Buckingham Palace has issued a rare statement after Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer and younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, wrote in a new book that King Charles III — then the Prince of Wales — told him days after Diana’s death in 1997 that the world’s grief for her would not last. The passage appeared in newspaper extracts published September 16, 2026, ahead of the book’s release on September 22.
The palace neither confirmed nor denied Spencer’s recollection. A palace spokesperson said: “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 judgment and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss.”
Spencer describes a private telephone conversation almost 30 years ago. There is no recording of it and no second witness to it, and the account rests entirely on the earl’s memory of what was said. The palace’s reply stopped short of addressing the claim itself while pointing to the effect that grief can have on recollection.
A Dispute Over the Procession
The exchange, as Spencer tells it, grew out of the arrangements for Diana’s funeral — specifically whether her sons, Prince William, then 15, and Prince Harry, then 12, would walk behind her coffin. Spencer, 62, writes that he learned of the plan from a senior aide to Queen Elizabeth II shortly before the funeral and objected immediately. “That’s not going to happen,” he says he told the aide.
Minutes later, Spencer writes, the then Prince of Wales telephoned him and insisted the boys should walk. Spencer says he argued that Diana would never have wanted her young sons put through such a public spectacle. He has objected publicly for years, telling BBC Radio 4 in 2017 that he had been “a passionate advocate” against the plan and that “I was lied to and told that they wanted to do it, which of course they didn’t.” According to his account, Charles pointed to his own experience walking in Lord Mountbatten’s funeral procession 18 years earlier. When Spencer noted that Charles had been 30 years old at that ceremony, he writes, the prince “went nuts.”
What Spencer Writes Was Said
Recalling the final moments of the call, Spencer writes: “Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped. I assumed the pause signaled an effort to bring himself under control, but then he unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death.”
He continues: “‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough!'”
Spencer writes that he was so stunned it took him a few seconds to respond. “‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ I said flatly, before hanging up,” he writes.
Spencer’s best-known public words about the royal family until now were the eulogy he delivered at Westminster Abbey in September 1997. He walked in the funeral procession himself, alongside William, Harry, the then Prince of Wales and Prince Philip.
Why Spencer Wrote the Book
“Swan Song: Diana, My Sister” is due out worldwide on September 22, published in the UK by Penguin Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House. When the book was announced on August 18, Spencer said requests for interviews about his sister had poured in once again as the 30th anniversary of her death approaches next year, and that he had decided to set down his own thoughts and memories instead of continuing to read other people’s opinions, many of which, he said, rest on untruths that have hardened into accepted fact.
Spencer said at the time that he wanted “to speak on Diana’s behalf and do so in an openly positive way,” and that he hoped readers too young to remember her in her heyday would come away understanding who she really 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.”
In his 1997 eulogy, Spencer paid tribute to his sister’s compassion, sense of duty, style and beauty, and told mourners the world had seen in her a model of selfless humanity. He also used the address to criticize press intrusion, saying no one in the modern age had been hunted more relentlessly, and pledged to protect William and Harry from a similar fate.
Diana died in 1997 at the age of 36; she would have turned 65 on July 1 this year. Interest in the book has already produced one unusual episode: four copies of the Dutch-language edition were reportedly taken from a truck carrying them from the Dutch publisher’s printers to its warehouse in the Netherlands.
For now, the palace’s brief statement is the only word from the king’s household on Spencer’s account, and it reads as a reflection on grief rather than a rebuttal. The book, which Spencer says he wrote to counter untruths about his older sister, reaches readers on September 22.