Earl Charles Spencer to Publish First Extended Account of Sister Diana's Life

Earl Charles Spencer, the younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, is set to publish a book about his sister that he says will contain revelations drawing considerable attention. "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister" is scheduled for publication in September 2026 by Penguin Random House UK (Hello!, Mirror).

The book marks the first time Earl Spencer has spoken at length about Diana, nearly three decades after her death in a car crash in Paris in August 1997. She was 36. Her partner Dodi Fayed and chauffeur Henri Paul also died in the crash. The 29th anniversary of her death falls on 31 August this year — weeks before the book reaches shelves.

Spencer, 62, lives at Althorp Estate in Northamptonshire, the family seat where Diana is buried on an island in the grounds. He has said the aim of the book is to tell the truth about Diana from a brother's perspective and to speak on her behalf in an openly positive way. He described that aim as a continuation of what he attempted in the eulogy he delivered at Diana's 1997 funeral, a service watched by more than two billion people worldwide.

That eulogy remains one of the most remembered speeches in modern British public life. In it, Spencer referred to Diana's "blood family" — a phrase widely read at the time as a pointed distinction from the Royal Household into which she had married.

Diana was born into the aristocratic Spencer family in 1961. She married the then Prince of Wales in 1981, and the couple had two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. They divorced in 1996, a year before her death.

Daniel Bunyard, publishing director at Penguin Random House UK, described the book as being of historic importance and unique for being written by Earl Spencer from what he called a vantage point of intimacy. The publisher's language positions the book not as a memoir of Spencer's own life but as a defence and account of Diana's.

For readers, the promise of "revelations" from the brother who delivered the funeral oration is what sets this apart from the many books already written about Diana. Whether the contents meet that promise is a question the publication itself will answer in September.