Earl Spencer accuses King of 'gaslighting' over Palace's response to bombshell memoir claims
In his upcoming memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the earl alleges that Charles reacted “like a lottery winner” after his ex-wife’s death in 1997
Earl Spencer has accused the King of 'gaslighting' him after the Palace pushed back against a series of explosive claims in his upcoming memoir.
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Princess Diana's brother made the comment in response to Buckingham Palace's statement over claims in his upcoming memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.
These include the claim King Charles reacted "like a lottery winner," when his ex-wife died in 1997 and that, "we’ll forget her soon enough".
The bombshell allegations prompted an “unprecedented” response from Buckingham Palace who said “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason”.
Now, the earl has accused the King of gaslighting him and called the response a “rather poor imitation of the ‘recollections may vary’ quote” – the late Queen’s response to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s allegations in their Oprah Winfrey interview, The Mail on Sunday reports.
Read more: The monarchy has survived worse than Charles Spencer’s revelations, writes Shelagh Fogarty
He said: “It is not every day you wake up to find you’ve been gaslit by the King.
“It was astonishingly provocative and below the belt because it was essentially trying to say I’d lied without the King being able to deny what I’d said.
“I also thought it was a rather poor imitation of the ‘recollections may vary’ quote, which was a much more elegant way of putting things, but in these circumstances entirely out of place.”
He also said “Diana would be cheering from the rafters at this book”.
In response to the claims made in the memoir, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said on Wednesday: “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.”
On Friday, the earl insisted he is “telling the truth” and described the King’s comments about his sister as “monstrous”.
Speaking about an alleged row over Diana’s funeral arrangements involving her sons, the earl said: “(The King) went ballistic, would be the right term, and started really going for my family as a whole, about their sense of duty, not being adequate enough, and ranted for a while, I have no idea how long, but it was a significant period, and I just listened.
“And then he stopped, and I thought, ‘Oh now he’s going to pull himself together and say something more appropriate’.
“And then he said, ‘We’ll forget her soon enough’.”
Asked whether he has “evidence” of the King’s comments, the earl told the BBC: “I told friends and family straight away, close friends and family, about what had been said, because it was so monstrous.”
He added: “I’m telling the truth.”
Charles is said to have made the comments about his ex-wife in a row with the earl over whether the then Prince William and Prince Harry should follow Diana’s funeral cortege.
In the latest extract of the earl’s book serialised in the Daily Mail, Earl Spencer told of his memories of the funeral, and his concern for Harry, after he observed a “lack of obvious care” for the then 12-year-old prince.
Earl Spencer walked behind Diana’s coffin during the funeral procession on September 6 1997, alongside Harry, William, then 15, Charles, and the late Duke of Edinburgh.
Recounting the train journey from London to Althorp after the funeral, Earl Spencer said: “My chief memory of that train journey is of being concerned at the lack of obvious care for Harry, as he decompressed from the ghastliness of the morning.“
He needed Diana’s hugs, of course, and they would forever be denied him.“
But instead of calm and nurture, he was allowed to spin out of control.”Earl Spencer said he could not get over how “tiny, and slight, and bereft” his nephew looked, adding he remembers thinking Harry was “too small to be doing this”.