Charles Spencer, the younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, is refusing to back down from explosive claims about the Royal Family in his new memoir — and Buckingham Palace has pushed back hard.
In 'Swan Song: Diana, My Sister', serialised in the Daily Mail, the 9th Earl Spencer alleges that during a phone row over funeral plans in September 1997, the then Prince Charles told him: 'Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough.' The remark supposedly came as the family argued over whether Princes William, then 15, and Harry, then 12, should walk behind their mother's coffin in the procession on 6 September.
The Palace responded with an unusually pointed statement, suggesting that 'the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory'. Asked by the BBC whether the King was furious, Spencer replied: 'Is he furious or is he embarrassed?' He insisted the call was one of only two he'd ever had with the then Prince of Wales, and that he was 'hyper alert' to every word. He says he told family and friends at the time because the comment was 'so monstrous'.
The memoir goes further. Spencer writes that Charles sounded 'giddily elated — like a lottery winner' on the morning Diana died in the Paris car crash on 31 August 1997, and speculates he may have seen the death as freeing him to marry Camilla Parker Bowles. He also claims the late Queen reacted 'tetchily', asking 'what's she been up to now?' before grasping the gravity of the situation, and questions why an ex-husband had any place at the funeral at all.
A source close to the King rejected the accounts, telling The Telegraph the alleged comment was 'just not in his nature', and that Charles was 'paralysed with grief' at the time — even breaking protocol to insist Diana receive a full ceremonial funeral with her coffin draped in the royal standard. The Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, made clear she sided with the Palace.
For travellers with an interest in the story, the natural stop is Althorp, the Spencer family's Northamptonshire estate where Diana grew up and is buried, and where Spencer gave his interview. Her brothers' recollections of the funeral — Harry looking 'tiny and slight and bereft', William 'more self-possessed' — offer a fresh window on a week that shaped how millions remember the royals, and a reminder of why the estate remains a site of pilgrimage for her admirers.
Whether you believe the Earl or the Palace, the row is a reminder that Diana's story still carries real emotional weight nearly three decades on — and that Althorp remains the most tangible place to encounter it.