Earl Spencer's Diana memoir due 22 September as Palace pushes back on excerpts
Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer, will publish a memoir about his sister Diana, Princess of Wales, on 22 September.
The book is titled Swan Song: Diana, My Sister. Pre-publication excerpts have already prompted pushback from Buckingham Palace. Hello Magazine
It is being published by Penguin Press, a division of Penguin Random House. Penguin Press will release it simultaneously in the United States and Canada, and the book will be translated into 12 languages. Indian Express
Earl Spencer, who is 62, writes about Diana’s life and death. The book covers the breakdown of her marriage. In excerpts, he claims Diana attempted to break off her engagement to Charles, then Prince of Wales.
The strongest claims concern the morning Diana died, on 31 August 1997. Earl Spencer claims Charles sounded “giddily elated – like a lottery winner” when he spoke to him that morning. He suggests Charles may have seen Diana’s death as freeing him to marry Camilla Parker Bowles, now Queen Camilla.
Earl Spencer says Charles told him he had informed William and Harry first thing that morning. The two princes were at Balmoral, the royal residence in Scotland. They were then aged 15 and 12.
Other excerpts concern the reaction inside the institution. Earl Spencer claims some inside Buckingham Palace were “relieved – indeed pleased” at Diana’s death. In a separate excerpt, he claims Charles was horrified at the public outpouring of grief. Hello Magazine
The funeral is another point of dispute. Earl Spencer claims its organisation was taken off Diana’s family by Charles. He claims a wish by Diana to have Mozart’s Requiem, the composer’s mass for the dead, played at her funeral was ignored.
He also says the then-Prince of Wales subjected him to a “stream of anger” around that period. The Palace has entered a war of words with Earl Spencer over the claims. BBC
King Charles III issued a rare response after the excerpts appeared. People
For readers coming to this fresh, this is a family account meeting an institutional record. One side is a brother’s memoir. The other is the Palace, which seldom answers in public.
