The palace is said to be ready for more bombshell revelations, however, sources believe that Earl Spencer’s version of the aftermath of Diana’s death are the most damaging revelations in the book for the royal family.
On Thursday, the Daily Mail published its first serialization of the book, which included further damaging claims that Charles sounded “like a lottery winner” the night she died. In his memoir, Spencer writes: “He sounded giddily elated, like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time.”
According to Spencer, he and Prince Charles clashed over whether Prince William and Prince Harry should walk behind their mother’s coffin, something Spencer found “barbaric.”
Charles “went nuts,” Spencer writes, and shouted, “That’s the problem with your family. They’ve got no bloody sense of duty.”
Charles then paused before 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,” Spencer writes. “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough!” Spencer says Charles told him, before he replied, “I can’t believe you just said that,” and hung up. Buckingham Palace said it would not be commenting further on the matter.
Insiders say that King Charles is so incensed by Spencer’s claims that he has given some of his most trusted aides the greenlight to speak on his behalf.
Julian Payne, who ran Charles’s communications from 2016 to 2021 and worked with the prince during the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death in 2017, told BBC Radio 4’s Today that he did not recognize “the way the king is being characterized in those remarks.”
“Naturally, we ended up discussing her several times during that summer because the media interest was so intense,” Payne said. “What I remember was he was very clear that there was never to be any criticism, never to be any pushback on the narratives that were usually highly critical of him. He was absolutely emphatic that we were to respect her memory and not undermine it in any way. When he was telling us there was never to be any criticism or pushback, that wasn’t about him. That was absolutely about the late princess and her memory.”
