What King Charles Told Camilla Years After Diana’s Death Stunned Her

Buckingham Palace’s longstanding policy is not to comment on books.

That was the approach it took with Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare.

When I co-wrote Inspector Ken Wharfe’s 2002 memoir, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, about his years protecting the princess, the palace responded with silence.

Its only response to Andrew Morton’s brilliant bestseller, Diana: Her True Story, was to insist that the princess had not co-operated. In fact, she had.

Yet when asked about Earl Spencer’s memoir, Swan Song, a palace spokesman repeated that principle before commenting regardless.

“His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory.”

Surely someone, most likely the King’s senior aide Sir Clive Alderton, had secured His Majesty’s approval before that statement was released.

The King should have sent it back with a black line drawn through it.

It was a classic non-denial denial: too clever by half. The wording reads like a personal swipe at Earl Spencer, calling him a liar without saying so directly. Even worse, it suggests that something was indeed said. A dignified silence from the throne would have carried far more weight.

Would our late Queen have uttered a word in response? As my grandmother, a wise East End woman born at the end of Victoria’s reign, often said: “Least said, soonest mended.”

The King is the head of state. Justice in Britain is administered in his name. His office demands that he rise above such disputes, not be pulled into a public exchange of mudslinging.

The controversy centres on the telephone calls made after Diana’s death. Spencer says that, in one conversation shortly after the news broke, Charles sounded “giddily elated, like a lottery winner”. Utter twisted nonsense, if you ask me.

The two men also argued over whether William and Harry should walk behind their mother’s coffin. According to the earl, he told Charles that Diana would not have wanted that, then stayed silent during a rant that Spencer says ended with the words: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”

Spencer was in no mood to be instructed by the Windsors. He believed they had treated his sister badly and were now allowing the courtiers she despised to dictate the terms of her farewell. He then hung up on the future King.

The earl has now accused Charles of “gaslighting”. The resulting headlines focused on the latest royal feud, while the significant AI conference the King had convened at Dumfries House in Scotland last Thursday received little attention. That was the same day the Daily Mail published its exclusive account of Spencer’s claims.

The royal family has faced Earl Spencer’s anger before. I was inside Westminster Abbey for Diana, Princess of Wales’s ceremonial funeral—not among the congregation, but in the designated press seats—with a clear view of the royal family, the pulpit and the coffin.

I was seated beside the formidable Daily Mail journalist Ann Leslie, later Dame Ann, who died in 2023 aged 82. She produced a small portable television and inserted an earpiece so she could follow the procession. An appalled verger hurried over to reprimand her, insisting that she could not possibly do so.

“I’m not a mourner,” Ann replied. “I am a working journalist reporting on the whole funeral.” From her seat, she could see very little of the ceremony. The earpiece remained in place, and the television went into her bag after she pretended to switch it off.

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Then Spencer. His eulogy was emotional, powerful. Savage. Spencer has every right to pen his book. He is an historian and a good writer. It is fresh, and he says it sets out his reasons why he spoke as he did that day. Had he waited until the King was dead, he would have been accused of dancing on his grave.

Back then, the royals and the press had to take it on the chin. My eyes were locked on the Prince of Wales, and sorrow was written across his face. None of them answered, which did them credit. Twenty-nine years on, the King should have done the same.

That week had become a tug of war. Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Director of Communications and Strategy, Alastair Campbell, were pushing their own agenda as crowds massed in London amid fears it could turn ugly. The Queen dug her heels in before giving way to Blair.

Charles was stuck in the middle, thinking first of his boys, when Spencer tried to tear up what had already been agreed. Of course, tempers flared. Frustrated? Yes, almost certainly. Elated like a lottery winner? I simply don’t buy it. That phrase says more about Spencer’s bitterness than about Charles.

Without the quarrel before it, or any sense of how it was spoken, if it was spoken at all, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough’ tells us very little. If the earl has left his half of the conversation out of the book, that is disingenuous at the very least.

I have observed Charles for more than three decades. He is a compassionate man. I saw nothing that week to suggest his mind was on marrying Camilla. He has a temper, which tiredness sharpens, as the pens showed us all. Twice, in four days in September 2022, a pen got the better of the new King.

First came the pen holder he waved away at his Accession Council, then the leaking pen at Hillsborough Castle, Northern Ireland, prompting Charles to exclaim, ‘I can’t bear this bloody thing.’ Both moments were caught on camera, and the internet turned them into memes before the Queen was even buried.

Those who know the King well say he never bears a grudge and always apologizes soon afterwards.

But he does not do death well.

Those present recall that when Camilla’s father, Bruce Shand, died in 2006, she was distraught. Charles assured her he understood, because he had been upset over his grandmother. Camilla was stunned. It was her father, she said, not her grandmother and Charles still had both his parents. There was no cruelty in it. He can be lost in his own world.

I will give Spencer this much. If Charles really did say Diana would soon be forgotten, it would go a long way to explain the eulogy, and his vow that her blood family would not let her sons’ souls be ‘simply immersed by duty and tradition.’

The walk behind the coffin cost those boys dearly. Harry says he carries it still. Each new allegation wears the monarchy down a little further – all the more when the palace answers back.

Nobody else was on that line. Having re-watched Spencer’s BBC interview, I find his account, as told, impossible to believe. Whatever passed between them in anger, contempt for the mother of his sons is not in Charles.

If Spencer wants to be taken at his word, he should tell us what he said first, leading up to that cruel payoff line, that led him to hang up on the future King.

As for Diana, she will outlast every book written about her, mine included. I do not think she will ever be forgotten. I really don’t. However many authors write about her, she will always have the last word.

Robert Jobson is a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author. His latest book is The Windsor Legacy, published by Pegasus (USA) and Blink (UK).