Princess Diana’s younger brother has made a series of shocking claims while sharing recollections of his life with Diana in his new book.
Earl Spencer has made a series of claims in Swan Song: Diana, My Sister – including that the King said ‘we’ll forget her soon enough’ after she died, sparking a war of words between him and Buckingham Palace.
has read Earl Spencer’s new book, ‘Swan Song: Diana, My Sister’, and found numerous bombshell allegations.
The book hit shelves early today.
Prince Charles was ‘giddy’ after Diana’s death
‘The phone rang constantly. Prince Charles caught me as I crossed the landing upstairs,’ Earl Spencer wrote. It had been no more than three days since Diana died in a Paris car crash.
‘Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated – like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time.
‘He let me know he had informed William and Harry of their mother’s death, first thing that morning, in their bedrooms at Balmoral. It all sounded so strangely matter-of-fact, given the enormity of the disaster.’
Earl Spencer said that, looking back on the phone call, he believes Charles’ reaction was to ‘think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not.’
King Charles was ‘jealous’ when Diana’s father died
Earl Spencer also recalled an uncomfortable moment with King Charles shortly after his father, John Spencer, died.
‘I had found it so moving to see my father’s coffin being borne into the church by his six longest-serving male members of staff that I had caught my breath and started to cry,’ Earl Spencer wrote.
‘My sister Sarah, seeing the state I was in, touched me gently on the shoulder, in a silent gesture of support and understanding. Then, as we stood opposite one another, Prince Charles suddenly said: ‘You’re so lucky!’ I was unsure if I had heard him right. ‘I’m sorry, sir?’
“You’re just so lucky – you know, inheriting when you’re so young!’
King Charles allegedly added: ‘’You’re inheriting this place in your twenties. And, I mean, I’m forty-three, he said, ‘and I employ fifty people – he was flushed in the face now – but my parents insist on treating me like – like a child?’ At this he stamped his foot in emphasis, I have to say, very much like a child; and a petulant one, at that.’
What Diana wanted for her children
Earl Spencer, reflecting after his sister’s untimely death, recounted how Diana wanted her two sons to become the ‘best versions of themselves’ despite their royal upbringing.
‘I have never, in my life, come across a better mother. However out of touch many in the Royal Family seemed, there had always been the reassurance for the public that their mother was going to give William and Harry values, insight and the emotional security that British princes had previously been denied,’ he wrote.
‘But now what would happen to them? They were still young enough to be easily influenced, and perhaps even to forget their mother’s guidance and example. Would they, at such a formative stage, be dragged back into the archaic ways of the monarchy, just as they seemed set on the enlightened path picked out by their mother? Might the chill element of royal tradition still have time to root out the seeds that Diana had sown and nurtured?’
Diana’s heartbreak over Charles before the wedding
Months before Diana and Charles wed, the princess-to-be was at a party with Elton John and her family, hoping to be reunited with her fiancé, who had just returned from a trip to New York.
Earl Spencer wrote: ‘Diana had dreamt of spending the party at Windsor Castle at her fiancé’s side. But he had shown next to no interest in her…’
Earl Spencer claimed that after an evening of ‘heartbreak’, Diana went to her father and told her she could not marry King Charles – a man who ‘clearly did not love her’.
Diana was groped by Mohamed Fayed
One shocking portion of the book recalled how Diana confided in her brother about how Mohamed Fayed had groped her.
‘Diana disliked Mohamed Fayed. She told me with revulsion how, early in her romance with Dodi, Mohamed had come up to her, dropped a hand onto her buttocks and squeezed them while saying in a leery, suggestive tone, ‘And in Egypt, father-in-law gets first go..?
‘She laughed when recounting the ghastliness of the episode, but she had been alerted to who Dodi’s father really was.’
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