Ten biggest bombshell claims from Earl Spencers’ memoir as he says ‘Charles giddily elated after Diana’s death’

Allegations about King Charles’ behaviour following Princess Diana’s death continue to emerge following the publication of more excerpts from her brother’s new memoir.

In a new excerpt published on Thursday, it is alleged that the King sounded “giddily elated… like a lottery winner” when he rang Earl Spencer following his ex-wife’s death, and that he later said: “We’ll forget her soon enough.”

Here are the most shocking claims from the book so far.

This claim has generated controversy because it portrays the late Queen reacting with irritation rather than concern when news first broke of Diana’s car accident, before the gravity of the situation emerged.

In his memoir, Earl Spencer writes: “When the Queen had heard the first news of Diana being in a traffic accident, she had asked tetchily, ‘What is she up to now?’ This, before the seriousness of it all became clear.”

Earl Spencer alleges Charles was furious at the proposal for his sons to take an active role in Diana’s funeral.

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’.”

Instead of saying something “more appropriate”, Earl Spencer writes that the King then followed up with: “We’ll forget her soon enough.”

This remark appears to have prompted Buckingham Palace to issue a highly unusual, direct response. Palace officials state grief can “cloud reason, affect judgment, and colour memory years later”.

In one of the most shocking allegations, the Earl said that Charles sounded “giddily elated” when they spoke just hours after Diana’s death.

The Earl alleges that he was flooded with calls when the news broke, with many callers barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help.

Charles’ reaction, however, is alleged to have been somewhat different.

The Earl wrote: “He sounded giddily elated – like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time.

“He let me know he had informed William and Harry of their mother’s death, first thing that morning, in their bedrooms at Balmoral. It all sounded strangely matter-of-fact, given the enormity of the disaster.

“Looking back now, I suspect the prince’s first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not.”

The Earl claims that, the day before Charles and Diana’s wedding, his sister had confided to a close friend, her husband-­to-­be had told her that “he was very happy to marry her, but he was not actually in love with her.”

He added that, just two months after becoming engaged, she had become so concerned about their relationship that she tried to break it off – but that her father said it was impossible to pull out of such an enormous commitment.

The Earl alleges that Diana told him that, on the day of her wedding, she had been “in the throes” of an eating disorder for five months.

He claims that Diana “recoiled” from the photographs taken following her engagement, feeling that her 5ft 10in frame looked heavier than she wanted.

He also claims that Prince Charles had squeezed her waist a few days after the engagement, saying, “Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?”

Diana would later share with the Earl that her waist shrank from 29 to 22.5 inches between her engagement and her marriage, he says.

The Earl claims that Diana’s issues were exacerbated when her care was handed over to Dr John Batten, a 58-­year-­old who had been the Queen’s physician since 1974, rather than long-term family GP, Mike Bloomer, a close family friend.

The Earl claims that Diana considered suicide on a number of occasions in the years before her death.

He wrote: “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.”

More extracts from the bombshell book are due to be released tomorrow.

The Earl details the build-up to Diana’s funeral, for which he was the chosen point of contact for the Spencer family when it came to arrangements.

He mentions “very serious tensions” between the Queen and then-Prince Charles’s teams ahead of the ceremony.

This led to no one from the Royal Family talking to the Earl directly about the funeral arrangements – with such matters “farmed out” to a courtier instead.

According to the Earl, these were caused by “the heir to the throne’s growing frustrations at being a middle-aged man still waiting to reign.”

In the memoir, Earl Spencer is full of praise for Lieutenant Colonel Malcolm Ross, who was in charge of all ceremonial and official events that the Queen was to attend.

He says that Lt Col Ross always treated him with extreme courtesy – unlike others in the Palace.

Speaking of Diana, he wrote: “There were others in the Palace, I already knew, who were relieved – ­indeed, pleased – that she had gone.”

The Earl says he insisted to the then-Prince of Wales that Diana would not have wanted Prince William and Prince Harry, then aged 15 and 12, to have made the difficult public walk in her funeral procession.

According to an excerpt, the Earl told one of Queen Elizabeth II’s senior aides “that’s not going to happen”.

Charles called minutes later and told him that 18 years earlier he had walked in the funeral procession of his great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten – to which the Earl pointed out that Charles had been 30 at the time of Lord Mountbatten’s funeral in 1979.

The Earl claims: “Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped.

“I assumed the pause signalled 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!’”

The Earl says he then hung up the phone.

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