To the King’s supporters, the move looks like revenge delivered with an almost glacial chill. Relations between the House of Windsor and the Spencers have long been strained, but few anticipated what they regard as such a calculated and spiteful attack.
For Prince William, the perceived betrayal is especially painful. For years, he has urged those still benefiting from the memory of his late mother to allow her to rest in peace. Now, it appears, he must include his own uncle among them.
Whether Earl Spencer’s explosive book is genuinely an act of brotherly loyalty — an attempt to correct what many believe were injustices inflicted on Diana during her life and after her death — is open to debate. What is harder to dispute is that he has taken a sharply honed scalpel to wounds that had never fully healed.
When it emerged that the four-times-married aristocrat had begun writing after nearly 30 years, I was told privately that William was ‘deeply disappointed’.
‘What good can ever come of it?’ one source asked.
‘You can imagine how this has gone down,’ said another.
Yesterday, I heard indirectly that William was ‘furious’. I cannot officially verify that account, as Kensington Palace is keeping out of the dispute — at least for the moment.
The Prince of Wales also faces an uncomfortable reality. Diana’s final resting place is on the extensive Althorp estate, the Spencer family home. Put simply, for William to visit his mother, he has to go through Earl Spencer.
When news broke that the four-times married aristocrat Earl Spencer had put pen to paper after almost 30 years, I was privately told William was ‘deeply disappointed’, writes Rebecca English
Earl Spencer, of course, would never prevent William from visiting to pay his respects. At Diana’s funeral, he famously pledged that William and Harry’s ‘blood family’ would protect her boys.
But one can only imagine how difficult this episode will be for the heir to the Throne, particularly knowing that his estranged brother, Harry, has recently forged such a close relationship with their uncle.
It is a moot point whether the Duke of Sussex knew precisely what was coming. Some have reported that he was ‘aware’ of what was written in the book, and some have wondered if it might have come up when the two men met during the Sussexes’ recent stay at Althorp. Others, however, claim that like the King and Prince William, Harry was not informed about the book’s contents because security was supposedly so tight around the final manuscript – this week’s theft of the Dutch-language edition notwithstanding.
As for the King, it’s difficult for me to convey the true sense of anger and disappointment at what Earl Spencer has done.
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On Wednesday night, when the Mail reported the book’s sensational claim that the then-Prince of Wales said of Diana ‘we will forget her soon enough’ shortly after she died, it took just 90 minutes for the Palace to respond.
The speed of that response shows just how much the claim incensed the King’s senior officials and the monarch himself. The statement broke the Palace’s long-held mantra of refusing to comment on any royal biography or memoir (even Harry’s) as a matter of principle.
But the phrasing used to rebut the earl’s claims, clearly designed to inflict maximum damage, was the biggest clue as to how they truly feel: ‘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.’ ‘“Recollections may vary” on steroids,’ one former courtier remarked to me, referring, of course, to Queen Elizabeth’s famously masterful reaction to Harry and Meghan’s bombshell Oprah interview.
There seems little doubt that a conversation between Charles and the earl took place in those fraught days back in 1997. But there are only two men in the world who know exactly what was said – and both have wildly different memories of what was discussed, and of the emotions and language used. For what it’s worth, I am told that Earl Spencer, as a historian, has always been a strict note-taker.
Earl Spencer memorably vowed at Diana’s funeral that William and Harry’s ‘blood family’ would protect her boys
Julian Payne, the King’s former communications secretary, told the BBC yesterday: ‘I personally was working for (Charles) during the 20th anniversary of the late princess’s death in 2017… 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.
‘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.’
Another friend of the King candidly admitted to me that the breakdown of his marriage to Diana had been ‘wretched’ and there were ‘wrongs on both sides’. But they empathised how ‘paralysed’ he was with shock, grief and, yes, self-recrimination.
They also point out that it was Charles who went against both the initial wishes of his own family, and that of Diana’s, for her to be treated as a private citizen. And it was Charles who insisted on flying to Paris to bring his ex-wife’s body back home. By all accounts, he even fought for Diana to be afforded a full state funeral.
Why, they ask, would Charles have wanted her to be ‘forgotten’ or diminished in any way, when he was privately battling for her to be given greater recognition?
Whatever the truth, it must be hard to see what good can come of all this. Scores may have been settled. But at what cost?