Princess Diana's former butler has rejected Earl Spencer's claim that King Charles sounded "giddily elated" following his ex-wife's death. Paul Burrell, who worked closely with Diana, said he saw the then Prince Charles in Paris after the Princess of Wales died in August 1997 and recalled a very different scene.
Burrell disputes Spencer's account
Earl Spencer claims in his new memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, that Charles sounded "giddily elated - like a lottery winner" during a phone call after Diana's fatal car crash. But speaking to Piers Morgan Uncensored, Burrell said: "I think this book is more about Earl Spencer than it is about his sister Diana. I read this rather spiteful, revengeful, aristocratic point of view that he's penned, and quite frankly I didn't recognise some of it."
Burrell added: "He talks about the king being giddy with excitement when Diana died. Well, Piers, I was in Paris. I saw the king on the day he came to Paris. He walked down the corridor towards me. He was a broken man. He was devastated. And he went into the room with Diana's sisters for ten minutes and came out."
'A broken man' in Paris
"Clearly, he'd been crying. His eyes were bloodshot. And honestly, I've never seen him like that, ever. He was pale and he was scared," Burrell said. His impression was that Charles was there both as the father of Princes William and Harry and to pay his respects to Diana.
He added: "I thought to myself, you're here for the boys, because you are the boys' father and this is their mother. And he was paying respect to Princess Diana. So I don't recognize what Earl Spencer says about Prince Charles. It isn't his language."
Tensions between families
Asked whether he believed Spencer was an accurate historian of his sister's life, Burrell replied: "No, I don't. This is his narrative, very much like Harry and his truth. This is Spencer's truth, but the truth is a much bigger picture than Spencer has painted."
Burrell then claimed there had long been tensions between the Spencers and the Royal Family. He said: "He's vengeful. He is calling the king to account because there's always been a war between the Spencers and the Waleses. That started in Westminster Abbey when he stood up and gave his eulogy."
"I sat there facing our queen in Westminster Abbey, in front of Diana's coffin, when he said those words. Of course, the royal family did not applaud when the nation applauded... I remember watching our queen being berated in Westminster Abbey, in a house of God, by her godson, for doing something terribly wrong. And I could not accept that. He should have had more respect for our queen."
Earl Spencer has stood by the central claims in his memoir. Speaking on ITV's Lorraine, Spencer insisted the book was about Diana rather than an attack on the Royal Family. He said: "This is about Diana. It was impossible to give the full story of Diana's life without putting in context certain things."
