Charles Spencer represents all that I detest in our class-riven country. An aristocrat, raised to believe he is better than us commoners; a serial divorcee; as entitled as most of the rest of his class is. Yet today, I feel I must defend him. As I did his sister.
His book Swan Song: Diana, My Sister has just been published. Monarchists are up in arms. Slings and arrows from the Palace, royal commentators and loyal royalists keep on coming. In my view they want to kill the book before it reaches too many people. Which is why I, an avowed republican, read it.
Spencer is at times annoyingly self-justifying, but most of the book is credible and candid, laying bare the cruelties of this class and its victims. And vitally, it re-centres the late Diana, Princess of Wales, whom the Palace and royal acolytes have been wiping from national memory for many years.
By 2012, the year of the Queen’s Jubilee, PR guru Mark Borkowski confidently said Diana had been “airbrushed out” and one columnist lamented that the erasure was complete and the Firm had won.
This is what happened to Prince Harry too. I was, like many others, moved by Spare. But adamant monarchists came out and declared Harry bad, mad and dangerous. His dad did not publicly defend him.
In 1994, Charles had himself spoken to journalist Jonathan Dimbleby, his friend, about his cold parents, his uncaring public school where he was miserable, marrying Diana out of duty, his affair with Camilla (which he claimed he restarted after realising his marriage was over) and so on. The book was billed as “an intimate portrait of a life trapped by destiny”. To me, Spencer’s book is also about lives trapped by destiny. Charles went public about his agonies and frustrations. So, why is Spencer being slammed by the Palace for opening up about their childhoods and delving into Diana’s ill-fated marriage?
Some of their nannies, according to Spencer, were brutal chastisers. Their mother left them and went off with a lover, then fought and lost a battle for custody. The Earl, her husband, appears as a hard chauvinist. Raine, the Earl’s second wife, in my view should feature in a fairy tale about wicked stepmothers: she told Diana she was stupid and unworthy.
Her revenge was to become one of the most radiant, famous and transformative women in the world.
I was moved to tears to read again about what Diana said was body shaming by her fiancé, who, in Spencer’s account, told her during their courtship that he didn’t love her. She wanted out before the wedding, but her ghastly father made her go through with it.
So too the section on the funeral, when Charles allegedly told Spencer of his sister: “We’ll forget her soon enough.” And Spencer also claims that until his father intervened, Charles insisted he would walk right behind the coffin, in the centre. Of course, the Palace has hit back, saying fraternal grief can “cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory”.
Knowing this stuff helps the republican cause. That’s what must be unnerving monarchists.
Piers Morgan has said he will sue Spencer for erroneously accusing him of publishing illicitly taken pictures of Diana. Morgan worked at The Sun at the time, while the photographs were published in the Sunday Mirror. The book’s editors should have fact-checked. Spencer has apologised. But Morgan, a big royalist who hated Harry’s Spare, wants the passages removed, even if that means the entire book is pulped. Of course he does.
On the Jeremy Vine show on Monday one caller was apoplectic about Spencer’s revelations nearly 30 years after Diana’s death. As if a brother writing about the pain of his sister as she went into a marriage which, by then, she didn’t want – because Charles had apparently told her he didn’t love her – was treason. As if no one should pen memoirs and histories, because, you know, so much time has passed. But we also had a caller saying she was a monarchist till Diana left the marriage and Charles carried on with Camilla. And many say she should never have married the prince, that she was special and made to suffer. Ordinary people understand heartache better than toffs do.
My mother, who was one of the legion of fans, prophesied that Diana would stay with us. Spookily, it seems as if her ghost will not lie down. Perhaps because it cannot find peace while the King and Camilla, the third person in the ill-fated marriage, carry on as if she never was.
Hence then, the article about i should detest earl spencer but this is why i m defending him was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( I should detest Earl Spencer, but this is why I’m defending him )
Also on site :