Earl Spencer's forthcoming book claims King Charles told him Princess Diana would be "forgotten soon enough" days after her death, and Buckingham Palace has broken its own protocol to push back.
The memoir, titled Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, is set for worldwide publication on September 22 through Penguin Michael Joseph. In its pages, the 62-year-old earl describes a phone call he says he received from Charles, then the Prince of Wales, in the days between Diana's death on August 31, 1997, and her funeral on September 6. The Daily Mail published the first details from the book, setting off a rapid and unusually blunt response from the Palace.
Spencer said that Charles phoned him in a fury, questioning the Spencer family's sense of duty and citing his own experience walking in Lord Mountbatten's funeral procession in 1979. When Spencer pointed out that Charles had been 30 at the time, an adult, not a child, Spencer says Charles "went nuts." Then came the line now at the center of the dispute.
"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!'."
Spencer says he replied, "I can't believe you just said that," and hung up.
Whether that exchange happened as described is now the subject of a public dispute between Diana's brother and the institution her ex-husband leads. Earl Spencer says he wrote the memoir to correct "untruths" told about his older sister. The Palace says grief distorted his memory.
Buckingham Palace does not, as a matter of stated principle, comment on books. It commented on this one. A royal spokesman issued a written statement that stopped short of calling Spencer a liar but came close.
"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 judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss."
That sentence, with its careful suggestion that Spencer's recollection is unreliable, drew immediate attention from royal correspondents. Julian Payne, who served as King Charles's communications secretary from 2016 to 2021, called the statement "highly unusual" and said it displayed the "strength of feeling that there must have been for them to feel that they needed to go out there and correct it."
Sky News royal correspondent Laura Bundock described it as a "really remarkable intervention" and "beyond punchy," adding that the Palace felt it "simply cannot stay silent given who has written the book, Diana's brother, given the subject of the book, Diana herself, and given the nature of the allegations made."
Royal expert Phil Dampier put it more plainly. He called the statement "extraordinary" and added: "The days of never complain never explain have gone... not surprisingly."
Payne went further on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, offering a firsthand account of Charles's posture toward Diana's memory. He said he worked directly with Charles during the 20th anniversary of Diana's death in 2017, when media interest was intense.
"What I remember was he was very clear that there was never to be any criticism, never to be any pushback on the narratives that were usually highly critical of him, but he was absolutely emphatic that we were to respect her memory and not undermine it in any way. So it seems to me very odd that in the moment itself with the grief of his family and his own shock that he would choose that moment to use those words. It's just not language that I recognise."
A source close to the King told reporters the alleged remark was "just not in his nature and it certainly wasn't in his nature at that time, when he was a man absolutely grief-stricken." BBC royal correspondent Sean Coughlan said the Palace views the allegation as "entirely out of character for a man with a deeply compassionate nature, who at the time was dealing with his own grief and that of their two sons."
The tension between the Spencer and Windsor accounts has been building for nearly three decades. Earl Spencer has long positioned himself as a guardian of Diana's legacy, dating back to the eulogy he delivered at her funeral, a speech later described as one of the greatest of the 20th century.
Former BBC royal reporter Jennie Bond framed the dispute in stark terms:
"It is incredibly sad and it is, it seems to me, pure war now. We lived through the war of the Waleses, I did, back in the 90s between Charles and Diana. Now we have another war between Diana's brother and the King and I do not know what purpose it serves. It can only go to hurt, I think, William and Harry who love their father and probably undoubtedly love their uncle as well."
Prince Harry's position in the dispute remains unclear, and the accounts of what he knew do not line up. ITV royal editor Chris Ship said Harry was aware of the book's contents: "I know that Harry's aware of what his uncle has written in this book. And we also know that Harry stayed with Charles Spencer when he was over in the summer and had a big family gathering."
An insider told Page Six the same thing more bluntly: "Harry knew what was in the book, it didn't come as a shock."
But a source close to Harry offered a narrower version, saying the Duke of Sussex "has not seen a copy in advance." Other insiders claimed that Harry, William, and the Palace were not informed about the memoir's contents at all, only that the book was coming.
Harry visited Althorp, the Spencer family estate in Northamptonshire, in July. He stayed with Earl Spencer and made what was described as an "emotional pilgrimage" to Diana's grave with his wife Meghan and their children, Archie and Lilibet. Meghan later shared an image on Instagram of the family's walk to the gravesite, with the children appearing to carry bouquets of flowers.
Harry has not publicly commented on the memoir or the Palace's response. He was expected to appear at the inaugural Invictus Spirit Awards ceremony in London. His relationship with King Charles has been publicly strained for years, and this latest episode puts him in the uncomfortable position of standing between his father and his uncle, both of whom claim to be honoring Diana's memory.
The alleged phone call is not the only contentious claim in the book. Spencer also said that he told a senior aide to Queen Elizabeth that Prince William and Prince Harry walking behind their mother's coffin in the funeral procession was "not going to happen" and was not what Diana would have wanted. The boys, William was 15 and Harry was 12, ultimately did walk in the procession alongside their father, their grandfather Prince Philip, and Earl Spencer himself.
The memoir reportedly contains further claims about Diana's marriage to Charles and the aftermath of her death in a Paris car crash. Spencer says his purpose is to correct the record about his sister, though the specific "untruths" he aims to address remain unclear from the published excerpts.
Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, offered a pointed assessment. She said she last met Diana six weeks before the princess's death.
"I think Diana would be horrified that her brother has revealed this remark by Charles. When I last met her, six weeks before her death, she was adamant that she and Charles really loved each other. It was so important to her that their children knew that. So she would be horrified that he has shared a comment that could appear to show so much malice."
Seward added that she believed the remark, if it was made, was "not meant like that," noting that "at the time, the Spencers and the Royal Family were at loggerheads."
Spencer has publicly honored Diana's memory on multiple occasions over the years, and the approaching 30th anniversary of her death has renewed attention on the family's unresolved grievances.
Adding an unusual wrinkle to the pre-publication drama, police in the Netherlands are investigating the theft of four copies of Swan Song from the back of a parked lorry. Publishing sources described the incident as "extremely suspicious." No arrests have been reported.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Royal Family carried on with scheduled engagements. King Charles was at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, Scotland, hosting an AI summit with executives from Nvidia, Anthropic, and OpenAI. He was expected to tell the gathering that new technology should serve "humanity, community and the natural world." Prince William and Princess Kate were making their first official visit to the Isle of Bute. Princess Anne attended the opening of a new History Centre at the German Military Cemetery in Staffordshire.
Former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said Charles was "clearly absolutely incandescent" over the allegations. An unnamed "senior establishment figure", described as a household name, reportedly told friends that Earl Spencer "should be horse-whipped across town."
Harry himself has been developing his own project about his mother's life as the 30th anniversary approaches, a reminder that the contest over Diana's story is far from settled, and that the people who loved her most still cannot agree on what happened.
Nearly thirty years after Diana's death, the people closest to her are still fighting over who gets to tell her story. The public, as usual, gets the fallout, and Diana's sons get caught in the middle.
