Earl Spencer has said he could write a “hit piece on the royal family” but said it was not a threat as he would not put pen to paper.
Charles Spencer’s controversial book about his sister Diana, Princess of Wales has made headlines around the world for its string of allegations against the monarch, but he insisted it was not a “hit piece on the King”.
Former tabloid editor Piers Morgan has claimed the royal family are “spitting blood” over Earl Spencer’s memoir about Diana – called Swan Song: Diana, My Sister – and that he wants to “destroy” the reputation of the King.
Interviewed on the ITV show Lorraine, Diana’s brother, who famously gave a eulogy at her funeral, said: “This is about Diana.
“It was impossible to give the full story of Diana’s life without putting in context certain things.
“This is not a threat at all because I’m not going to do it, if I wanted to write a hit piece on the royal family, I could do that – that’s not my job.
“My job in this book was to celebrate Diana, it’s exactly the same as with the eulogy.
“By doing that, other people are going to come off not as well as they might want to.”
Earl Spencer claims in his book that the King, then the Prince of Wales, said about Diana “we’ll forget her soon enough” during an argument over whether the then Princes William and Harry should walk behind their mother’s coffin in her funeral procession.
The memoir also alleges the King “sounded giddily elated – like a lottery winner” when he spoke to the earl after Diana’s death.
In a strongly worded response, Buckingham Palace said the King was “mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss”.
When asked by Lorraine if he stood by everything he said about the King, the earl replied: “Yes, so I would like to explain, I wasn’t setting out to do a hit piece on the King at all.
“The bits that have been included in the book are totally in context.”
The earl repeated his apology after wrongly suggesting in his book that Mr Morgan was responsible for publishing photographs, taken with hidden cameras, of Diana in a leotard working out at the gym, in the Daily Mirror newspaper in 1993.
Mr Morgan was working at The Sun at the time, and did not join the Mirror as its editor until 1995.
He said: “I mean, unlike some journalists we know, I’m very happy to acknowledge I made a small error and I’ve apologised and it will be put right in the second edition, but that’s it.”
Mr Morgan has called on Diana’s brother to pulp the remaining copies of his book and instructed his lawyers to demand the work be pulled from sale immediately.
He reacted to the earl describing his mistake as a “small error” during an appearance on the Channel 5 show Jeremy Vine, saying: “I don’t think that’s a small error, nor do my lawyers, it’s a serious defamation.”
Mr Morgan said: “I’m not professing to be the Mother Teresa of Fleet Street in all the time I worked there, and I didn’t never make mistakes myself, but this is a very, very big mistake and I think he’s done it in a way that’s incredibly casual.”
The earl said he did not talk to any members of the royal family about his book as he wanted to take “full responsibility” for its contents and it was not a “book by committee”.
He added: “So I told both William and Harry and my sisters earlier on the day that it was released, as a piece of news, that the book was coming out.”
Asked by Lorraine if he could be a mediator in the long-running rift between Diana’s sons, the earl said: “But I’ve never presumed to be involved in that.
“Everyone watching has probably knowledge of family rifts, they’re so personal, there’s so much we don’t know about in any family rift, and it’s just down to the individuals to deal with it how they want and I would never presume to advise on that.”
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