The untold truth about Princess Diana’s ‘peripheral’ relationship with her brother Charles Spencer

The battle lines have been drawn between Charles Spencer and the British royal family. Next week will see the release of a controversial new memoir penned by the 9th Earl Spencer about the life and death of his sister, Princess Diana. And early excerpts have already proven to be incredibly explosive – so much so that Buckingham Palace has been swift to issue a rebuttal and engage in a war of words. 

Allegations included within the pages of Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Spencer alleges that mere days after Diana’s untimely death in 1997, her former husband Charles told him: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough!”

It is a shocking claim – and one that prompted a rare rebuttal from the palace. “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 judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss,” a royal spokesperson said in response.

Elsewhere in the book, Spencer alleges that the King sounded “giddily elated – like a lottery winner” on the morning Diana died, and suggests that the then-Prince Charles might have been pleased he was now “free” to marry Camilla Parker Bowles.

Charles and Diana’s childhood – and a forged bond

Certainly the book is set to rock the royal family. But critics have been quick to point to Charles’s own difficult relationship with Diana, which saw times of estrangement between the siblings.

Diana and her younger brother were close as children, sticking together after their mother abruptly walked out, leaving their father John with custody of all four of their children. While their older sisters Sarah and Jane were off at boarding school, the younger Spencers would spend weekends shuttling back and forth between the family home and their mother’s flat in London.

It was a formative experience and Charles spoke about those years in his famous eulogy at Diana’s funeral service. “She had not changed at all from the big sister who mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school and endured those long train journeys between our parents’ homes with me at weekends,” he remembered. 

Charles vows to keep Diana grounded during royal life

But a great deal changed after Diana got engaged to then-Prince Charles and was thrust into the spotlight. His brother believed it was his job to remain straightforward and frank with her, with the aim of keeping her grounded. 

This, he later told the Times, could sometimes prove “difficult”, since he was compelled to “say things that people weren’t saying to her in a loving way, a constructive way, and I think it was tricky for her to hear anything except how marvellous life was – but I thought that was my duty”. 

One of the most testing periods for brother and sister came shortly after Diana’s separation from Prince Charles. Private letters read out during the 2002 theft trial of Paul Burrell revealed she had asked her sibling to be able to move into the Garden House on Althorp, the family estate in Northamptonshire.

Charles denies Diana dream home after her split

Diana had hoped to move back to the grounds where she had spent her childhood, and which her brother – as the only Spencer male – had inherited. 

According to the Telegraph, Charles initially accepted – but changed his mind just weeks later, citing “the inevitable police and press interference” that would follow her arrival.

In a letter addressed to ‘Dearest Duch’, his pet name for Diana, he informed her he had moved an employee into the property instead, and suggested to her a farmhouse on the estate which would interfere less in the lives of himself and Victoria Lockwood, his first wife.

He wrote: “I know you will be disappointed but I know I am doing the right thing for my wife and children. I am just sorry I cannot help my sister!

“Seriously though, there are farmhouses around here that may well not interfere with us, but I cannot afford to give them rent-free, although I wish I could. In theory, it would be lovely to help you out and I am sorry I can’t do that.

“Victoria and I really value our privacy and the combined pressure of the Northants police, neighbours and friends have definitely compromised that. If you are really interested in renting a farmhouse, either here or in Warwickshire or Norfolk, that would be wonderful.”

He later told BBC Radio 4: “Diana had a lovely dream that she could live a normal life afterwards. But the one house that she set her heart on in the park was three bedrooms and 100 yards from the road. And it was just not possible. The police knew it wouldn’t work.”

Charles said he offered his sister “every other property that was suitable on the estate” and “really felt it was the right decision for her, but she probably couldn’t see it”.

Unopened letter returned to Diana

Certainly, a rift had formed. In a third letter, dated June 28, 1993, the Earl returned a separate note from his sister unopened. He wrote: “Dearest Duch, knowing the state you were in the other night when you hung up on me, I doubt whether reading this will help our relationship.

“Therefore I am returning it unopened because it is the quickest way to rebuild our friendship.”

Diana wept as she read her brother’s words

Charles and Diana’s rollercoaster relationship also came under scrutiny when her butler Paul Burrell included private correspondence from her family in his 2003 memoir A Royal Duty, including a letter from her brother.

Burrell said the letter that had most hurt Diana was one from her brother refusing her permission to move to the Althorp estate and dismissing the bulimia from which she suffered as “mental problems”.

The Princess wept, he claimed, as she read the words: “After years of neglect on both sides our relationship is the weakest I have with any of my sisters… perhaps you have more time to notice that we seldom speak.

“I… will always be there for you… as a loving brother, albeit one who has through 15 years’ absence rather lost touch – to the extent I have to read Richard Kay [a journalist] to learn that you are coming to Althorp.”

‘A peripheral part of your life’

Elsewhere in the letter, Spencer wrote: “I long ago accepted that I was a peripheral part of your life, and that no longer saddens me. Indeed, it is easier for me and my family to be in that position as I view the consternation and hurt your fickle friendship has caused so many.”

Those words are a stark contrast to the eulogy Earl Spencer famously delivered at Diana’s funeral in September 1997. In it, he described her as  “the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty’ and spoke sympathetically of her eating disorder, describing her as “a very insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her desire to do good for others so she could release herself from deep feelings of unworthiness of which her eating disorders were merely a symptom”.

In one of the most famous parts of the speech, he called her “the most hunted person of the modern age” and blamed the tabloid media for relentless harassment that drove her desire to leave England. He also took aim at the royal family, directly addressing her young sons, and promising on behalf of the Spencer family that they would protect William and Harry and ensure their souls were not “solely consumed by duty and tradition”.

In front of 2,000 guests in Westminster Abbey, he said: “She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys, William and Harry, from a similar fate and I do this here, Diana, on your behalf.

“We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.”