Charles Spencer’s new memoir Swan Song is set to be explosive for the royal family.
Princess Diana Archive//Getty Images
Princess Diana’s brother’s new memoir, Swan Song, comes out next week, but new revelations published in the Daily Mail today are already shocking. Namely, days after Princess Diana’s death, then-Prince Charles reportedly told Charles Spencer “rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”
The two men had a fight over the decision to have Princes William and Harry, then 15 and 12, walk in the funeral procession for their mother. The Mail notes, “The Earl says he insisted to the then Prince of Wales that Diana would not have wanted her young sons to endure such a public ordeal. It is claimed Charles then questioned the Spencer family’s sense of duty before saying his ex-wife, whose death sparked a global outpouring of grief, would soon be forgotten.”
“Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped,” Spencer reportedly writes in Swan Song. ‘I assumed the pause signalled 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. ‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough!’”
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said in reaction, “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 colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.”
