A new excerpt from Earl Spencer’s memoir alleges that Charles sounded “giddily elated… like a lottery winner” when he spoke to Spencer just hours after Diana’s death.
Swan Song: Diana, My Sister is being serialised in the Daily Mail. According to the memoir, Charles told Spencer that he had informed William and Harry of their mother’s death first thing that morning in their bedrooms at Balmoral. Spencer writes that the account sounded “strangely matter-of-fact” given the scale of the loss.
Spencer says he suspects Charles’s first reaction may have focused more on how Diana’s death could free him to marry the woman he loved than on the loss of someone he did not.
Claims about Diana’s funeral
The memoir alleges that Charles was furious about a proposal for William and Harry to take an active role in Diana’s funeral procession. Spencer says Charles “went ballistic”, criticised his family’s sense of duty and ranted for a significant period during a telephone call.
Spencer says he told a senior aide to Queen Elizabeth II that William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12, would not make the public walk. He says he insisted that Diana would not have wanted them to do so.
Spencer claims Charles later cited his own participation in Lord Mountbatten’s funeral. Spencer responded that Charles had been 30 at that funeral in 1979.
The memoir also says there were “very serious tensions” between Queen Elizabeth II’s team and then-Prince Charles’s team before the ceremony. Spencer says funeral matters were delegated to a courtier rather than discussed directly with him.
After Charles stopped speaking during a discussion about the funeral, Spencer’s memoir quotes him as saying: “We’ll forget her soon enough.”
Claims about Diana’s engagement and health
Spencer claims Diana tried to end her engagement to Charles two months after becoming engaged, but that her father told her it was impossible to withdraw from such a large commitment.
He alleges that Diana told him she had been “in the throes” of an eating disorder for five months on her wedding day. Spencer also claims that Charles squeezed Diana’s waist a few days after their engagement and said: “Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?”
The memoir claims Diana considered suicide on several occasions before her death and drove more than once to Beachy Head while contemplating ending her life. Spencer says her love for William and Harry stopped her from going further.
Palace response
Buckingham Palace had not responded to the latest claims. A palace spokesman said that grief can “cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory” many years after a loss.
Related: Earl Spencer alleges King Charles sounded ‘giddily elated’ after Diana’s death
Source: Evening Standard
