Earl Spencer has said he has been “gaslit” by the King after Buckingham Palace pushed back against claims in his new memoir that Charles said “we’ll forget her soon enough” after Princess Diana died.
The earl made a series of claims about the King in the memoir chronicling the life of his sister Diana, prompting an unusual response from Buckingham Palace, which said “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason”.
Earl's Response to Palace Statement
Spencer accused the King of gaslighting him and called the response a “rather poor imitation of the ‘recollections may vary’ quote” – the late Queen’s response to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s allegations in their Oprah Winfrey interview, The Mail on Sunday reports.
He said: “It is not every day you wake up to find you’ve been gaslit by the King. It was astonishingly provocative and below the belt because it was essentially trying to say I’d lied without the King being able to deny what I’d said. I also thought it was a rather poor imitation of the ‘recollections may vary’ quote, which was a much more elegant way of putting things, but in these circumstances entirely out of place.”
He added: “Diana would be cheering from the rafters at this book”.
Palace Statement and BBC Interview
A Buckingham Palace spokesman released a statement in response to claims made in the memoir on Wednesday: “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.”
The earl insisted he is “telling the truth” and described the King’s comments about his sister as “monstrous” in an extract of a BBC interview released on Friday.
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’.”
Memoir Details and Funeral Memories
Asked whether he has “evidence” of the King’s comments, the earl told the BBC: “I told friends and family straight away, close friends and family, about what had been said, because it was so monstrous.” He added: “I’m telling the truth.”
The then-prince is said to have made the comments about his ex-wife in a disagreement with Spencer over whether Prince William and Prince Harry should follow Diana’s funeral cortege.
Earl Spencer told of his memories of the funeral in the latest extract of the book serialised in the Daily Mail, sharing his concern for Harry after he observed a “lack of obvious care” for the then 12-year-old prince. Diana's brother walked behind her coffin during the funeral procession on September 6, 1997, alongside Harry, William, then 15, Charles, and the late Duke of Edinburgh.
Recounting the train journey from London to Althorp after the funeral, Earl Spencer said: “My chief memory of that train journey is of being concerned at the lack of obvious care for Harry, as he decompressed from the ghastliness of the morning. He needed Diana’s hugs, of course, and they would forever be denied him. But instead of calm and nurture, he was allowed to spin out of control.”
Earl Spencer said he could not get over how “tiny, and slight, and bereft” his nephew looked, adding he remembers thinking Harry was “too small to be doing this”. The Star has contacted the palace for comment.
