You know who is having a great month? The Earl Spencer’s publicist and booker. Charles Spencer is well-spoken, clever, with a fascinating mix of patrician haughtiness and flawed, grief-stricken authenticity. Spencer received a tremendous gift last week when Buckingham Palace jumped in to gaslight him before his book was even out. That alone gave his book promotion even more urgency and relevancy, like the aristocrat versus the king, in the battle for who defines Princess Diana’s memory and legacy. On Wednesday, Charles Spencer appeared on Lorraine, a British talk show. I’m including the video at the end of the post – he spoke about the Sussex family’s visit to Althorp in July, and Piers Morgan’s bloviations.
Charles Spencer is sharing new insight into Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s summer stay at Althorp House with their children — and reflecting on the grandmother his sister Princess Diana never got the chance to be. The 9th Earl Spencer, 62, spoke about the family’s July visit to his ancestral home during an appearance on the British talk show Lorraine on Wednesday, Sept. 23, while discussing his new memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.
“Harry came to stay in the summer with his family, and that was lovely,” Spencer said, offering a rare glimpse into the private visit. “Although when I look, you know, it’s so sad. I saw the two little kids running around, and the sadness of not having… Can you imagine what a great-grandmother Diana would’ve been? Spoiling them rotten.”
On Lorraine, he added that he “stands by” the book, and is weathering the criticism he’s received with the help and support of his wife, professor Cat Spencer.
“It hasn’t rattled me at all. I’m married to a very fabulous woman; she’s Norwegian and very direct,” he said. “And every time we’ve heard of another crashing tsunami of criticism, she just goes, ‘You’re right, they’re wrong, and Diana would be proud.’ And that’s it.”
Piers Morgan threatened legal action on Monday, Sept. 21, against Spencer over alleged “demonstrable lies” about him in the book, per an X statement, which Spencer has since apologized for — though he stands by his account of their phone call soon after Diana’s death.
Host Lorraine Kelly asked him about the allegations from Morgan, to which he replied, “I’m very happy to acknowledge I made a small error, and I’ve apologized, and it will be put right in the second edition. But that’s it.”
Spencer also doubled down on the claims the book makes about King Charles. “I wasn’t setting out to do a hit piece on the king at all. The bits that have been included in the book are totally in context,” he said.
He cited the example of claiming Charles said, “We’ll forget her soon enough,” about his sister following her death at the age of 36. “So that clip you played of me getting through the end of [Diana’s] eulogy, I end with this thing that the final thought I give is that Diana will never be extinguished from our mind,” Spencer said on the show. “That was a direct counter to the King saying, ‘We’ll forget her soon enough.’ So it had to be included, because the strand through the book is: how did this eulogy come about? I use that as a device to look at Diana’s life. So if I didn’t put in the reason, you wouldn’t have the consequence.”
I’ve sort of become numb to how ghastly the Windsors really are, but Spencer pointing out that his eulogy was basically a response to then-Prince Charles’ horrific comment… that made me choke up a little. That really was it, right? Spencer seemed so justifiably angry at the funeral, and we’ve believed for years that the anger was mostly about how the Windsors had to be dragged kicking and screaming into honoring Diana and acting right. While that was definitely a factor, Spencer’s eulogy was, in retrospect, so much about Prince Charles hissing “We’ll forget her soon enough.”
As for what he says about Diana as a grandmother… yeah, Diana would have loved it. She would have loved all of her grandchildren. Oh, and in this interview, Spencer talks about how the palace has journalists acting like stenographers. Yep.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images and Meghan’s Instagram, screencap courtesy of Lorraine.
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- Diana, Princess of Wales Prince William Prince Harry Queen Elizabeth II Princess Margaret Prince Charles, Prince of Wales Trooping the Colour,Image: 514953405, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: John Shelley Collection / Avalon
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- Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, and Diana, Princess of Wales, visit Beach Head Cemetery in Anzio, Italy, to honour those killed in the Allied landings of January 1944. Diana is wearing a dress by Catherine Walker,Image: 549498963, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Photoshot – sales@photoshot.com London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Florida: +1 239 689 1883 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251, Model Release: no, Credit line: John Shelley Collection / Avalon
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- Earl Spencer, brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, meets members of the Rock Choir as they announce they will be supporting The Diana Award for a special fundraising project, at Althorp House in Northamptonshire, as the charity celebrate their 25th anniversary. Featuring: Earl Spencer Where: Althorp, United Kingdom When: 20 Sep 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Earl Spencer, brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, meets members of the Rock Choir as they announce they will be supporting The Diana Award for a special fundraising project, at Althorp House in Northamptonshire, as the charity celebrate their 25th anniversary. Featuring: Earl Spencer Where: Althorp, United Kingdom When: 20 Sep 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
Yeah, some people online had figured out that the last line of eulogy was due to Charles’ comments about Diana being forgotten. I don’t understand how people can still support the Royal Family. They’re just awful people including the late Queen.
There are entire YouTube channels with lots of subscribers dedicated to how wonderful, indeed perfect, they are. SMDH.
While Spencer was giving that eulogy, all I could think was, “This will go over like a lead balloon.” And here we are, almost thirty years later, the Windsors are still crashing out. Never complain, never explain indeed.
He writes in the book that at the rehearsal for the service he pretended he had forgotten the speech. He knew he’d be pressured to change it if they heard it before the funeral.
He was expected to pre deliver the eulogy at the rehearsal? They definitely suspected they were about to be torched.
I am here for his sneakiness. Damn. Love it.
Yeah, they knew he might go off, and he did.
Very, very wise of him!
Luckily, diana was not alive to see how monstrous William has become. It would broke her heart that her first born is demon and married to a racist . William is chuck 2.0.
If she was alive and been a source of warmth and guidance for him, this isn’t who he’d be now.
Diana would have been horrified at the way her eldest son and his wife treated harry and meghan.
I’ve noticed this a lot in England since I came here in 2007 — there is a wilful persistence in believing in fairy tales, like a kind of obdurate Pollyanna vibe, like, when they voted Brexit in 2016, the phrase I heard most often, in the tube, on the train, on the bus, (I don’t drive on the left) was, “We’ll be alright no matter what,” and I longed to shout at them all, “NO YOU WON’T. YOU’RE F*CKED.” Like, they seem to have a limitless capacity for self-deluding Panglossian optimism. Which explains how they can traipse through a devastated post-Thatcher, post-Labour, post-reality landscape, lifting their eyes to the horizon, in hopeful expectation. It’s ….deluded. But how else would they get up in the morning? All you have to do, to obtain a reality check, is hop over to the Continent, and all of a sudden, infrastructure is robust, not creaking, shops are clean and service is brisk, not dingy and drifting, people are awake and alert and not dragging. Weather is clearer, prospects are brighter…. It’s illuminating. They look at the royals through the same rose tinted lens. Pun intended.
“Keep Calm And Carry On!”
Remember how that phrase was all over the place during the “Downton Abbey” era? On mugs, pillows, wall plaques, everything. It got to really annoy the heck out of me. So when when I joined my husband on his golf trip to Ireland, just to see the sights, I spotted a mug with the Irish version in the airport. “Feck It Sure it’s Grand!” Love that mug. I still have it.
Interesting point and very well said. It is delightful to watch them get paid out for the jingoism of Brexit.
(O/T: I’ve never heard of this woman Lorraine before. Can someone tell me where her accent comes from?)
She’s Scottish.
She’s Scottish
She’s Scottish, born in Glasgow.
Like me she’s Scottish – from Glasgow.
Scottish and very much a royalist
Indeed. She half-grimaced when Earl Spencer began to talk about the children running around and (and the camera immediately cut to his face), then she nodded almost reluctantly, to my mind, when he said “Can you imagine what a great grandmother Diana would have been?” She can’t imagine Diana being a grandmother to the Sussex children, but she would have waxed lyrical about it had been the Waleses.
She, like a few others on daylight television (I think her show is being axed and she claimed to be blindsided?) have spent years inciting hate against H+M and repeating all of the lying narratives. A true perpetrator of stochastic terrorism, this one.
If the queen and charles had not cast out Diana and been more supportive she probably would be with all her grandchildren now.
Agree, Tessa, particularly in that they could’ve/should’ve continued the security detail she’d been afforded as a member of the BRF. Withdrawing that was disgusting.
Yes, i think hearing charles’ comment about forgetting Diana and the insistence that the boys walk behind the coffin puts so much of the eulogy into context. At the time I remember I had a similar reaction to what Kaiser described – this is a general response to how the Windsors behaved leading up to the funeral and how they treated Diana while she was in the Firm – but it was obviously more pointed and direct than that. Diana’s flame will never be extinguished, they will raise Harry and William with not just a sense of service and duty but a sense of love etc.
He was calling out charles specifically for his actions that week and he was MAD about it.
and yes Diana would have been a wonderful grandmother. It is incredibly sad that she doesnt get to experience any of her grandkids and Charles does, but seems to not be interested in any of them, honestly.
Yes and it does make his discussion of the book needing context, the fact that the eulogy was a direct response to what Charles said. Part of me could believe Charles didn’t even remember saying it bc he probably said it so often. As in whoops did I say that to earl Spencer too? But knows it’s something he said or would have said whether he remembered it or not.
Charles Spencer pointing out the gaslighting has been great to see. Anyone around at the time of the funeral and over a certain age definitely knew that Diana was treated poorly by the royals and so it wasn’t really a surprise that he was critical. Of course the usual sycophants pretended to be aghast, but reading the last few lines of the eulogy now, it does fits with Spencer rebutting Charles’s assertion that Diana would be soon forgotten. He got that more wrong than he could ever imagine.
Re Pissy Moron, he’s really enjoying his moment back in the spotlight.
A lawyer on the BBC said yesterday that with PM continuing his lawsuit against Charles Spencer, he was likely to win about £25-30’000 in damages, so diddly-squat. Because CS has already apologised and the publisher has already agreed to correct the error in the 2nd edition, so the alleged reputational damage Moron suffered is negligible.
One could even argue this episode has been a boost to Moron, as it’s got him on the front pages again, with his lipless smirk…
Diana would have been a fab grandmother and she would have ran off the Middletons at dawn (the Earl says that they were not raised to tolerate entitlement; and given it pours off Kate and her family they would not have gotten close to William if Diana was around. We have heard many stories of how that family treat the royal staff). And yeah she would have loved Meghan.
Seeing the Earl in the media a lot has me noticing the resemblance to Diana – I think its the eyes.
I’ve noticed that too – its the eyes and the way he sort of dips his head as he talks and looks up.
What’s cracking me up is that I can understand him perfectly in all his interviews etc and I cannot understand Kate when she talks. Her fake posh accent makes her impossible to understand.
Kate mumbles. Earl Spencer enunciates and gives weight to his words. That’s the difference.
That’s how you know its fake and put on – if that’s how she really spoke you would understand her.
Exactly. There is no denying Charles Spencer has a posh accent. And he is completely comprehensible.
I’m part way into a Very Private School. It’s a strange concept to me that the uber elite of Britain purposely send their children at young ages to schools that emphasize harsh discipline. American elite send their children to academically rigorous schools but the best known of these aren’t for young children and don’t use corporal punishment. Anyway, certainly that doesn’t breed a tolerance for entitlement. Watching nouveau riche try to break into a society structured by strict discipline and ancient codes must be irritating at best. And the Bucket family is shameless.
Do they still send their kids away at 8? I thought that was much less common now even there. I went to boarding school in the US and yes, they start later here. Like in high school. There was one school that one of my roommates had attended that started earlier, but I don’t think they have pupils that young any more. She was around 10 when she went away to school. I think it really did a number on her emotionally even though there was no corporal punishment.
I have no idea. George is 13. So maybe 8 isn’t done anymore. But Earl Charles describing being an 8 year feeling home sickness akin to mourning with no emotional warmth or kindness to help his transition is horrifying. I’ve read a ton of novels about orphans sent away like that, but extremely wealthy children whose parents love and value them but still send them off to experience isolation and corporal punishment ? It’s puzzling. But explains a lot about aristocratic culture.
I wonder if part of the idea was that those schools would “toughen them up” in a way that their posh lives might not? But so many of those stories aren’t about instilling discipline or anything, they’re just abuse. I listened to A Very Private School and it was a tough listen, although he was an excellent narrator. I commented as much on one of his tweets about the book and he told me that was a kind thing to say, so of course I felt famous for thirty seconds lol.
Anyway I also think part of the issue with those schools is that there is a sense of “if I had to do it, you have to do it too.” So parents assume that because they survived, it was a good thing and their kids should experience it as well.
here in the US, i think a lot of the institutionalized abuse in education was via the Catholic Church and not necessarily just the elite boarding schools.
@Becks1 – Think you nailed it with “it’s what I went through.” That probably went on for a thousand years before the recent culture of actually thinking about childhood mental health. Young Charles says his father considered home schooling him but the titled aristos in his circle told Daddy Spencer (I guess not yet the earl) it would be a disaster to remove Young Charles from the normal course of things. But when you think about how cold and harsh British aristos have been historically, up to and including Charles, obviously, the boarding school abuse has to be a big part of it.
I don’t know what William and Harry experienced at boarding school, but we know they were surrounded by trauma at young ages stemming from that culture.
King Charles should remember the lyric from Stevie Nicks song, Silver Springs. “you’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loved you”.
When It Hits the Fan – A Statement from the King – BBC Sounds https://share.google/TjLMp4xFcZE5b1hJ6
This is worth listening to about King ‘s statement to the book. One commentator opines that even if Charles Rex did say dismissive crap a. He was upset b, We can all see how he raised the boys!! c. RF ‘ s extensive charity work absolves them!!
I suggest he re-read Spare and the way Harry isn’t hugged reassured or comforted by dad after being told m has died . Instead he’s left alone for hours! Eventually both sons are forced to shield dad by walking with him behind the coffin.
So no, I told think Charles was a great single father devoted to shielding, loving and nurturing his sons for the past 29 years. Why is he estranged from both of them if he was mum and dad to them after Diana died?
Diana was the superior parent and both boys suffered greatly from her absence and no, Charles was never even adequate as a father let alone grandfather.
Sounded like major royal axx-kissing horse dookey to me (ie: not “worth listening to” imho, unless you’re willing to endure 21-mins of 90-10 (90 💋💋💋 King Chuck da T’ird; vs 10 👍 Random House publisher), with a side of tsk-tsk-tsking to both Charleses, and a 7-min Ed Sheeran tail end.
#1 – Hisself Righteous Haughtiness (HRH) Chuck DID NOT DENY the allegation that he hissed at Spencer on the phone about the insignificance of his recently deceased sister.
#2 – Hisself Righteous Haughtiness (HRH) Chuck did the same thing to Charles Spencer that he did for years to his sister, Diana – questioned their mental fitness. Takes a special kind of gaslighting axxh0le operating from a higher power base to call other people crazy — must be why Brits love him.
I remember watching Diana‘s funeral and wondering about the line he said about Diana never being forgotten. I thought how strange to say that when there was such an outpouring of grief worldwide over her death and how it would be impossible to ever forget her impact. After the phone revelation, I can understand why the Earl put that remark in his eulogy. The Windsors are just so despicable.
Plummy British accents usually annoy me, but Charles Spencer is so thoughtful and articulate that it’s a pleasure listening to him talk about Diana.
His love for Diana is just so apparent and sweet. I’m so glad Harry has him in his life. And I can understand why William isn’t close to Charles Spencer — his uncle doesn’t reflexively bow to the royals and William, like his father, wants to be bowed to (*must resist valet reference here*).
Another thing: Props to Charles Spencer for stating clearly that the British press serve as stenographers for the palace. That needs to be pointed out often.
@People, “great grandmother”, not “great-grandmother”. 🙄
She would’ve been great, indeed. She had so much humanity and understood vulnerability. I miss her! I grew up with the BRF at that point. Her type of beauty, and a lot of the beauty around at that point, has never been found again in women of her age. That entire look, skin, hair. Gorgeous personality, as well.
I was rather appalled by the earl’s eulogy at the time, because I thought it was rather harsh criticism of what is after all the other side of Harry and William’s family. Of course I noticed how angry CS was, and had the passing thought that he should have exercised a little more discretion. Of course, I didn’t know things about the Windsors that I know now, and at the time I bought into the idea that Diana was really someone in need of therapy with serious mental and emotional issues. I went back to listen to the eulogy after all this news came out and it made perfect sense and it brought tears to my eyes. Actually after I watched a documentary of Diana titled In Her Own Words a few years ago, I realized how utterly alone Diana actually was in her fight against the media and the Windsors, and how brave and smart she was capable of being. To plan a life of humanitarian work apart from the palace machinery was amazing, and tragic she never got a chance to live it.