‘Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.’ The allegation prompted an unusually direct response from the Palace.
The alleged remark was reportedly made during a fierce dispute over whether Princes William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12, should walk behind their mother’s coffin during her funeral procession.
In a statement issued last week, a Palace spokesman challenged the accuracy of Earl Spencer’s account, saying that shared grief between brothers can ‘cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory’.
Earl Spencer has said he became embroiled in a furious argument with Charles after expressing discomfort at the idea of William and Harry, who were still children, walking behind their mother’s coffin. He claimed Charles responded by criticising his family’s commitment to duty.
In his BBC interview today, Earl Spencer said the evidence of that confrontation, and his response to the alleged words, could be found in the eulogy he delivered at Diana’s funeral.
Earl Spencer suggested he had previously told William and Harry that Charles allegedly said during an argument over Diana’s funeral that their mother would soon be forgotten.
Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Earl Spencer said the claims in his memoir would not come as a surprise to William and Harry.
Alongside his well-known declaration that Diana’s ‘blood family’ would protect her sons, Earl Spencer’s eulogy included the words: ‘Above all, we give thanks for the life of a woman I’m so proud to be able to call my sister: the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana, whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished
Earl Spencer said today of his explosive row with the future king on the eve of the funeral: ‘You can see evidence of that conversation in the final eulogy.
‘I really stress Diana’s sense of duty – duty comes across very clearly in the eulogy, and then it culminates in something which I think really underlines the truth of my assertion here.
‘If you get to the final bit of my eulogy, it is that her fantastic qualities “will never be extinguished from our minds”.
‘It was a direct rebuttal of “we’ll forget her soon enough”.’
The early also had to deny that he was making a threat against the King when he suggested that he had more unflattering material which he chose not to use in his book.
He said: ‘This is not a threat, it’s a fact, I know lots of things about the King which I chose not to include in the book because they were not relevant.’
Challenged that his remarks did, in fact, sound a bit like a threat, he continued: ‘No, it’s not at all a threat. It’s just the reality. I want to give the context of what I said and what I didn’t say, I’m not threatening.
‘I’m not a salacious writer on any level, but if I was a salacious writer and wanted to write that sort of thing, I have plenty of other things I could have said, and really have no interest in doing so.’
Earl Spencer later claimed he had no intention of making any further claims about the Royal Family, saying: ‘That’s it. That’s me done.’
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