The second series of excerpts from Earl Spencer’s book about Princess Diana have been released as he doubled down on his claims in a fresh interview.
In his highly anticipated memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the Earl has made bombshell allegations about King Charles’ conduct around his ex-wife Princess Diana up to and following her death.
Revelations from the book, currently being serialised by the Daily Mail before it is published next Tuesday, have so far focused on the King’s behaviour, from statements he made to Diana before their marriage to comments he made to the Earl before her funeral.
Earl Spencer gave an interview to the BBC ahead of the book’s publication in which he insisted everything he said was true amid backlash.
Prior to the serialisation, Buckingham Palace responded directly to the allegations, saying the King was mindful that “grief can cloud reason” in reference to the Earl.
Here are the latest bombshell allegations made in the memoir.
Prince Charles ‘had no place at his his ex’s funeral’
Earl Spencer recalled his sister’s funeral as a “a form of mental torture,” stating that he believed neither Prince Charles, or Princes William and Harry should have been in attendance.
Sharing his feelings on the funeral procession, one passage read: “What was Prince Charles actually doing there? I thought at one moment.
“This ex-husband, from a marriage that had collapsed so bitterly four years before and finally ended in divorce a year earlier, surely had no place at his ex’s funeral.
“Supporting his sons was the reason given for his prominent place, but what were the boys doing there, anyway? It all seemed mad to me.
“I was anxious that I could not look sideways to check how Harry was doing. But at one point I found us marching briefly out of sight, under a massive arch. Relieved that nobody could see us here, I quickly leant across to Harry, and gave him an encouraging hug. ‘Well done, Harry!’ I said. ‘You’re doing bloody brilliantly!’”
Diana’s fraught relationship with the Royals at the time of her death
Excerpts published on Friday reveal further details about Diana’s fraught relationship with the Palace at the time of her death.
The book read: “I saw the face of Princess Michael, whom Diana had considered her ‘nightmare neighbour’ at Kensington Palace. She had accosted my sister after she was deprived of her HRH title, and said, with feigned kindness: ‘Don’t worry, Diana – you only need to curtsy to me when we are in public !’
“There was Princess Margaret, who had been a good ally of Diana till the Panorama interview had taken place. Margaret could never forgive what she viewed as an unforgivable act of treachery against the Royal Family and had chosen not to bow to Diana’s coffin when it had passed her that morning”.
After Diana’s death, there was ‘a lack of obvious care’ for Prince Harry
In other passages of the book, Earl Spencer spoke of his concern for Prince Harry.
He wrote: “My chief memory of that train journey is of being concerned at the lack of obvious care for Harry, as he decompressed from the ghastliness of the morning.
“He needed Diana’s hugs, of course, and they would forever be denied him. But instead of calm and nurture, he was allowed to spin out of control.
“I have often looked back, reckoning that a more caring hand at such points as this would have helped him enormously in the future. Instead, he seemed so very alone in his despair and torment”.
The Queen’s offer to restore her honorifics posthumously
The Earl wrote he rejected the late Queen’s “well-meaning” gesture to restore Diana’s HRH title posthumously as it felt like a “consolation award”. He claimed his sister was “dreadfully hurt” by the “petty and vindictive” decision to remove her title, and just hours after her funeral she offered to restore it.
“I felt that I knew in my bones how she would view this posthumous award,” he writes. “That's very kind of the Queen, of course. But what's the point, Robert? Now? I mean – Diana's dead.”
He said that just hours after his eulogy at Diana’s funeral, the late Queen’s private secretary Robert Fellowes beckoned me to follow him into a quiet corner of the carriage.
“I have just received a call from Her Majesty… and she would like to offer Diana her HRH title back,” he wrote Mr Fellowes as saying.
While the Earl later wondered if he was right to reject the award, he felt “the title should never have been removed during her life, in which case it would not have been necessary to offer it to her in death.”
Prince Charles plucked a ‘single stem’ to drop on Diana’s coffin
The Earl also recalled his anger at Prince Charles on the day of Diana's funeral.
He wrote: “Diana was lowered into the ground as the vicar offered his sentences of Christian comfort.
“Several of us threw in our flowers on top of the coffin. Prince Charles plucked a single stem from my bouquet for Diana and let it drop on his ex-wife’s coffin.
“How very generous, I thought, angry now on Diana’s behalf, as she began to disappear under the soil.
“But anger was very much a secondary emotion at such a moment of profound loss. The burial was both incredibly painful and utterly exquisite.”
Earl doubles down on claims in fresh interview - and says Queen reacted ‘tetchily’ to news of fatal crash
The latest serialisation of the Earl’s book was released alongside a teaser clip of an interview he gave to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, in which he insists everything he has said is true.
Speaking about an alleged row over Diana’s funeral arrangements involving her sons, the earl said: “(The King) went ballistic, would be the right term, and started really going for my family as a whole, about their sense of duty, not being adequate enough, and ranted for a while, I have no idea how long, but it was a significant period, and I just listened.
“And then he stopped, and I thought, ‘Oh now he’s going to pull himself together and say something more appropriate’.
“And then he said, ‘We’ll forget her soon enough’.”
Asked whether he has “evidence” of the King’s comments, the earl told the BBC: “I told friends and family straight away, close friends and family, about what had been said, because it was so monstrous.”
He added: “I’m telling the truth.”
Earl Spencer further claimed Elizabeth reacted “tetchily” to news of his sister having been in a car accident.
He said: “When the Queen had heard the first news of Diana’s being in a traffic accident, she had asked tetchily, ‘What is she up to now?’
“This, before the seriousness of it all became clear.”
His full interview with Laura Kuenssberg will be available to watch on BBC iPlayer on Sunday from 4pm and broadcast on BBC One at 6.30pm.
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