The man behind a tell-all memoir on the life and death of Diana says his intent is not to wage a war of words with King Charles, and that he hopes his sister’s story is a cautionary tale for how people treat her youngest son. Earl Charles Spencer joined CTV Your Morning to speak about his memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which chronicles the upbringing, life and death of his sister Diana, former Princess of Wales. “This is not a hatchet job trying to cause problems for the Royal Family,” Spencer said in an interview airing Friday. Described previously by Spencer as a way to “tell the truth about Diana from her brother’s perspective,” the memoir was released earlier this month. It includes much-talked-about allegations including that the then-Prince Charles sounded “like a lottery winner” and was “giddily elated” following the death of his ex-wife. Spencer’s criticism, outlined in excepts published ahead of the book’s official launch last week, prompted the now-King to take the rare step of responding publicly. A representative of Buckingham Palace said King Charles III was “mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory” even years after a loss. Spencer told the Telegraph that the response was an attempt at “gaslighting” by implying memory issues, and called it “very aggressive.” He told the U.K. publication that readers will notice the book is meant as a tribute to Diana and that the parts about others are “really incidental to that.” He says the King has not denied any claims. When asked about it by CTV, he said he thought some of the criticism that his book was unfair and malicious was “misplaced… I don’t really think about the Royal Family. This book is about Diana and how fabulous she was.” Concerns for safety of Prince Harry’s family Spencer, who once pledged in Diana’s eulogy to do what he could to ensure her sons “are not simply immersed by duty and tradition, but can sing openly as you planned,” spoke about similarities between Diana’s life and Prince Harry’s. He said what he meant was that he wanted to be respectful of Harry’s and William’s royal heritage, but also to make sure they weren’t “drowned by the really grim bits” of royal traditions. “That’s one of the points that I really wanted to make with this book: yeah, Diana was this princess and she happened to be beautiful and connected with people, but she was also a human being and her sons are human beings, and I know we know that logically, but it’s easy in this royal media coverage to forget this,” he told CTV Your Morning host Anne-Marie Mediwake. Media coverage is among the themes in his memoir as he recounts the challenges Diana faced as a public figure. He said Diana was “often reduced to tears of despair,” and that those who purchased the tabloids likely didn’t realize the “vicious” unkindness behind the stories they devoured. With Harry and Meghan’s recent move back to the U.K., Spencer said he worries about the family’s safety. “I saw it very much up close with Diana getting slaughtered by the worst parts of the tabloid press in the last years of her life, and I don’t like what they do to Harry and Meghan any more, actually. I think it’s disgusting and wrong,” he said. “I’m not a security expert, but as an uncle who’s seen his sister be unprotected and die being pursued by paparazzi, that sets the alarms going, you know?” Earlier this week, a spokesperson for Prince Harry said the couple’s 5- and 7-year-old children had been stalked by “certain European paparazzi” at school, describing it as an “extraordinarily reckless” invasion of privacy. Spencer said witnessing this first-hand when Harry’s family stayed with him in July makes him worry. He was asked about Harry’s allegations that some negative stories about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were leaked or planted by the Royal household to protect other senior royals. Harry made the claim in his memoir, Spare, and in a Netflix documentary series about him and his wife. Buckingham Palace did not officially comment on the series or the book, but U.K. media reported “royal insiders” at the time as rebutting the claims. Spencer said he believed it to be true, adding, “There is another side to the Royal Family. They are very powerful. They have huge contacts and control of various people in the media in the U.K. And they’re quite used to throwing their weight about, especially if they see someone outside the fold behaving in a way they don’t like … They did it with Diana.” He wondered if Harry and Meghan’s move is good for the Palace and for the family. When asked how he thought Diana might feel about reports that Harry and William don’t speak to each other, he declined to speculate, saying, “I deal in facts and I don’t deal in speculation.” But, he added, “I would say that any mother would not want any fracture between her children.” Spencer has said he didn’t have anyone in the family involved in the making of the book. The brothers were asked about the book in public appearances last week but declined to comment, according to reports. Making Diana ‘a complete human’ Spencer said he hopes his memoir reaches two audiences. For those who knew of Diana when she lived, he said, “I try and reconnect them with her and then broaden out the picture to make her a complete human.” For younger readers who only know his sister as “probably a sad and beautiful face from history books … I want to bring her alive for them.” Nearly three decades after her death in 1997, there is still interest in her life and death around the world. “She’s still so fascinating to people, and that’s a huge testimony to her unique character.” Diana, behind the public mask Asked about his mental picture of Diana, Spencer said, “It’s one of her laughing. She had the most uncontrollable laughter.” The public caught glimpses of Diana’s sense of humour. Spencer remembered a time when she went down a waterslide with Princes William and Henry, and the family’s security got soaked. “And that is the Diana I remember. Collapsed with laughter.” The siblings connected over their “ridiculous humour,” he said, and for decades after his death it was how he held on to her memory. He said she quick-witted and clever, something the public may not have known, and praised her empathy and emotional intelligence as part of what made her so captivating to others. From wedding highs to divorce lows Spencer, an historian and former TV journalist, wrote of Diana’s relationship highs and lows. At one point, he recalls a moment when he and his sister were talking about their marriages and Diana told her Charles was “in love with his valet.” The valet is unnamed, and the Palace has declined to comment on specific excerpts. Spencer said he included this difficult and emotional moment in the 1990s in contrast with the jubilant version of his sister he describes post-engagement, “scrunched up on a sofa” and excitedly sharing the news with her friends in the early ‘80s. “This (the valet conversation) was the sort of sad end of that hope and dream of hers,” he said. He recalled that during that conversation, he’d warned Diana of the public’s reaction to her incoming divorce, which was an end to the “fairy tale” they’d bought in to. Spencer was criticized for including this moment, he said, noting some said it was an attempt to discredit the King. To his critics, he said: “At no point am I looking to discredit anyone. This book is a celebration of Diana as this absolutely, incredibly wonderful person. The only things I put in here that are about other people are directly relevant to her story.” In a column for CTVNews.ca about the memoir, royal commentator Afua Hagan notes that even Spencer admitted he found the valet confession hard to believe. “There’s zero independent corroboration here, and I think it would be careless to treat this as any kind of evidence about Charles’s private life. All we can honestly say is that Spencer says Diana told him that. Nothing more, nothing less,” Hagan wrote. A fight with the Royal Family King Charles is the focus of a few points in the book, including a section that outlines an alleged disagreement between Spencer and Charles about Princes William and Harry. Diana and King Charles’ sons were 15 and 12 when their mother died, and their uncle says he had a fight with the Royal Family over the boys’ role in the funeral. Spencer said of the fight outlined in-depth in his memoir that he believed the boys were not given the choice, saying he was told “it had been decided” that they would walk behind their mother’s coffin. Spencer said he believes this was a move to justify why Charles, Diana’s ex-husband, was part of the funeral. “One of the things I cover in the book, because it’s just so interesting to me and people hadn’t picked up on it, was what on Earth was he doing as part of the ceremony?” The King’s former brother-in-law said he later read about alleged behind-the-scenes conversations involving concerns from Buckingham Palace that Charles might be shouted at or insulted by the crowd if he was in the funeral alone, so the boys were brought in as a buffer. When asked whether Charles might have just wanted to honour the mother of his sons, Spencer conceded he didn’t know. This and other conversations highlighted the control the Palace had over the procession, according to Spencer. He said Diana had left him as guardian of the boys, and that while that didn’t give him legal rights, “I thought it meant she wanted me to speak up for them.” Spencer said he told the now-King that he believed it’s not what Diana would want for her sons, but that Charles “got quite agitated quite quickly.” According to Spencer, Charles told him that he’d had to play a similar role in the funeral of his great-uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, who died when Charles was 30. Spencer alleges Charles began “ranting,” gathered himself together, then told Spencer, “We’ll forget her soon enough.” Calling it “astonishing,” Spencer said he hung up on the then-Prince. He said those five words left him in disbelief, and stand out in his memory to this day. When asked whether Charles might have meant the Princes would forget the moment, or the emotional impact of the funeral, Spencer said no, he’s sure that Charles meant Diana herself. ‘Kilometres of grief’ That walk between Kensington Palace and Westminster Abbey was challenging, Spencer said. It is estimated that more than one million people lined the streets, and Spencer describes it as over half an hour of “pulsing grief towards Diana and her sons.” The grief was so real that people were wailing, he said. “I get the chills actually, even thinking about it.” Diana’s family had been guided by Prince Philip to look ahead, “but my goodness, you know, to walk through I don’t know how many kilometres of grief without being able to look to either side and identify it, that was truly traumatizing,” Spencer said. He said he’d tried to watch the funeral, which was attended by 2,000 guests and watched on TV by approximately 2 to 2.5 billion people, but ultimately could not. “It was too much.” Spencer, who was 33 at the time, delivered the eulogy at the funeral, and described himself in that moment as “emotional, and I was trying to hold it together.” He said he took the role seriously, feeling like he was speaking for Diana. His speech was only read in advance by his then-girlfriend, but Spencer claims the family tried to listen in during a rehearsal to “the one unscripted part of the service.” “So then I just played the upper-class idiot, which is a very easy role for me, and I said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I left the speech behind.’” He said it was a lie that worked. “In fact, I had two copies, because I’m a bit of a nerd like that.” Spencer said he wanted to keep his eulogy to himself, save from possible interference, because it was personal. Spencer spoke to Diana’s compassion and selflessness, her experience with suffering and the empathy it induced. He also spoke of a need to protect her young sons from the media, a poignant message given how Diana died. Investigations determined an intoxicated driver crashed the vehicle she was in while trying to evade paparazzi. The speech was met by a roar from the crowd, and applause so loud it carried from outside into the church, Spencer said. ‘I wonder if I made the right decision’ Diana’s title of Her Royal Highness (HRH) had been removed following her and Charles’ divorce in 1996, a decision that left his sister feeling betrayed, according to Spencer. Queen Elizabeth II offered to reinstate the status on the day of Diana’s funeral, according to Spencer, who says he rejected the offer. “I don’t know if I regret it, I wonder if I made the right decision,” he said, decades later. He told Your Morning he’d told the Queen’s private secretary, “That’s kind but there’s no point now, she’s dead.” Since that time, he said, he’s wondered whether he made the right call. “That would have been a triumph of Diana’s in a way, and also maybe it would have meant a lot to her sons, I don’t know. At the time, it felt like a very thoughtful gesture by a very thoughtful monarch, but I couldn’t see what use it was to Diana.” With files from CTVNews.ca royal commentator Afua Hagan, The Associated Press and Reuters
