Earl Spencer has apologised to Piers Morgan after the broadcaster challenged claims in his new book about his sister, Diana, Princess of Wales. Morgan says he still plans to take legal action despite the apology.
Dispute over funeral account
In Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Spencer writes about being "flabbergasted" to learn that newspaper editors had been invited to her funeral. He says he told the Queen's senior private secretary, Robert Fellowes, that they were not welcome as that had, in his opinion, "killed her".
Spencer writes that he personally called tabloid editors to uninvite them from the ceremony. "The only one who sounded surly, as opposed to merely confused or embarrassed, was Piers Morgan of the Mirror, who snarled with annoyance before he hung up," Spencer writes.
The earl also claims that he assumed Morgan must be feeling "guilt" over the Sunday Mirror publishing photographs of Diana wearing a leotard in a gym four years earlier.
Morgan's response
Morgan reacted to the claims on his Piers Morgan Uncensored show on Monday night. "Well, this is all pretty extraordinary stuff, isn't it? And very damning, particularly about me. I come across in the most despicable manner imaginable. There's just one problem. It's all bullshit and very, very easy bullshit for me to prove it," he said.
Morgan said the Sunday Mirror published the pictures of Diana in November 1993 - two years before he started working at the Daily Mirror. He added: "My question though is this, if Earl Spencer can be so incredibly, defamatorially wrong about such basic facts involving me, well, why should we believe anything else he puts in this book?"
Morgan wrote on X: "I am taking legal action against Earl Spencer and his publishers over demonstrable lies he has written about me in his new book, which call into question his credibility as a supposed 'historian'."
Apology and continued legal action
A statement on behalf of Charles Spencer read: "Earl Spencer's account of his conversation with Piers Morgan is accurate. Mr Morgan was surly and annoyed when Earl Spencer called personally to tell him that he was not welcome at his sister's funeral.
"The book then records Earl Spencer's assumption that Mr Morgan's response was because he was editor of the Daily Mirror when the Mirror Group had published highly intrusive photographs of Princess Diana at the gym. The photographs were published by the Sunday Mirror on November 7 1993. Mr Morgan has pointed out that he did not join the Daily Mirror until October 1995. As an historian, accuracy is important to Earl Spencer. He therefore wishes to clarify that his assumption was incorrect. Earl Spencer apologises to Mr Morgan for this error."
But in a message on X on Tuesday afternoon, Morgan said he still planned to take legal action against the earl. He wrote: "Earl Spencer has apologised to me for his defamatory lies published in his new book, Swan Song, published today. But I am pursuing legal action against him and his publisher Penguin to have the lies removed, and damages paid to the King's Trust."
Claims about King Charles
The earl's book contains a string of explosive claims about King Charles. Spencer said he felt it was his "duty… as an eyewitness to history" to write a new memoir chronicling the life of his sister.
The earl accused the King of gaslighting him after Buckingham Palace pushed back against claims that Charles said "we'll forget her soon enough" after Diana died in 1997. In response, a Buckingham Palace spokesman 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 colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss."
Speaking about an alleged row over Diana's funeral arrangements involving her sons, the earl said: "(The King) went ballistic, would be the right term, and started really going for my family as a whole, about their sense of duty, not being adequate enough, and ranted for a while, I have no idea how long, but it was a significant period, and I just listened. And then he stopped, and I thought, 'Oh now he's going to pull himself together and say something more appropriate'. And then he said, 'We'll forget her soon enough'."
Charles is said to have made the comments about his ex-wife in a row with the earl over whether the then Prince William and Prince Harry should follow Diana's funeral cortege. On what William and Harry might think of the comments being brought up, the earl added the words "will not be a surprise", the BBC reported.
In another extract from the interview with the BBC, the earl said the relationship between the press and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex "echoes" the way the media treated his sister.
