Earl Spencer says Sussex press coverage echoes Diana and defends memoir claims
Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer, says the press treatment of his nephew Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, echoes the coverage of his sister Diana, Princess of Wales.
The claim comes in a BBC interview with Laura Kuenssberg, recorded at his Althorp estate in Northamptonshire and due to air on the evening of Sunday 20 September. In it, Earl Spencer describes the coverage of Harry and Meghan as having a “cancerous influence” The Guardian.
He says Diana was “really brought low” by criticism she received from the media. Harry made a similar complaint himself. He told Oprah Winfrey in 2021 that the tabloid press had created a “toxic environment”.
The interview centres on Earl Spencer’s new memoir chronicling Diana’s life. He says he is telling the truth about its claims. He says he told close friends and family straight away about what was said.
At issue is a phone call after Diana’s death in 1997. Earl Spencer says King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, “went ballistic” during the call BBC. He alleges that Charles said of Diana: “we’ll forget her soon enough”.
Earl Spencer has called the alleged remarks “monstrous”. Buckingham Palace, responding to the memoir, said His Majesty is mindful that “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory.” Earl Spencer accused the King of gaslighting him with that response.
The Sussexes returned to the United Kingdom from the United States on 26 August. Earl Spencer and his then wife Karen Spencer attended their wedding at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 2018.
The book has arrived as Diana’s black “revenge dress”, the off-the-shoulder dress she wore to a dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1994, has gone on display before auction at Sotheby’s.
