Buckingham Palace responds to Charles Spencer’s Diana claim

Buckingham Palace has pushed back against a claim from Charles Spencer about King Charles and the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997. A palace spokesperson called grief’s effect on memory a factor in evaluating Spencer’s account.

Spencer, Diana’s younger brother, wrote in his upcoming book “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,” that after he spoke with the then-Prince Charles about whether Princes William and Harry would walk behind Diana’s coffin, Charles expressed what Spencer described as contempt for his sister.

“Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped,” Spencer wrote, according to the Daily Mail, which published an excerpt from the book. “I assumed the pause signaled 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!'” Spencer said of the now king.

The passage came after copies of the book were stolen from a truck in the Netherlands this week, ahead of its Sept. 22 release, the Daily Mail reported.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson responded on Wednesday, telling People Magazine that grief can alter recollection.

“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 color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss,” the spokesperson said.

In the 2017 BBC documentary “Diana, 7 Days,” William said the brothers’ decision to walk in the funeral procession was collective.

“It wasn’t an easy decision, and it was a collective family decision to do that. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But we were overwhelmed by how many people turned out, it was just incredible,” William said. “There was that balance between duty and family and that’s what we had to do.”

In a Penguin Random House press release last month, Spencer said he planned to share his own account of his sister’s story.

“With the 30th anniversary of Diana’s tragic death on the skyline, I’ve been inundated yet again with requests for interviews about my sister,” Spencer said. “This has convinced me to write down my own thoughts and memories, once and for all, rather than having the discomfort of again reading the opinions of others, many of which are based on untruths that have become accepted over time.”