BBC News
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 credibility of the book, after an initial extract claimed 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 to be inappropriate to be sharing 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, external, 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.
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