london —
Charles Spencer, the late Princess Diana’s brother, claimed in his forthcoming memoir that King Charles told him in the days after her death: “We will soon forget her,” according to excerpts published in the Daily Mail on Wednesday.
Ms Spencer claimed she had an “angry outburst” over the phone after Prince Charles, then the Prince of Wales, claimed that his sister would not have wanted to take part in Prince William and Prince Harry’s funeral procession.
The late Princess of Wales died in August 1997 after suffering internal injuries in a high-speed car accident in Paris. Her sons, then 15 and 12, joined the funeral procession a few days later.
Buckingham Palace objected to Spencer’s claims. In an unusually strong statement, the palace suggested that Mr Spencer’s judgment had been clouded by grief, in an unusually strong statement attributing the reaction directly to the monarch.
“While we do not comment on books as a general rule, Her Majesty is mindful that even many years after such a loss, the pain of a brother’s grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory in ways that others do not recognize,” a palace spokesperson said in a statement.
CNN has not seen the book, Swan Song, prior to its publication, but a Penguin Random House spokesperson confirmed to CNN that the text quoted from the book is accurate. The Daily Mail received exclusive rights to publish excerpts as part of a series starting Thursday, the paper said, calling the book “explosive”.
Mr Spencer has written a book about the tense phone call, due to be published next week, which is expected to include harsh criticism of the royal family.
“Prince Charles continued to vent his anger without me interfering, and then I stopped,” Spencer wrote. “I took that silence as a signal to try to control himself, but then he unleashed on the phone the pent-up disdain I had always felt for Princess Diana and the fear that the world was devastated by her death.”
“‘Don’t worry,’ he hissed. ‘You’ll forget about her in no time!'” Spencer wrote. “‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ I said flatly and hung up.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
