Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer told he wrote his memoir about Princess Diana as a “duty...as an eyewitness to history” before Tuesday’s release of Swan Song. He said he wanted “to put things down once and for all that were true,” putting the book’s disputed claims about King Charles back into public view.
Earl Spencer on Diana’s death
Earl Spencer said he was in South Africa on 31 August 1997 when Princess Diana died in a Paris car crash with Dodi Fayed and the driver. He said Lady Jane Fellowes called in the middle of the night to say Diana had been in a crash and that it was not too serious, before the calls became more distressing and ended with, “I'm afraid she's died.”
He also said he later took a call at his home in Cape Town from Prince Charles, who told him how he broke the news to Princes William and Harry at Balmoral Castle. Spencer said, “I felt there was a sort of giddy tone,” and added, “I just felt there was a lightness in his tone about Diana's death that really jarred with me.”
Swan Song and Buckingham Palace
In Swan Song, Earl Spencer says King Charles said “we'll forget her soon enough” during an argument over whether Princes William and Harry should walk in Diana's funeral procession. Spencer said he had been discussing funeral arrangements with a palace official, who said it had been agreed the boys would walk behind their mother’s coffin, and he told the official it was not what Diana would have wanted.
Buckingham Palace responded that the King was “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.” That leaves the memoir resting on Spencer’s recollection and tone-based interpretation, not on any separate public record. For readers, the sharper issue now is whether the interview changes how this family dispute over Diana’s death is read, or simply hardens the split before the book lands.
Laura Kuenssberg interview
The full interview with Laura Kuenssberg is already available on iPlayer and will be broadcast on One at 18:30 BST on Sunday. Tuesday’s release makes the interview the lead-in, not the endpoint, and the next round of attention will sit on how much of Spencer’s account the book adds beyond the brief on-air remarks.
