By Ben Kerrigan-
Buckingham Palace has made an unusually pointed intervention after Earl Spencer alleged that the then Prince Charles told him, in the raw aftermath of Princess Diana’s death, that the world would soon forget her, reopening one of the most painful episodes in the modern history of the Royal Family nearly three decades after Diana died in a Paris car crash. The allegation appears in Spencer’s forthcoming memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, and has prompted a swift response from the Palace, which normally declines to comment on books or on disputed recollections of private conversations.
Diana died on August 31, 1997, aged 36, after the car carrying her crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. Her death triggered an extraordinary outpouring of public grief in Britain and around the world and placed the Royal Family under intense scrutiny as it struggled to respond to the scale of the mourning. Almost 30 years later, her brother, Charles Spencer, has revisited those extraordinary days in a memoir that he says is intended to tell the story of Diana from his own perspective and to preserve his memories of a sister whose death has continued to shape the public life of the monarchy. The book is due to be published on September 22, with extracts being serialised by the Daily Mail.
AD: Capeesh Restaurant
The most explosive passage concerns a telephone conversation Spencer says he had with Diana’s former husband, then Prince Charles, while arrangements were being made for her funeral. According to Spencer’s account, the disagreement centred on the decision that Princes William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12 respectively, should walk behind their mother’s coffin during the funeral procession. Spencer says he objected because he believed Diana would not have wanted her young sons to be placed in such an emotionally punishing position. He describes Charles responding with what he characterises as a sustained outburst of anger, which Spencer interpreted as revealing what he believed was the former Prince of Wales’s pent-up resentment towards Diana.
Beautiful Princess Diana died in 1997 car crash
It was during that confrontation, Spencer alleges, that Charles made the remark that has now prompted the Palace’s intervention. Spencer recalls him saying, “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough,” before describing his own disbelief at what he had heard. In his account, he told Charles that he could not believe he had said such a thing before ending the conversation. The claim is presented in the memoir as Spencer’s recollection of a private exchange nearly three decades ago, rather than as an independently established account of what was said. Spencer late rin the book claims Charles was “giddily elated” in a phone call to him after his sister’s death in 1997. he later says “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”.
The Palace did not issue a conventional denial of the quotation. Instead, its response was carefully framed around the reliability of memory in the aftermath of profound bereavement. “While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle,” a Buckingham Palace spokesman said, “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”.
AD: Oysterian Sea Food Restaurant And Bar
The language was significant precisely because it stopped short of engaging with every detail of Spencer’s account, while nevertheless making clear that the Palace disputes the recollection being presented. Royal commentators have described the intervention as highly unusual, with Sky News royal correspondent Laura Bundock calling it a remarkably robust response. The Palace’s decision to depart from its customary reluctance to comment on books reflects the sensitivity of the allegation, the identity of its author, and the continuing emotional significance of Diana’s death to the Royal Family and the public.
The claim has also prompted criticism from people who knew or worked closely with Charles. Julian Payne, who served as the King’s communications secretary between 2016 and 2021, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he did not recognise the characterisation of Charles contained in Spencer’s account. Other royal commentators have similarly pointed to the extraordinary circumstances confronting the then Prince of Wales in the days after Diana’s death, when he was grieving himself while attempting to support his two young sons through the death o
The dispute over the funeral procession is particularly sensitive because the decision to have William and Harry walk behind Diana’s coffin has remained controversial for years. The image of the two boys moving through the streets of London behind their mother’s coffin became one of the defining photographs of the funeral, and both brothers have subsequently reflected on the experience. Harry has previously said that he believed no child should have been asked to perform such a public walk behind a parent’s coffin, but he has also spoken differently about the decision with the benefit of hindsight.
In the 2017 BBC documentary Diana, 7 Days, Harry said that he had no opinion on whether the decision to have him walk behind his mother’s coffin was right or wrong, but added: “I’m glad I was part of it. Looking back on it now, I’m very glad I was part of it.” He also acknowledged the difficulty his father faced in breaking the news of Diana’s death to his two sons, saying: “One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is tell your children that your other parent has died.”
Spencer’s memoir now places that decision back at the centre of the story, offering his own recollection of the arguments surrounding it and of his relationship with Charles during one of the darkest periods in the family’s history. His account arrives at a moment when interest in Diana remains intense and when the approach of the 30th anniversary of her death is likely to bring renewed scrutiny of her life, her marriage to Charles and the events surrounding her final days.
For the King, the controversy reaches back to a period when he was not yet monarch but was already at the centre of an extraordinary national crisis. For Spencer, it is an attempt to put his own memories of his sister on record before another generation comes to know Diana principally through photographs, documentaries and competing accounts of her life. And for the Palace, the episode represents a difficult balancing act: protecting the King’s account without becoming drawn into a prolonged public argument over private conversations that took place almost 30 years ago.
That is what makes the Palace’s intervention so striking. It has not attempted to relitigate every detail of Diana’s funeral or to challenge Spencer’s grief, but it has placed a clear qualification on the reliability of his recollection. The result is a rare public clash between two men connected to Diana by family, loss and memory, with the disagreement now playing out in the full glare of the modern media.
As Swan Song: Diana, My Sister approaches publication, further revelations may inevitably renew questions about the events surrounding Diana’s death and funeral. Yet beneath the competing accounts lies a more enduring reality: the arguments of 1997 have never entirely disappeared. Almost three decades after Diana’s coffin passed through the streets of London, the people who witnessed those days are still interpreting what happened, and the Royal Family is once again being asked to answer for a moment in its history that remains extraordinarily difficult to leave in the past.