BBC News
Earl Spencer will ultimately be remembered by the passionate eulogy he delivered at Diana’s funeral in Westminster Abbey.
He reveals how he had pretended to have lost his copy of his speech at the rehearsal, so no one could hear it in advance and try to tone down his stinging criticism of the press and the royals.
After the hounding of Diana by the paparazzi, he says he personally rang tabloid newspaper editors to disinvite them from the Abbey funeral, after their invitations had already been sent out.
She was buried on an island in the Spencers’ Althorp estate, rather than a graveyard – and the book describes how a bishop was brought to consecrate the ground to make it possible.
Much of the interest in this book has been driven by its settling of old scores with the Royal Family. It can feel like medieval barons jousting.
References to King Charles are almost all negative, including the suggestion that he was jealous of his wife’s public popularity.
The book reports a conversation in which it’s claimed the then-Prince Charles complained: “I mean, I’m 43,’ he said, ‘and I employ fifty people’ – he was flushed in the face now – ‘but my parents insist on treating me like – like a child!'”
The King is portrayed as resentful, with a “senior courtier” reporting an alleged comment by the late Queen: “He even resented it when I taught him the alphabet.”
There’s a bizarre account of discussions in the Royal Family about whether the then-Prince Charles’s ears should have been pinned back.
And there’s the allegation that Diana had said the King was in love with his valet, which the author himself says seemed improbable.
What comes across is how close the Spencers were to the royals – but without being friends.
Charles and Diana Spencer went to the same children’s parties as the young royals.
The royals are depicted as the type of children who come round, break your toys and then disappear, in what might be an extended metaphor for how he saw Diana’s story.
There’s also a story about a teenage Prince Andrew smirking in a church service because the priest used the word “womb”.
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