New Delhi: Days after Princess Diana’s death, King Charles allegedly predicted that she would be “forgotten soon enough”.
In an upcoming memoir, Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer and brother of the late Princess Diana, Princess of Wales, claims that after Diana’s death then-Prince Charles told him that “we’ll forget her soon enough.”
The allegation appears in the first public extract from Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Spencer’s book to be released on 22 September. In the extract, he recalls a heated phone call in the days after Diana’s fatal car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997.
Spencer claims he was informed by a senior Palace aide that her sons, Princes William, then 15, and Harry, then 12, would walk alongside her coffin. He then had a phone call with Charles.
“He [Charles] unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death,” he wrote in the memoir. “’Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough’.”
Spencer recalled being “stunned” by the alleged remarks that it took him a few seconds to reply.
‘“I can’t believe you just said that,” I said flatly, before hanging up,’ he wrote in the memoir.
Spencer further added that Charles responded with a “stream of anger,” questioned the Spencer family’s sense of duty, and referenced his own participation in Lord Mountbatten’s funeral years earlier, when Charles was 30.
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Speaking on behalf of Diana
Spencer has described the book as an effort to speak on Diana’s behalf and correct what he sees as untruths that have become accepted over time, particularly as the 30th anniversary of her death approaches.
The memoir is also expected to address aspects of her marriage and the period after her death. Ahead of publication, a small number of copies were reportedly stolen from a truck in the Netherlands.
Buckingham Palace does not usually comment on books. However, a statement has been issued after the extract appeared.
“While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss,” a spokesperson said.
It is reminiscent, perhaps deliberately, the Daily Mail noted, of the late Queen’s famous “recollections may vary” retort to Harry and Meghan Markle’s accusations of racism.