King Charles has become embroiled in a bitter dispute with Princess Diana’s brother after Earl Spencer claimed the then-Prince Charles said of Diana: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”
Buckingham Palace released an extraordinary response to Earl Spencer’s explosive new book, which recounts a painful confrontation he says he had with Charles in the days following Diana’s death.
In a response that reverberated through royal circles, the King’s aides suggested that grief can “cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory”. The remark was widely viewed as a pointed parallel to the late Queen’s famous response to Harry and Meghan: “Recollections may vary.”
The Palace’s unprecedented rebuke of Earl Spencer followed the Daily Mail’s disclosure of the first details from his searing memoir. The first extract is due to be published on the Daily Mail website and app at 5pm today.
The Daily Mail’s revelations have divided society, with opposing camps rallying behind each side.
One senior establishment figure, described as a household name, told friends last night that Earl Spencer “should be horse-whipped across town”.
The striking statement challenging Earl Spencer’s account has underscored the depth of the King’s anger, particularly because the Palace did not respond publicly to Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, experts said.
Former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said Charles, who is meeting leaders from some of the world’s top AI developers in Scotland today, is “clearly absolutely incandescent” over the allegation that he suggested Diana would soon be forgotten.
Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams called Earl Spencer’s allegations “destructive” and “driven by hatred”, adding: “There is no question that the King, and rightly so, is absolutely furious.”
Majesty magazine editor-in-chief Ingrid Seward said: “I think Diana would be horrified that her brother has revealed this remark by Charles.”
‘When I last met her, six weeks before her death, she was adamant that she and Charles really loved each other. It was so important to her that their children knew that.
‘So she would be horrified that he has shared a comment that could appear to show so much malice. I am sure it was not meant like that. But at the time, the Spencers and the Royal Family were at loggerheads.’
Julian Payne, the King’s communications secretary between 2016 and 2021, said the ‘highly unusual’ statement from the Palace displayed the ‘strength of feeling that there must have been for them to feel that they needed to go out there and correct it’.
He said: ‘I just don’t recognise the way the King is characterised in those remarks.’
The King is at war with Princess Diana’s brother over Earl Spencer’s bombshell claim Charles declared ‘rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough’
The King’s unprecedented response via the Palace reveals that has been outraged by Earl Spencer’s claims, experts have said
Charles and Diana on their last official trip together to South Korea in November 1992
In Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the earl tells how in 1997 he clashed with Charles over the idea of Princes William and Harry walking in their mother’s funeral procession.
Spencer said he insisted Diana would not have wanted William, then aged 15, and Harry, 12, to endure such a public ordeal, telling the then heir to the throne: ‘That’s not going to happen.’
But he claims furious Charles ‘went nuts’ and responded with a ‘stream of anger’ including telling him, just days after the death of the princess that shook the world, that ‘rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough’.
The first full part of the serialisation of the memoir will be published on dailymail.com at 5pm UK time today.
Last night Buckingham Palace took the highly unusual step of issuing a withering put-down to the incendiary claims about the King.
A Royal spokesman 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 judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.’
The caustic response is being compared to the late Queen Elizabeth’s celebrated remark that ‘recollections may vary’ about Harry and Meghan’s outlandish claims in their Oprah Winfrey interview attacking the Royal Family.
A source close to the King said the comment he is alleged to have made about Diana was ‘just not in his nature and it certainly wasn’t in his nature at that time, when he was a man absolutely grief-stricken’.
They pointed out that the then Prince of Wales was the person who overruled Royal protocol to insist that Diana should have a full state-style ceremonial funeral.
The rebuke was issued by the palace shortly after the Mail revealed claims made by Earl Spencer in his book.
Earl Spencer, 62, says he has written the memoir to correct ‘untruths’ told about his older sister.
The astonishing account of the King’s alleged outburst, almost 30 years ago, is described by the earl over several pages.
He says that one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides had told him, in the days before the funeral, that William and Harry would take part in the procession, which is when he responded that this was not what his sister would have wanted and was ‘not going to happen’.
Minutes later, he recalls, he received a phone call from Prince Charles who questioned the Spencer family’s sense of duty and insisted that, 18 years earlier, he had walked in the funeral procession of Lord Mountbatten, his great-uncle.
The memoir describes how Charles ‘went nuts’ after the earl pointed out that the prince had been 30 at the time of Lord Mountbatten’s funeral in 1979.
In one of the book’s most extraordinary passages, Earl Spencer writes: ‘Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped.
‘I assumed the pause signalled an effort to bring himself under control, but then 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. ‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, “we’ll forget her soon enough!”.’
Earl Spencer said that he was ‘so stunned’ by the alleged remarks that he took a few seconds to reply.
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‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ I said flatly, before hanging up,’ he writes.
Julian Payne, the King’s former communications secretary between 2016 and 2021, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I personally was working for him during the 20th anniversary of the late princess’s death in 2017 and naturally we ended up discussing her several times during that summer because the media interest was so intense.
‘What I remember was 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.
‘So 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.’
BBC royal correspondent Sean Coughlan said the Palace see the allegation against Charles as ‘being entirely out of character for a man with a deeply compassionate nature, who at the time was dealing with his own grief and that of their two sons’.
Royal expert Phil Dampier described the palace statement as ‘extraordinary’, adding: ‘The days of never complain never explain have gone… not surprisingly.’
Commentator Richard Fitzwilliams told GB News: ‘I think it is something that the Royal Family obviously have taken very seriously with an extraordinary statement.’
He added that royal observers will now be considering whether the Duke of Sussex will also respond to the book’s contents.
Mr Fitzwilliams said: ‘People will be asking what did Prince Harry know about this book and what its contents are. Will he in fact be speaking about this? Will he be reacting? I sincerely hope so because it’s a scandalous thing to accept to say that his father made these statements.
‘Here you’ve got a situation where it will be interesting to see what Prince Harry says, if anything, about this because he’s been speaking about so many topics linked to the royal family since they’ve stepped down as senior working royals.’
Sky News royal correspondent Laura Bundock said the Palace statement was a ‘really remarkable intervention’ and a ‘very robust response’ which is ‘beyond punchy’.
She added: ‘It is, as they say very unusual for them to make any comment about a book. They normally do not comment on books.’
Ms Bundock also pointed out that the palace did not respond to Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, but the new book is a ‘very different situation’.
She continued: ‘At this point they feel they simply cannot stay silent given who has written the book, Diana’s brother, given the subject of the book, Diana herself, and given the nature of the allegations made.’
The Earl, Diana and Charles at the Earl’s 21st birthday party in 1985 at the Mirabelle restaurant in London
From left, the Earl, Prince William, Prince Harry and Charles at Diana’s funeral on September 6, 1997
Diana’s death on August 31, 1997, aged 36, sparked a global outpouring of grief.
On September 6, 1997, six days after Diana’s death, Earl Spencer delivered a defiant eulogy at her funeral that was later named one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.
His raw oration in Westminster Abbey was delivered after he walked alongside William and Harry, as well as Prince Charles and Prince Philip, behind Diana’s coffin in a funeral procession through central London.
The new book includes a string of further extraordinary claims about Diana’s failed marriage to Charles and the tumultuous aftermath of her tragic death in a car crash in Paris.
The revelations are set to plunge Buckingham Palace into a fresh storm just weeks after the return of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their children to the UK from California.
The exclusive serialisation will begin on dailymail.com later today at 5pm.
Described as ‘historic’, Swan Song is due to be published worldwide next Tuesday – in the UK by Penguin Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House.
Police in the Netherlands are still investigating what publishing sources say is the ‘extremely suspicious’ overnight theft of four copies of the book from the back of a parked lorry earlier this week.
Today, several senior Royal Family members will be seen in public carrying out official engagements.
Charles is set to address bosses from some of the world’s leading AI developers – Nvidia, Anthropic and OpenAI – about the future of artificial intelligence.
He is expected to tell a summit at Dumfries House in Scotland that the new technology should be in the ‘service of humanity, community and the natural world’.
Diana’s son William and his wife Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales who also hold the titles of the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay in Scotland, are set to make their first official visit to Isle of Bute.
The day is to include visiting their namesake town of Rothesay and follows their visits to the Isles of Mull and Iona last year.
The Duke of Sussex is also expected to make his first public appearance since returning to the UK – appearing at the inaugural Invictus Spirit Awards ceremony in London.
The Duchess of Edinburgh’s visit to Zambia, to try to celebrate the relationship between Zambia and the UK, is among other royal engagements.
Elsewhere, Princess Anne will attend the opening of a new History Centre at the German Military Cemetery in Staffordshire.
Extracted from Swan Song: Diana, My Sister by Charles Spencer, to be published by Michael Joseph on September 22, £28. © Charles Spencer 2026. To order a copy for £23.80 (offer valid to 10/10/26; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.