Earl Spencer, brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, has claimed King Charles “sounded giddily elated” when he called him after her death in 1997.
In a controversial book about Diana, he alleged the then-Prince Charles sounded like a “lottery winner” after the news.
Buckingham Palace strongly pushed back on Wednesday against the book’s credibility, after an initial extract claimed that Charles had said of Diana: “We’ll forget her soon enough.”
A spokesperson 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.”
The latest claims are once again highly personal in their attacks on King Charles and the royals, interpreting their motives in a very harsh light.
The evidence is Earl Spencer’s own recollection of conversations about that emotional time around his sister’s death, almost 30 years ago.
What remains to be seen is how the public might respond to the allegations, whether they might support this book as a new and different Spencer perspective, or whether they might feel it is inappropriate to share such private disputes.
Representatives of Prince Harry have said they do not want to comment on the book and Buckingham Palace has pointed back to its response from Wednesday, when it rejected the account of Prince Charles in the wake of Diana’s death in Paris.
In excerpts from Earl Spencer’s memoir published in the Daily Mail, he recounts being alerted to the car crash on 31 August, 1997, by a phone call from his sister Jane in the middle of the night at his home in Cape Town, South Africa.
During the calls that followed, which confirmed the death, the then-Prince Charles telephoned him, he writes.
The book alleges: “Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated – like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time.”
According to Earl Spencer, Charles informed him he had told Princes William and Harry of their mother’s death first thing that morning, in their bedrooms at Balmoral.
The royal couple had divorced in August 1996.
Swan Song: Diana, My Sister is due to be published next week. BBC News has not seen the book in full.
In the memoir, Earl Spencer writes of his sister’s troubled marriage – claiming a friend of Diana’s had told him that on the eve of their wedding in July 1981, Prince Charles had told her he was “very happy to marry her, but… not actually in love with her”.
Things became “very difficult indeed” in the marriage early on, Earl Spencer writes, adding that he is “sure that both spouses despaired of the other at times”.
He now believes his sister had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and as part of her condition suffered from Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria – describing the latter as an “intense emotional pain in the face of others’ rejection or criticism”.
In her later years, he writes, Princess Diana considered taking her own life on more than one occasion but love for her sons “stopped her from going further”.
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