Earl Spencer has forcefully defended his account of a private exchange with King Charles, insisting: “I’m telling the truth,” as their increasingly public dispute intensifies.
In comments likely to deepen the rift reverberating around the Royal Family, Princess Diana’s brother said he informed friends and relatives immediately about what he describes as an outburst by the then-Prince of Wales, saying it was “so monstrous”.
The Daily Mail, which is publishing extracts from the earl’s forthcoming memoir, reported this week that Spencer alleges Charles made the remark just days after Diana died in 1997: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”
The allegation triggered an unusual response from Buckingham Palace. Royal aides challenged the reliability of Spencer’s recollection, saying grief can “cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory”.
However, speaking to the BBC on Tuesday night, the 62-year-old earl said: “I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said.”
Spencer continued: “I’ve only ever had two calls on the line with Prince Charles at any stage of my life.
“I was hyper alert to what he was saying and those are precisely the words he said and I promise that to you now. Genuinely, that is what he said. I don’t hear him saying he didn’t say that.”
Earl Spencer is pictured speaking with Laura Kuenssberg at his Althorp estate before the release of his book.
Charles and Diana during a visit to Venice on their tour of Italy in May 1985.
Earl Spencer has maintained that he is “telling the truth” about remarks he says were made by the then-Prince Charles after Princess Diana’s death.
Told by Laura Kuenssberg how the Palace’s unprecedented statement showed the King was ‘plainly furious’, Earl Spencer replied: ‘Is he furious or is he embarrassed?’
In the latest compelling extract of the memoir that has sparked the row between the former brothers-in-law, published in today’s Mail, the earl lambasts the Royal Family for a ‘lack of obvious care’ for Prince Harry in the wake of Princess Diana’s funeral.
In the memoir – entitled Swan Song: Diana, My Sister – the earl writes that Harry, who was 12 at the time of his mother’s death, ‘needed Diana’s hugs’ but was instead ‘allowed to spin out of control’.
He says ‘a more caring hand’ at such moments would have helped Harry ‘enormously in the future’ but instead the young prince ‘seemed so very alone in his despair and torment’.
He also reveals that he read his eulogy to Diana’s coffin in Chapel Royal, a private chapel at St James’s Palace where his sister’s body lay for five days before her funeral.
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Describing the intensely poignant scene, he writes: ‘In that moment, when fantasy surely took hold of my overloaded senses, I felt that Diana was applauding my words, with soft insistence.’
He describes how the funeral procession – during which he walked alongside Diana’s sons, William and Harry, Prince Charles and Prince Philip – was ‘the most harrowing experience of my life’ and a form of ‘mental torture’.
The earl adds: ‘I could not get over how tiny, and slight, and bereft, Harry looked. Too small to be doing this, I thought, and wondered how on earth this heartbroken child could bear the ordeal of that moment…’
Prince Harry stands between Earl Spencer and Prince Charles outside Westminster Abbey during the funeral procession for Princess Diana on September 6, 1997
The Earl’s explosive memoir – Swan Song: Diana, My Sister – is one of the most anticipated books of the year and is due to be released next week
A portrait of Diana is on display at Althorp House where her brother Earl Spencer was interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg
The Mail yesterday revealed how the earl claims that immediately after the funeral, as the Spencer family travelled by Royal Train to Althorp for Diana’s private burial, he was told that Queen Elizabeth had offered to restore his sister’s Her Royal Highness title. He rejected the offer.
Now, in today’s extract, he writes that his ‘chief memory of that train journey is of being concerned at the lack of obvious care for Harry, as he decompressed from the ghastliness of the morning’.
Earl Spencer adds: ‘He needed Diana’s hugs, of course, and they would forever be denied him. But instead of calm and nurture, he was allowed to spin out of control.
‘I have often looked back, reckoning that a more caring hand at such points as this would have helped him enormously in the future.’
The latest extract came as Tory leader Kemi Badenoch voiced her support for the King, saying she was ‘always on the side of His Majesty’.
‘I would reiterate exactly what it was that the King himself had said or certainly Buckingham Palace said on his behalf,’ she added.
In a statement released on Wednesday night, the Palace said: ‘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 last night declined to comment either on the latest instalment or Earl Spencer’s comments to the BBC.