Royal family news live: Earl Spencer accuses King of ‘gaslighting’ him after palace’s response to explosive book claims

Earl Spencer has accused the King of gaslighting him after Buckingham Palace pushed back against explosive claims that Charles said “we’ll forget her soon enough” after Diana, Princess of Wales, died.

The earl has made a series of damning claims about the King in a new memoir chronicling the life of his sister Diana that prompted the response from Buckingham Palace, which 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.

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”.

As Buckingham Palace hits back at the claims of King Charles’s reaction to the death of Diana, Dan Wakeford, former People editor and founder of the Celebrity Intelligence website, looks at why her brother is publishing his tell-all now, and how the next 12 months will be about settling scores.

Diana suffered from an eating disorder which worsened after Charles called her “chubby,” Earl Spencer has claimed in his bombshell memoir.

In an extract from his book, serialised in the Daily Mail, the Earl claims that ahead of his sister’s wedding, Prince Charles had squeezed Diana’s waist and said, “Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?”

The earl said his sister found the comment “devastating,” later telling him that her “waist shrank from 29 to 23 and a half inches between her engagement and her marriage,” which were five months apart in 1981.

The Queen has spoken of her love for books that have a “life-enhancing power” after a series of allegations were made about the King in extracts from Earl Spencer’s memoir about the life of Diana, Princess of Wales.

The Queen was welcomed by Lord William Burlington, the chairman of The Chatsworth House Trust, who said it was “a huge thrill” to collaborate with The Queen’s Reading Room for a second consecutive year.

Camilla gave a speech in the Painted Hall and said being at Chatsworth House, which has a library of over 17,000 books, was “like coming home”.

She told the guests: “I created my Reading Room simply because, like all of us here, I love books and their life-enhancing power and I want to share that love with others.

“In those early days, I had no idea if anybody would be interested but six years on, we are a global community of millions from over 180 countries, swapping recommendations, undertaking research and donating thousands of books to women’s refuges and homeless shelters.”

Camilla’s speech about her love for reading comes after Earl Spencer made a series of damning claims about the King in a new memoir chronicling the life of his sister Diana that prompted an “unprecedented” response from Buckingham Palace who said, “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason”.

Earl Spencer further claimed that the King sounded “giddily elated… like a lottery winner” when he rang the earl following the princess’s death.

In passages of his bombshell book, Earl Spencer spoke of how his sister contemplated “ending it all” before her death.

He said she drove “more than once” to the cliffs at Beachy Head in East Sussex and was “contemplating ending it all”, adding that “her love for her sons stopped her from going further”.

The book reads: “It is a sad fact that, in her later years, Diana drove herself more than once to Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in England, while contemplating ending it all.

“Her love for her sons stopped her from going further.”

By ignoring the late Queen Elizabeth’s famous motto in the row over Earl Spencer’s new book about Diana, the King has been seriously wrongfooted, says Harry Mount.

In his first public appearance since Buckingham Palace responded to claims made in a new memoir by Earl Spencer, King Charles spoke to tech industry leaders of the existential dangers posed by artificial intelligence.

Speaking at a summit at Dumfries House, the King urged executives from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Nvidia to ensure humanity remains sacred as AI advances.

He has declined to comment further after his initial statement, in which the Palace said the King is “mindful” of how grief can colour memory.

Earl Spencer’s book titled Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, is set to be released globally on Tuesday.

However, the pages have been serialised by the Daily Mail, leaking some of the most explosive allegations ahead of publication.

An interview with Diana’s brother and BBC broadcaster Laura Kuenssberg will also be released on Sunday evening, in which more revelations are expected.