“I want to speak on Diana, Princess of Wales’s behalf and do so in an openly positive way.” That was how Earl Spencer described his motivation for writing Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, published next week.
With the 30th anniversary of the former Princess of Wales’ death approaching in 2027, Earl Spencer had been “inundated” with interview requests, he said, which convinced him to “write down my own thoughts and memories, once and for all, rather than having the discomfort of again reading the opinions of others, many of which are based on untruths.”
Those thoughts and memories have proven explosive, which Earl Spencer, 62, must have anticipated. He claims that when the then-Prince Charles called him in the aftermath of Diana’s death, “he sounded giddily elated – like a lottery winner.” In an extract published in the Daily Mail, he said that, after clashing over whether the princes should walk behind their mother’s coffin (the idea was “ghastly,” he told the now-King) “[Charles] unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana… ‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough!'”
The allegations are so striking that Buckingham Palace made the unusual move of issuing a withering statement in response – something they refrained from even following the publication of Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare. “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 judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss”, a spokesperson said.
Earl Spencer says he decided to write Swan Song, three decades after Diana’s death, simply to set the record straight about his sister. But are there other factors at play? Motivations that might convince him it was worth going to war with Buckingham Palace?
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(Left to right) Earl Spencer, Prince William, Prince Harry and the then Prince of Wales at Diana’s funeral in 1997 (Photo: Fiona Hanson/PA Wire)(Photo: Fiona Hanson/PA)Since her death in 1997, Earl Spencer, who succeeded his father as Viscount Althorp in 1992, aged 27, has in many ways become a custodian of Diana’s legacy; she is buried on an island on the Althorp estate where Earl Spencer lives.
The two youngest Spencer siblings were particularly close in childhood during their parents’ bitter divorce, while their elder sisters, Lady Jane Fellowes and Lady Sarah McCorquodale, were away at boarding school. Diana saw herself as part-sibling, part-mother figure to her brother after their mother left the family home when she was six and Earl Spencer, three.
The pair shared similarities their elder sisters didn’t, Diana believed, telling her biographer Andrew Morton that “[Charles] will always suffer because he’s like me.” In Swan Song, Earl Spencer writes they both suffered from Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria – “intense emotional pain in the face of rejection or criticism”; they, too, shared the same sense of humour, he has said. He called his sister “Duch” (short for ‘Duchess’, because of how she carried herself); her moniker for him was Carlos (a Spanish riff on his name, Charles).
Along with their closeness, there were periods of “coolness,” according to Morton, including when Diana asked to stay at the Garden House at Althorp in the aftermath of her marriage breakdown in 1992, and was turned down by her brother because of “the inevitable police and press interference” that would ensue. (He offered her another house on the estate instead.)
Terse words were also exchanged via letter about the “mental problems” she suffered while battling bulimia. Before she died, Earl Spencer was living in South Africa and seeing his youngest sister six or seven times a year. Her passing, he said, felt like “an amputation”.
Diana and Earl Spencer, then Viscount Althorp, were always close in childhood as the two youngest siblings (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty)As self-appointed custodian of her legacy, he promised to protect her sons. In his 1997 eulogy at Westminster Abbey, he famously pledged that Diana’s “blood family” would do all they could to help guide the boys. Earl Spencer said Diana left him as their guardian, although he acknowledges this carried no legal standing while their father was alive.
In the intervening decades, more of a distance opened up between Earl Spencer and his nephews. Even by 2002, when asked about his relationship with the princes, he said that “they may not be encouraged to stay in touch with their mother’s side of the family.” He added that he had spoken with their father just once during that time.
As adults, it’s clear that Harry has spent more time with his uncle. Harry’s decision to step back from royal duties, and his well-documented struggles with King Charles, have encouraged a closer relationship. In July, before the Sussexes moved back to Britain, Harry, Meghan and their two young children visited Althorp, posting pictures of the estate online.
Both Harry and Charles have felt compelled to go public with their own recollections of events within the Royal Family; indeed, Harry’s breaking of the royal omerta is likely to have been another factor in Charles’ decision to write about his sister. And, given Prince Harry was reportedly paid $20m (£15m) for Spare, there is no doubt that royal memoirs can be a lucrative business (Earl Spencer has written nine nonfiction books since 1998, four of them Sunday Times bestsellers).
Swan Song also follows the huge success of Earl Spencer’s 2024 book, A Very Private School – a highly personal account of his time at boarding school, where, he recounts, he was beaten with a cricket boot and thumped round the head, blood drying in his hair. The acclaim he received on publication may well have encouraged him to dig deeper this time, baring parts of his sister’s past that might otherwise have remained buried.
As to money being a motivator, although Earl Spencer’s personal fortune stands at an estimated £150 million, his outgoings are sizeable. In 2020, the energy bills alone at Althorp were over £130,000, which, adjusted for inflation and energy costs, would now be closer to £150,000. Then there are the three divorces to pay for, the first of which resulted in a £1.8m settlement to be paid by him, while he was ordered to pay legal costs, estimated at over £2m, in another court case related to his third divorce. He married his fourth wife, Cat Jarman, in 2026.
Swan Song is likely to be a bestseller; it is to be translated into 12 languages, and an audiobook read by its author will also be released. “When I finished the recording, I thought: ‘That is exactly what I wanted and needed to say — and [Diana] would, I reckon, have approved of every word,” he said of his work.
While he has taken comfort in what his sister would have made of his words, others appear less impressed. Royal correspondent Jennie Bond said that “I do not know what purpose it serves. It can only go to hurt, I think, William and Harry, who love their father and probably undoubtedly love their uncle as well. To see the family torn apart by this serves no purpose.”
In 2002, Earl Spencer admitted it was “time for me to put a line under being the man who made the speech at his sister’s funeral and to have my say about some of the misrepresentations that were the fallout from it”. Twenty-four years later, he has finally decided to do so.
Given the fracas it has already caused pre-publication, the only remaining hope is that it does make good on what he promised was his original aim: showing the world that his sister was “a one-off, dynamic character, full of love, charisma and self-doubt, who gave life a hell of a go, and left the world a far better place, despite exiting the stage while still so young”.
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