Copies of Earl Spencer‘s sensational book about Princess Diana have been stolen from a lorry – just before its exclusive serialisation in the Daily Mail.
The memoir – Swan Song: Diana, My Sister – includes revelations about Diana’s deeply unhappy marriage with the then Prince of Wales.
It also describes the crisis that engulfed the Royal Family after her death in a car crash almost 30 years ago.
Last night a publishing insider said: ‘Earl Spencer has kept his silence for nearly 30 years and what he has to say about the King’s reaction when Diana died is utterly devastating.’
But, in an astonishing development, the Mail can reveal that a truck packed with thousands of copies of the book was broken into after it was parked overnight in a lay-by in the Netherlands earlier this week.
Just four copies, which had been wrapped in black plastic to hide their contents, were stolen in what publishing sources believe could have been an audacious plot to steal the highly-anticipated book of the year before it hits the shelves.
Dutch police are investigating the mysterious break-in, with theories among industry insiders about who was responsible ranging from a gang of opportunistic thieves to a misguided, but highly informed, supporter of the Royal Family.
‘It’s extremely suspicious,’ one publishing source said last night. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened before. This is probably the biggest book of the year and the security surrounding it has been incredibly tight.
Earl Spencer’s bombshell new book about his sister Princess Diana has been stolen (he is pictured in March)
The front cover of the memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, is pictured
The book includes revelations about Diana’s deeply unhappy marriage with the then Prince of Wales (Charles and Diana are pictured in 1985)
‘Every possible precaution has been taken to prevent it from being leaked ahead of its serialisation. Therefore this unprecedented incident is being taken extremely seriously.’ Swan Song is due to be published worldwide next Tuesday, by Penguin Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House, with the Mail publishing an exclusive serialisation before the memoir is available in bookshops.
Described as an ‘historic’ and ‘extraordinarily moving’ the memoir is a deeply personal account of Earl Spencer’s relationship with his older sibling and of her failed marriage. It also provides unprecedented insight into the seismic week
following Diana’s death in August 1997, during which the House of Windsor was engulfed by a global wave of public grief and anger.
Buckingham Palace is understood to be braced for a string of shocking revelations that threaten to reopen the wounds of the former Prince and Princess of Wales’s highly acrimonious split and eventual divorce. Publication plans have, however, been thrown into chaos by the heist. The Mail understands that a lorry left a printing plant in Central Europe on Monday on its way to a warehouse in the Netherlands before copies were distributed to Dutch bookshops.
At some point that evening the driver parked in a lay-by deep in the Dutch countryside to sleep. At around 8am he found the lorry had been broken into but, mysteriously, only a handful of wrapped copies of Swan Song were missing.
Shocked Penguin bosses in London were only told about the break-in at 3.30pm yesterday. It would not be the first time that a major book has been stolen just before publication. In 2003, a lorry with more than 7,000 of copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth in the fantasy series, was stolen from a warehouse on Merseyside.
Ahead of the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death, Earl Spencer has vowed that his book, which will be published around the world and translated into 12 languages, will correct ‘untruths’ that have been told about his sister.
The earl, 62, delivered a raw and defiant eulogy during Diana’s funeral at Westminster Abbey, which was broadcast to a worldwide audience of 2.5billion.
