Palace Denies Spencer Claim About Charles Remark After Diana's Death
Buckingham Palace has denied a claim in Earl Spencer's new book about what then-Prince Charles said after Diana's death. The denial was issued on 17 September 2026 in response to an extract from the memoir. Sky News
Spencer says Charles spoke to him during a heated row over funeral arrangements days after Diana's death. He quotes Charles as saying: "Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough." The Guardian The exchange, as he recalls it, took place in the days before Diana's funeral.
Diana, Princess of Wales, died in 1997. Spencer recalls the conversation in his book Swan Song. ITV The memoir, titled Swan Song, is being serialised by the Daily Mail. The Guardian
The Palace issued its statement a little over an hour after the Daily Mail published its first extract online. It did not wait for the full serialisation or for the book's publication to run its course.
The statement said "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". That language stops short of naming Spencer directly. It disputes the reliability of the recollection rather than the detail of the funeral discussions.
King Charles's former communications secretary Julian Payne told BBC's Today programme that the palace "felt the need to set the record straight and deny these remarks have been made". The Guardian The wording is categorical. It leaves little room for competing interpretation of what was intended.
The broader context here is a dispute over memory, not only over fact. Like two archives holding different notes on the same week, the accounts diverge. One side offers a direct quotation from a private conversation nearly three decades old. The other denies the words were spoken and questions how grief shapes recall. Neither side has produced a contemporaneous record in the material published so far.
Looking at what this means for the Palace, a quick response carries its own calculation. Silence would have let the quotation circulate unchallenged through a newspaper serialisation cycle — books released in parts to build attention. A rapid denial seeks to attach doubt to the extract from the outset. It also puts the Palace version alongside the allegation in early coverage, not later as a correction.
In my view, the next phase will turn less on the single sentence than on the surrounding record. Serialisation rewards sharp, quotable passages. Institutional rebuttal relies on brevity and finality. That tension often prolongs the story it is meant to close. What endures is not only what was said in those days, but who is trusted to define the public memory of them.
