Earl Charles Spencer's new memoir about Princess Diana accuses King Charles of callous indifference after her death, and Buckingham Palace has already fired back with a rare public statement.
The book, titled "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister," drops September 22 and contains a string of damaging claims about the British royal family, from alleged cruelty in the aftermath of Diana's 1997 death in Paris to accusations of emotional neglect toward her young sons. USA TODAY reported on the memoir's most significant allegations, which Spencer, Diana's younger brother, says he is sharing publicly for the first time.
The most incendiary claim centers on a phone call Spencer says he received from the then-Prince of Wales in the days after Diana was killed. Spencer writes that Charles, unlike other callers who were "stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences," sounded "giddily elated. Like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time." Spencer alleges Charles told him: "Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough!"
Spencer says he responded, "I can't believe you just said that," and hung up.
The Palace does not typically respond to books. It made an exception here. On September 16, six days before the memoir's release, Buckingham Palace issued a statement to the BBC addressing the claim directly.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson 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."
That statement amounts to a polite but unmistakable accusation: Spencer's memory is unreliable. The Palace did not deny the phone call took place. It questioned whether Spencer remembers it accurately.
Dickie Arbiter, who served as Queen Elizabeth's press secretary at the time of Diana's death, told BBC Newsnight that Charles was "devastated at the time." Royal commentator Jennie Bond called Spencer's account "vindictive" and "extraordinary," though she added on BBC Breakfast: "I have no reason to disbelieve this is his memory of what happened, but there are usually two sides to a conversation and a story."
Spencer has accused King Charles of "gaslighting" him over the Palace's response to his memoir claims, a charge that has only deepened the public rift between the two men.
The memoir does not limit itself to the aftermath of Diana's death. Spencer traces the collapse of his sister's marriage back to before the wedding itself. He writes that roughly a month after her engagement to Charles, Diana discovered a bracelet Charles had purchased for Camilla. The media photographed Diana crying as Charles left on a business trip and assumed she was lovesick. Spencer says the truth was different.
"Diana was completely at sea having found a bracelet that Prince Charles had bought for Camilla."
Spencer writes that Diana went to their father and said she could not go through with the marriage. Her father told her it was "impossible to pull out of such an enormous commitment at that point." Diana married Charles anyway.
The long shadow of Charles's relationship with Camilla runs through Spencer's account. At Prince Andrew's 21st birthday party, an event with 650 guests, Spencer says Charles showed no interest in Diana whatsoever.
Years later, Spencer recalls, Diana told him at a London restaurant that she wanted a divorce. He warned her the public would not take her side easily: "They've bought into a fairytale, and I reckon they may well, wrongly, blame you for destroying their fantasy." Then Diana made a claim Spencer calls "improbable" in his own memoir: "My husband is in love with his valet." Spencer says he never pressed for a name or details. His response was blunt: "Well, I guess in that case, you really don't have a choice."
Some of the memoir's most pointed passages involve Prince William and Prince Harry in the days surrounding their mother's funeral. Spencer writes that he objected to the plan requiring both boys to walk behind Diana's coffin. He calls the arrangement "utterly barbaric."
Both princes ultimately walked. Spencer says William and Harry each stated they would do it on the condition that their grandfather, the late Prince Philip, walked with them. William, then 15, appeared "more self-possessed" with "greater composure and maturity." Harry, just 12, was a different sight.
"Too small to be doing this I thought, and I wondered how on earth this heartbroken child could bear the ordeal of that moment."
Spencer describes Harry as "tiny" and "bereft," moving "as quickly as possible" with "the shortest stride of the elders walking with him." He goes further, arguing that Harry was "allowed to spin out of control" in the years that followed due to a "lack of obvious care," and that "a more caring hand" might have helped him "enormously in the future."
Spencer's account of the tensions inside the Palace at the time of Diana's death is blunt. He writes that "very serious tensions" existed between the Queen's team at Buckingham Palace and Prince Charles's team at St James's Palace, driven "by the heir to the throne's growing frustrations at being a middle-aged man still waiting to reign."
That frustration, Spencer suggests, surfaced in a conversation at his own father's funeral. He says Charles told him he was "so lucky" to have inherited his title and estate "so young." Charles, then 43, allegedly complained that despite having 50 people in his employ, his parents insisted on treating him "like a child." Spencer's assessment of the remark in the memoir is acid: "And a petulant one, at that."
Spencer has alleged broader royal jealousy and harsh treatment of Diana's memory, claims the Palace has consistently declined to address in detail.
Queen Elizabeth stripped Diana of her HRH title in 1996 after the divorce from Charles. Diana, Spencer writes, was "dreadfully hurt" and considered the move "an appalling betrayal." After Diana's death, the Queen offered through her private secretary Robert Fellowes to reinstate the title posthumously.
Spencer refused. He told Fellowes: "That's very kind of the Queen, of course. But what's the point, Robert? Now? I mean, Diana's dead."
He adds in the memoir: "The title should never have been removed during her life, in which case it would not have been necessary to offer it to her in death." Spencer says he believed he knew "in my bones how she would view this posthumous award." The gesture, in his telling, was too late to matter and too hollow to accept.
Spencer also recounts a disturbing incident Diana described to him involving Mohamed Al Fayed, the billionaire father of Dodi Fayed, who was Diana's boyfriend at the time of the Paris crash. Spencer writes that Diana told him Al Fayed groped her early in her relationship with Dodi, dropping a hand onto her buttocks and squeezing while making a crude remark: "And in Egypt, father-in-law gets first go..." Diana described "the ghastliness of the episode" to her brother.
Spencer writes that Dodi himself was "kind to Diana," noting the "gentle playfulness between the two of them." Al Fayed died at age 94 in 2023, a year before the BBC released a documentary titled "Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods," which alleged rape and attempted rape by the businessman. Harrods, the London department store Al Fayed once owned, said it was "utterly appalled by the allegations" and vowed to ensure "such behaviour can never be repeated in the future."
The memoir was announced as Spencer's effort to correct what he has called decades of "untruths" about his sister's life and death. The book is published by Penguin Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House, which described it as the first time Spencer "has spoken openly and at length" about Diana.
Meanwhile, Prince Harry is reportedly developing his own Diana film project as the 30th anniversary of her death approaches, adding yet another voice to the contested story of her life and legacy.
Nearly three decades after Diana's death, the people closest to her are still fighting over who failed her, and how badly. The Palace's instinct, as always, is to suggest that grief distorts memory. Spencer's instinct is to put the memory on the record and let readers decide who sounds distorted.
