Palace rejects Earl Spencer claim about Diana remark

Buckingham Palace has issued an unusually forceful denial after Earl Spencer, the brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, claimed in a forthcoming memoir that King Charles III said she would “soon” be forgotten in the days after her death.

The claim appears in excerpts of Spencer’s book, “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,” published by the Daily Mail ahead of its release next week. Spencer writes about the emotional days after Diana died in a Paris car crash in 1997 at age 36, including a dispute over whether Princes William and Harry, then 15 and 12, should walk behind their mother’s coffin during the funeral procession.

Spencer says he told the then-Prince Charles that Diana would not have wanted her sons to endure the ordeal. He claims Charles responded with a “stream of anger.”

“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,” Spencer wrote, according to the published excerpt. “‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough.’”

The Palace rejected the account and suggested grief may have affected Spencer’s recollection.

“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,” Buckingham Palace said.

The BBC reported that the Palace views the alleged remark as entirely out of character for Charles, describing him as a man with a deeply compassionate nature who was dealing at the time with his own grief and that of his two sons.

The statement was notable because the royal family often avoids detailed responses to books and public allegations. NBC News noted that the family largely did not comment when Prince Harry published his memoir “Spare” in 2023. The BBC and NBC both compared the tone to Queen Elizabeth II’s 2021 response to allegations of racism made by Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, when the late queen said, “recollections may vary.”

Diana’s funeral procession remains one of the defining images of the period. Her brother and two sons walked behind her coffin as it moved through central London. Prince Harry has previously said that walking behind the coffin at age 12 was something no child “should be asked to do.” In 2017, he told the BBC he did not “have an opinion whether that was right or wrong,” but said that “looking back on it,” he was glad to have been part of the day.

Diana married Charles in 1981 and became one of the most photographed women in the world. Their marriage ended in 1996. She died a year later after being chased by paparazzi with her partner, Dodi al-Fayed, in Paris. Her death brought widespread public mourning and criticism that the royal family had been slow to respond to the grief felt by many for the woman later described as the “people’s princess.”

India McTaggart, a royal correspondent at The Telegraph, told NBC News that Spencer’s book is expected to include “a number of incendiary claims” and that the Palace may be trying “to get on the front foot and get ahead of some of the allegations we expect to see.”

Julian Payne, the monarch’s former communications secretary, told the BBC that the alleged language was “just not language that I recognise.” He said the Palace’s “highly unusual” statement showed the “strength of feeling” behind its response.

The dispute comes during a crowded week of royal appearances. The BBC reported that Charles is hosting leading artificial intelligence firms at Dumfries House in Scotland, while William and Catherine are visiting community and volunteering projects on the Isle of Bute. Harry is also due to appear at the inaugural Invictus awards ceremony after returning to the United Kingdom.

The BBC also reported that copies of Spencer’s unreleased book were stolen from a truck in the Netherlands.