A New Yorker strolling along West 20th Street on Tuesday evening could hardly have missed the commotion. A long queue stretched down the pavement towards St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Chelsea.
‘Who is this guy, Earl?’ one passer-by asked someone in the line. ‘His name is Charles.’ ‘Then who is Earl?’ came the reply. ‘It’s his title.’
Charles Spencer had come to discuss his new book, Swan Song, with journalist Tina Brown. Every $20 ticket had sold out.
Unimpressed, the New Yorker shrugged and continued on his way, no closer to understanding the interest in the aristocratic Englishman.
Yet Spencer’s standing has fallen a long way. When I covered the Diana years as a Fleet Street reporter, he was a major figure.
At 33, he stood in the pulpit of Westminster Abbey to deliver a searing and unforgiving eulogy for his sister.
The Queen, his godmother, and the rest of the royal family listened in stony silence, their faces dark with disapproval.
The uncomfortable truth is that the tall aristocrat is now known chiefly as the brother of a sister who died.
After Princess Diana’s death, her brother Earl Spencer delivered a searing and unforgiving eulogy for her
Charles Spencer has now written a book about his sister’s life
Twenty-nine years later, he was once again the main attraction. The church was much smaller than Westminster Abbey, but every pew was occupied.
He also had a book to promote. Holding a microphone, Spencer appeared slightly tense, though he smiled when the audience applauded his claim that the Palace’s response to the book was not a denial but gaslighting.
Tina Brown, personally chosen for his only live conversation in the United States, questioned him about his childhood with Diana. Spencer maintained that it had been happy enough despite their parents’ separation.
Diana had given Brown a different account. ‘I was there,’ Spencer replied, with a sniff.
He had a point. Brown took pleasure in reminding the audience that she had lunch with the princess just weeks before her death. She also pointed out that Spencer was three years younger than Diana.
Was this some strange contest over who had known Diana best? Surely that was not the case.
They kept the exchange civil. Spencer’s argument for writing the book is that he was present at the very centre of the story—and he is entitled to make that case.
To reinforce the point, he suggested how valuable it would have been if Anne Boleyn’s brother, the poet George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, had been able to write his own memoir. It was an unfortunate example: he was executed for treason after being accused of sleeping with his sister. The allegation was untrue, one of several fabricated charges brought against Anne by a king determined to dispose of his queen so he could remarry.
Spencer describes himself as both a historian and a journalist. He has written well-received books about Charles I and Charles II. Some critics view his latest work as an attack on Charles III’s character.
He studied Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford, with the degree later converted to an MA. His journalism career included almost a decade as an NBC News correspondent, beginning in 1986. In both fields, the first rule is to get the facts right.
He insists he remembers his phone calls with Charles clearly, and on the night, he recounted the episode clearly. He even joked about the pen that tried the King’s temper after his accession. Brown did not give him an easy ride.
Still, I do not recognize the King he describes, a man so cruel about his ex-wife, the mother of his sons, that Spencer says he sounded ‘giddily elated,’ ‘like a lottery winner,’ when speaking after her death. In the heat of a row over whether William and Harry should walk behind her coffin, he may have said ‘we’ll forget her soon enough.’
Spencer insists that, despite his parents’ split, he and Diana were happy enough
Spencer likes to call himself a historian as well as a journalist. He has penned well received tomes on Charles I and Charles II. Some see his latest as a character assassination of Charles III
The elation, we are told, was because Charles would be free to marry his now Queen, Camilla. Spencer seems to have forgotten that Charles was already divorced from Diana. He was free to marry Camilla anyway.
The book will sell. It will be read for years and some of it will be taken seriously.
Near the end came the question that mattered. What would Diana have been if she had not married the heir to the throne?
He paused a long while. ‘Happy.’
I am not so sure she wasn’t happy anyway.
The Diana being written about by commentators now is a sad, troubled woman.
Her brother believes she had undiagnosed ADHD. Others have said she suffered from paranoia.
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Some of it is true and some is pure guesswork. It is not how I remember her.
This week I recorded an interview with my old friend Inspector Ken Wharfe MVO for my podcast, The Royal Editor. He reminded me she had the most infectious giggle and wicked sense of humor.
Diana had the most infectious giggle and wicked sense of humor
Had Diana not married the heir to the throne, she would have been ‘happy’ asserted Spencer
The Diana being written about by commentators now is a sad, troubled woman
Once, in the back of a car, she decided to have some fun with her hairdresser, Richard Dalton. Posing as an American correspondent, Ken rang him. He had seen the Princess’s new flicked hairstyle at an event in the US, he said, and it looked marvelous, though there was some concern about her roots.
Diana stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth so she would not be heard. Her sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, helpless with laughter, sat beside her and the driver could barely keep his eyes on the road. They had to call it off.
She found her own happiness. She learned to live with a husband who loved Camilla, and she had affairs of her own: with James Hewitt, who has admitted it, and with the late art dealer Oliver Hoare. James Gilbey may not have been a lover, but he was clearly a very intimate friend. He was the man heard calling her ‘Squidgy’ on the Squidgygate tapes.
She was perhaps happiest with Hasnat Khan, the heart surgeon. He would not commit because his family wanted him to marry a woman of the Muslim faith. Diana went to Pakistan to show them she was serious. They did not budge. Hasnat could not cope with the drama around her either, and the relationship ended weeks before her death.
Her worst mistake was giving up her police protection. I get a mention in Spencer’s book, on page 251, for saying so. He quotes an article I wrote for the Daily Express, where I was then royal correspondent, about her decision to disband her team of royal bodyguards. At the time I said it ‘speaks volumes for her present state of mind, it is very sad.’
Ken, loyal to the core, warned her against doing it before he left her side. She did not listen.
In Paris in August 1997, there was no Scotland Yard officer beside her. There was Trevor Rees-Jones, military trained and on Mohamed Al Fayed’s payroll. She was 36.
Spencer reveals that after she died, the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, later Lord Fellowes and Spencer’s own brother-in-law, brought word that Her Majesty wished to restore Diana’s HRH.
Losing it in the divorce had upset her deeply. She could not believe they had done it. She was the mother of a future king and she thought it was hers by right.
Spencer turned it down. She was dead. What would be the point?
He has wondered ever since whether he was right.
Brown reminded him that William had reportedly promised his mother he would give it back when he was king. Surely that was for William and Harry to decide, not him? Whatever was promised as a boy, I do not expect William to reopen it when he is king.
Diana had made her brother the boys’ guardian, a role with no real clout while their father was alive. He was careful about his nephews all evening. ‘Is it astounding that an Englishman wants to move back to England?’ he asked, defending Harry’s return.
Harry may well be making a film about his mother, Spencer said, but he did not know. He was mindful of William throughout. He does not want to anger the future king, though he may already have done so.
What would grieve Diana now is the silence between her sons.
Harry may well be making a film about his mother, Spencer said, but he does not know
What would grieve Diana now is the silence between her sons
Diana found her own happiness. She learned to live with a husband who loved Camilla, and she had affairs of her own
You need to be in your mid-forties to remember her as a living public figure. She has passed into history, and history needs the people who were in the room. Her brother has written his memoir. Ken Wharfe has written his, with me. Patrick Jephson, her private secretary, and Paul Burrell, her butler, have written theirs. The historian Dr David Starkey has made the point that first-hand witnesses are what historians will rely on.
Spencer told New York his sister would have been ‘happy’ had she never been a princess.
By implication, he was suggesting that if she hadn’t caught Charles’s eye, her life would have been far better.
Maybe. He was living in Cape Town when she died.
Sometimes she was happy anyway, despite it all.
Ken and I and many others close to her heard that infectious laugh often.
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).