Diana's brother says Buckingham Palace responded to his memoir with a "condescending" statement that tried to discredit his account without actually denying any of it, and he's not letting it go.
Earl Spencer sat down with ABC's Maggie Rulli at his family's Althorp estate in Northamptonshire to respond publicly to a palace statement that, in his view, questioned his credibility while carefully avoiding the substance of what he wrote. The interview, broadcast on Good Morning America, marked Spencer's most pointed public clash yet with the institution his late sister married into nearly four decades ago.
The dispute centers on Spencer's memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which the Daily Mail serialized and which contains explosive claims about then-Prince Charles's conduct in the hours and days after Diana's death in a 1997 car crash. Buckingham Palace broke its usual silence on published books to issue a written response, and Spencer says that response only made things worse.
The palace spokesman's statement read, in full: "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 statement was issued last Wednesday, according to the Daily Mail's reporting.
Spencer zeroed in on what the palace did not say. On ABC, he put it bluntly:
"What I said is straight and true. And what did they come back with? That. It doesn't say he didn't say it either. That's what I found interesting. I was really shocked, actually. And actually with a sort of PR hat on, I thought 'that's a strange move'."
That is the core of Spencer's complaint. The palace implied his memory was unreliable, grief "clouding reason" and "colouring memory", but never directly denied the specific words he attributed to the King. Spencer told the Mail on Sunday that the statement was "astonishingly provocative and below the belt because it was essentially trying to say I'd lied without the King being able to deny what I'd said."
Spencer had announced the memoir with a stated goal of correcting what he called decades of untruths about his sister's life and death. The palace's decision to respond at all, after claiming it does not comment on books "as a matter of principle", suggests the claims landed closer to the mark than the institution wanted to admit.
The memoir's most damaging claim involves a phone call Spencer says he received from then-Prince Charles during a dispute over whether Prince William and Prince Harry, then just 12 years old, should walk behind Diana's coffin in the funeral procession. Spencer wrote that Charles pushed for the boys to walk, citing his own experience walking in Lord Mountbatten's funeral procession in 1979, when Charles had been 30 years old.
Spencer's account of what happened next is vivid. From the memoir:
"(The King) went ballistic, would be the right term, and started really going for my family as a whole, about their sense of duty, not being adequate enough, and ranted for a while, I have no idea how long, but it was a significant period, and I just listened. And then he said, 'We'll forget her soon enough'."
That alleged remark, "We'll forget her soon enough", is the line the palace chose not to deny. Spencer also described a separate phone call from Charles shortly after Diana's death in which, he wrote, Charles "sounded giddily elated, like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time."
Spencer wrote that Charles told him he had already informed William and Harry of their mother's death that morning in their bedrooms at Balmoral. "It all sounded strangely matter-of-fact, given the enormity of the disaster," Spencer recalled. He added that he now suspects "the prince's first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not."
These are, of course, one man's recollections of private conversations nearly three decades old. But they are specific, detailed, and offered under Spencer's own name in a published book, not leaked anonymously. The allegations of royal jealousy and harsh choices surrounding Diana's death have been a recurring thread in Spencer's public statements.
In his remarks to the Mail on Sunday, Spencer drew a pointed comparison between this palace statement and the late Queen Elizabeth II's famous response to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview. The Queen had said simply that "recollections may vary", a line widely regarded as a masterclass in restrained royal rebuttal.
Spencer was less impressed by this latest attempt. He called it "a rather poor imitation of the 'recollections may vary' quote, which was a much more elegant way of putting things, but in these circumstances entirely out of place."
On ABC, Spencer framed the dispute in personal terms:
"Well, it's not every day you're gaslit by a king, but I was really upset with that because I thought it was very, not only condescending, but not straight."
He added: "But as a brother speaking the truth, it's not my truth, it's the truth, I was offended. And that's why I will always stick by the truth, and I think it was a mistake for them to say that."
The palace's decision to fire back at Spencer broke with its own stated policy of not commenting on books. That choice opened the door to exactly the kind of extended public argument the institution typically tries to avoid.
ABC's Rulli reported that Spencer told her neither Prince William nor Prince Harry had read the memoir before it was serialized. "So right now, those two are learning about the book in the excerpts just like the rest of us," Rulli said on air.
Spencer also disclosed that Harry and Meghan had stayed with him over the summer but did not mention any planned return to the United Kingdom during the visit. The memoir also references Spencer's concern for the then-12-year-old Harry at Diana's funeral, noting what he described as a "lack of obvious care" for the boy.
Harry has pursued his own public reckoning with his mother's legacy. He is reportedly developing a Diana film project as the 30th anniversary of her death approaches. Whether the memoir complicates or complements that effort remains to be seen.
Spencer's own relationship with Diana's memory has been a long public project. He honored her on the 29th anniversary of her death, and the memoir is the most detailed account he has offered of the private family dynamics surrounding the 1997 tragedy.
Several questions remain unanswered. King Charles has not personally addressed Spencer's claims beyond the spokesman's statement. Neither William nor Harry has commented publicly. And the palace has not explained why it broke its own stated principle against commenting on books, only to issue a statement that, as Spencer pointed out, never denied the most damaging allegation.
The phrase "the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason" is a careful construction. It does not call Spencer a liar. It does not say Charles never uttered the words attributed to him. It suggests, without quite saying, that a grieving brother cannot be trusted to remember clearly, even 28 years later, even when he is putting his name on a published account.
Spencer's response was to call that exactly what it looks like: an attempt to undermine his credibility without engaging the substance. Whether the palace's strategy was wise or reckless, it accomplished one thing with certainty, it guaranteed that the memoir, and the quote the palace would not deny, stayed in the headlines longer than silence ever would have.
Institutions that break their own rules to issue a non-denial denial rarely come out ahead. The palace had a principle. It abandoned the principle. And the result speaks for itself.
