KING CHARLES DISPUTES CLAIMS IN EARL SPENCER'S NEW MEMOIR

Earl Spencer's forthcoming memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, alleges that King Charles told him "rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough" in the days after Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997. The book claims the remark came during a dispute over funeral arrangements, specifically whether Princes William and Harry, then 15 and 12, should walk in their mother's funeral procession. Spencer writes that he initially told a senior aide to the late Queen Elizabeth that this "was not going to happen", before Charles, then Prince of Wales, phoned him and insisted it should. Spencer alleges Charles made the remark in a "stream of anger" during that call, which Spencer says reflected "his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death". Spencer says he replied "I can't believe you just said that" before hanging up.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson responded to the claims, telling one outlet that "grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss". The palace said it does not comment on books as a matter of principle. The Independent reported that it had contacted Buckingham Palace for comment and had not seen the memoir itself. Swan Song is being serialised by the Daily Mail and is due for worldwide publication next Tuesday, published in the UK by Penguin Michael Joseph. Diana would have turned 65 on 1 July this year, ahead of the 30th anniversary of her death.

Spencer has said he wrote the book to set out his own account of Diana rather than continue reading others' opinions of her. The memoir is reported to be critical of the royal family more broadly. Separately, four copies of the Dutch-language edition were reported stolen from a lorry en route from the publisher's printers to a warehouse in the Netherlands. No further detail on that theft has been confirmed.