Earl Spencer’s claims about King Charles in his new book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, have raised questions about the chronology of events surrounding Princess Diana’s death, as well as the reliability of memories recalled nearly three decades later.
The book was published last Tuesday, following a BBC interview in which Spencer discussed allegations concerning the King and addressed a separate defamatory error for which he had issued a correction and apology to a former newspaper editor.
Among the most striking claims is Spencer’s account of a telephone conversation with then Prince Charles on the day Diana died in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997. Spencer recalls Charles as being “giddily elated, like a lottery winner.”
Spencer subsequently softened that account during his BBC interview, acknowledging that he could not be certain of Charles’s state of mind. He suggested that Charles may have sounded unusually light because Diana’s death meant he was now free to marry Camilla, who is now Queen Camilla.
The chronology of that day, however, makes the claim difficult to reconcile with the circumstances Charles was facing. The reported telephone conversation took place after Charles had been informed of Diana’s death and had told his sons, William and Harry, that their mother had been killed. It was also before he travelled to Paris with Diana’s two sisters to bring her body back to Britain.
The circumstances surrounding that journey, and Charles’s responsibility for his two sons at the time, provide important context to any assessment of his state of mind. William was 15 and Harry was 12 when Diana died.
There was another conversation between Spencer and Charles several days later, this time concerning Diana’s funeral. Spencer had objected to the plan for William and Harry to walk behind their mother’s coffin during the procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. Charles is said to have tried to persuade him to accept the arrangement.
According to Spencer’s account, Charles became angry during the conversation and criticised what he regarded as the Spencer family’s inadequate sense of duty. Spencer recalls Charles eventually “went ballistic” and “ranted for a while”, before saying, “we’ll forget her soon enough.”
That account creates an obvious tension with the events that followed. If Charles wanted Diana to be forgotten, it is difficult to reconcile that position with his reported determination that his young sons should take part in one of the most publicly remembered moments of her funeral. William and Harry ultimately did walk behind Diana’s coffin, alongside Prince Philip, Charles and Spencer.
Harry later addressed the issue in his memoir Spare, confirming that Spencer had opposed the boys’ participation in the procession. His account, however, does not appear to support Spencer’s suggestion during the BBC interview that William and Harry would necessarily share his view of Charles.
Another question concerns the timing of Spencer’s allegations. If his recollection of Charles’s reaction immediately after Diana’s death is accurate, he did not publicly raise that account for almost 30 years.
That silence is particularly notable because the circumstances of Charles receiving the news have already been depicted in popular culture. In the sixth series of Netflix’s The Crown, Charles is portrayed as devastated after learning of Diana’s death. The portrayal was reportedly informed by accounts from people involved in the production’s research, including an account from someone said to have been present when Charles received the news who described him as having “howled like an animal.”
Spencer has not, until now, publicly challenged that portrayal in the same way he has challenged other accounts of the events surrounding Diana’s death.
The broader circumstances of that night also matter. Charles had to tell his sons that their mother had died, deal with the royal family’s response and decide how Diana’s body would be brought back to Britain. Although she was no longer a member of the royal family following their divorce, she remained the mother of the second and third in line to the throne.
Against that background, the Palace has chosen to respond to Spencer’s allegations, despite the royal family’s longstanding reluctance to engage publicly with criticism.
The traditional approach has often been summed up by the phrase “never complain, never explain.” This time, Buckingham Palace issued a statement saying that, although it does not normally comment on books, the King was 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.”
The wording was restrained, but its message was clear: the Palace was questioning Spencer’s recollection without directly addressing each allegation.
The dispute also raises an unusual legal question. Defamatory allegations that are false and damaging to a person’s reputation can ordinarily lead to legal action, but a lawsuit would be an awkward route for the King. While the monarch can bring certain legal proceedings, the constitutional position surrounding the King, the requirements of a defamation case and the prospect of giving evidence and facing cross-examination would make such a case highly unusual.
British royal history contains one particularly notable example of a monarch pursuing legal action over defamatory claims. In 1910-11, King George V insisted on proceedings against journalist Edward Mylius, who had published allegations that the King was secretly married to another woman and had children from that relationship.
Mylius was prosecuted for criminal libel and convicted after the allegations were found to be untrue. George V’s decision was driven in part by concern that the claims could damage the monarchy and create uncertainty around the succession.
The circumstances today are very different. The issue surrounding Spencer’s book is not a question of succession, but a highly personal dispute over recollections of one of the most traumatic periods in the modern history of the British royal family.
That is what makes the question of memory so important. Nearly 30 years after Diana’s death, people who experienced the events are inevitably drawing on memories formed under extraordinary emotional pressure. Memories can remain vivid while details, chronology and interpretations change over time. That does not by itself establish that Spencer’s recollections are false, but it does make the distinction between remembered experience and independently established fact particularly important.
The Palace’s response appears designed to leave that distinction open. Yet by declining to give a direct account of the conversations themselves, it also leaves the public with two competing versions of events.
Charles, according to Spencer’s account, reacted to Diana’s death with an extraordinary lightness and later responded angrily to objections over the funeral procession. The official response suggests that the King’s memories of those events differ and that grief may have influenced Spencer’s recollection.
The surviving chronology provides important context, but it cannot by itself establish exactly what Charles felt or what was said during private telephone calls nearly three decades ago. That is ultimately the difficulty at the heart of Spencer’s allegations. They concern private conversations that cannot easily be independently reconstructed, while the people involved remember the same events very differently.
What can be examined is the sequence of events, the accounts that have been publicly given over the years and the extent to which those accounts are consistent with one another. On that basis, Spencer’s new allegations invite scrutiny not simply because they concern the King, but because they introduce a markedly different interpretation of events that have been recounted many times before.
