The King is at war with Princess Diana‘s brother over Earl Spencer‘s bombshell claim Charles declared ‘rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough’.
Buckingham Palace issued an extraordinary statement in response to the explosive new book by Earl Spencer about a devastating row he had with then Prince Charles in the days after Diana died.
In a riposte that sent shockwaves through Royal circles, King Charles’s aides acidly suggested that grief can ‘cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory’ – in what was seen as a barbed echo of the late Queen’s famous ‘recollections may vary’ retort to Harry and Meghan.
The unprecedented slap-down by Buckingham Palace on Earl Spencer came after the Daily Mail revealed the first details from his searing new memoir – the first extract of which will be published on dailymail.com at 5pm today.
The Daily Mail’s sensational revelations are splitting society with rival camps backing either side.
Last night one senior establishment figure – a household name – told friends Earl Spencer ‘should be horse-whipped across town.’
The Palace’s remarkable statement disputing Earl Spencer’s claims also reveals the depth of the King’s anger, according to experts.
Former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said Charles was ‘clearly absolutely incandescent’.
Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams described Earl Spencer’s allegations as ‘destructive’ and driven by ‘hatred’, adding that he had ‘deliberately and callously’ released them during a ‘very difficult period’ for the Royal Family.
He said: ‘There is no question that the King, and rightly so, is absolutely furious.’
In Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the earl tells how in 1997 he clashed with Charles over the idea of Princes William and Harry walking in their mother’s funeral procession.
Spencer said he insisted Diana would not have wanted William, then aged 15, and Harry, 12, to endure such a public ordeal, telling the then heir to the throne: ‘That’s not going to happen.’
But he claims furious Charles ‘went nuts’ and responded with a ‘stream of anger’ including telling him, just days after the death of the princess that shook the world, that ‘rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough’.
The first full part of the serialisation of the memoir will be published on dailymail.com at 5pm UK time today.
The King is at war with Princess Diana’s brother over Earl Spencer’s bombshell claim Charles declared ‘rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough’
The King has been outraged by Earl Spencer’s claims, experts have said
Charles and Diana on their last official trip together to South Korea in November 1992
Last night Buckingham Palace took the highly unusual step of issuing a withering put-down to the incendiary claims about the King.
A Royal 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 judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.’
The caustic response is being compared to the late Queen Elizabeth’s celebrated remark that ‘recollections may vary’ about Harry and Meghan’s outlandish claims in their Oprah Winfrey interview attacking the Royal Family.
A source close to the King said the comment he is alleged to have made about Diana was ‘just not in his nature and it certainly wasn’t in his nature at that time, when he was a man absolutely grief-stricken’.
They pointed out that the then Prince of Wales was the person who overruled Royal protocol to insist that Diana should have a full state-style ceremonial funeral.
The rebuke was issued by the palace shortly after the Mail revealed claims made by Earl Spencer in his book.
Earl Spencer, 62, says he has written the memoir to correct ‘untruths’ told about his older sister.
The astonishing account of the King’s alleged outburst, almost 30 years ago, is described by the earl over several pages.
He says that one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides had told him, in the days before the funeral, that William and Harry would take part in the procession, which is when he responded that this was not what his sister would have wanted and was ‘not going to happen’.
Minutes later, he recalls, he received a phone call from Prince Charles who questioned the Spencer family’s sense of duty and insisted that, 18 years earlier, he had walked in the funeral procession of Lord Mountbatten, his great-uncle.
The memoir describes how Charles ‘went nuts’ after the earl pointed out that the prince had been 30 at the time of Lord Mountbatten’s funeral in 1979.
In one of the book’s most extraordinary passages, Earl Spencer writes: ‘Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped.
‘I assumed the pause signalled an effort to bring himself under control, but then he unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death. ‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough!’.’
The Earl, Diana and Charles at the Earl’s 21st birthday party in 1985 at the Mirabelle restaurant in London
From left, the Earl, Prince William, Prince Harry and Charles at Diana’s funeral on September 6, 1997
Earl Spencer said that he was ‘so stunned’ by the alleged remarks that he took a few seconds to reply.
‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ I said flatly, before hanging up,’ he writes.
Diana’s death on August 31, 1997, aged 36, sparked a global outpouring of grief.
On September 6, 1997, six days after Diana’s death, Earl Spencer delivered a defiant eulogy at her funeral that was later named one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.
His raw oration in Westminster Abbey was delivered after he walked alongside William and Harry, as well as Prince Charles and Prince Philip, behind Diana’s coffin in a funeral procession through central London.
The new book includes a string of further extraordinary claims about Diana’s failed marriage to Charles and the tumultuous aftermath of her tragic death in a car crash in Paris.
The revelations are set to plunge Buckingham Palace into a fresh storm just weeks after the return of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their children to the UK from California.
The exclusive serialisation will begin on dailymail.com later today.
Described as ‘historic’, Swan Song is due to be published worldwide next Tuesday – in the UK by Penguin Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House.
Police in the Netherlands are still investigating what publishing sources say is the ‘extremely suspicious’ overnight theft of four copies of the book from the back of a parked lorry earlier this week.
Extracted from Swan Song: Diana, My Sister by Charles Spencer, to be published by Michael Joseph on September 22, £28. © Charles Spencer 2026. To order a copy for £23.80 (offer valid to 10/10/26; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
