Princess Diana’s brother, Earl Charles Spencer, has responded to Buckingham Palace after they questioned his account of a conversation with King Charles III. Spencer claims the monarch is ‘gaslighting’ him regarding the alleged exchange after Diana’s death.
The dispute arose following an excerpt published in The Daily Mail from Spencer’s upcoming memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister. In it, Spencer recounts a heated discussion with King Charles, then Prince of Wales, during which Spencer claims Charles said, ‘We’ll forget her soon enough!’ about Diana. Buckingham Palace has disputed this claim, suggesting grief may have affected Spencer’s memory of the events following his sister’s death.
“It is not every day you wake up to find you’ve been gaslit by the king,” Spencer said in an interview with The Mail on Sunday. He criticized the palace’s response, describing it as ‘astonishingly provocative and below the belt’.
This situation recalls the palace’s previous ‘recollections may vary’ statement after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021.
Spencer reported that six days after Diana’s death in August 1997, he had a contentious phone call with Charles. Spencer claims Charles stopped midway through his ‘stream of anger’ to express disdain for the global mourning over Diana.
At that time, the king and Spencer clashed over the decision to have Diana’s sons, William and Harry, walk behind her coffin at the funeral. A spokesperson from Buckingham Palace offered a rare response, indicating that pain from fraternal grief may cloud judgment and affect memory.
In an interview on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Spencer maintained his statement. When confronted with the palace’s denial, he asserted that the statement from Buckingham Palace lacked clarity and consistency.
“Is he furious or embarrassed? I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said,” Spencer insisted.
Spencer also remarked that he had communicated the alleged comment to close friends and family shortly after the conversation. On whether this revelation would upset nephews William and Harry, Spencer stated they were already aware of his version of events.
Diana passed away at age 36 in a car accident in Paris. The accident also claimed the lives of her partner Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul. At the time of her death, Diana and Charles had been divorced for approximately a year.
In his 2023 memoir Spare, Harry discussed the impact of the decision to walk behind their mother’s coffin, mentioning that ‘several adults were aghast’, while Spencer ‘raised hell’ against it.
Spencer has previously criticized the decision, labeling it ‘bizarre and cruel’. He described the experience as ‘the most horrifying half an hour’ of his life, marked by immense grief and emotional turmoil.
Swan Song: Diana, My Sister will be released on September 22.