Earl Spencer last night accused King Charles of ‘gaslighting’ him in a dramatic escalation of their furious row over Princess Diana.
Speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, the earl denied that he wrote his bombshell memoir because he was motivated by money and said his late sister would be ‘cheering from the rafters’ at his book.
The Royal Family is reeling from a string of explosive claims in the memoir – entitled Swan Song: Diana, My Sister – after extracts were exclusively published by the Mail last week.
Earl Spencer’s incendiary claim that – days after Diana’s 1997 death – the then Prince Charles told him: ‘Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough’ provoked a highly unusual response from the Palace.
The Prince of Wales’s alleged comment was made during a blistering row with the earl over whether Princes William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12, should walk in their mother’s funeral procession.
But in a statement, a Palace spokesman last week questioned the veracity of Earl Spencer’s explosive account and said that fraternal grief can ‘cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory‘.
Now, in his first newspaper comments since the war of words erupted, Earl Spencer, 62, has hit back, describing the Palace’s statement as gaslighting, a form of psychological abuse where the victim is manipulated into questioning what they know to be true.
He also said the Palace’s statement was a ‘poor imitation’ of Queen Elizabeth’s famous ‘recollections may vary’ retort to Harry and Meghan after their interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021.
Earl Spencer has accused King Charles of ‘gaslighting’ him over the suggestion Lady Diana’s brother’s memoir is ‘clouded by grief’
He has claimed that in the days after Diana’s death, the then Prince Charles told him ‘we’ll forget her soon enough’
Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed in Saint Tropez, France on August 22, 1997 – just days before they died
‘It is not every day you wake up to find you’ve been gaslit by the King,’ he said.
‘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.’
In an interview with the BBC to be broadcast tonight, Earl Spencer said he told close friends and family ‘straight away’ about the Prince of Wales’s alleged outburst ‘because it was so monstrous’.
Writing in today’s MoS, the Mail’s Richard Kay – one of Diana’s most trusted confidants – recalls Earl Spencer telling him, in the week before the Princess’s funeral, that there had been a ‘furious row’ and that Prince Charles had been ‘utterly pathetic’.
Earl Spencer last night said: ‘I am a historian – I appreciate that a lot of the public don’t know that – and my primary responsibility as a historian is to tell the truth.
‘My motivation in this book has been to tell the truth about Diana and all she had to put up with in her public life through the eyes of the brother who grew up with her.
‘Along the way I’ve been able to deal with various myths that have grown up which needed to be dealt with once and for all.
King Charles III gives a speech during a meeting for leaders from the AI sector
Lord Charles Spencer in the library of his ancestral home, Althorp Hall, Northamptonshire
‘I’m in my sixties, neither of my parents made it to 70 and I wanted to do this while I could.’
Some royal commentators have claimed the earl is ‘cashing in’ on his late sister’s memory.
Charles Spencer, however, strenuously denied that his motivations in publishing the book are financial.
‘Money has never even been the remotest consideration in my choosing to write my tribute to Diana,’ he said.
‘Diana always had an expression which is don’t judge others by yourselves – and I think this applies to anyone who accuses me of something so ridiculous.’
Earl Spencer famously delivered a raw and defiant eulogy at his sister’s funeral, which was broadcast to a worldwide audience of 2.5 billion.
In one of the most poignant passages of his book, the earl reveals how he read the speech to Diana’s coffin in Chapel Royal, a private chapel at St James’s Palace, where his sister’s body lay for five days before the funeral.
He told the MoS that he believes his late sister would have both ‘applauded’ those words and been ‘fully behind’ his book.
SO WHAT IS GASLIGHTING?
Gaslighting involves tricking someone into questioning something they know to be true.
The phrase can be traced to the 1938 stage thriller Gas Light, by British author Patrick Hamilton, which was adapted into the 1944 film Gaslight starring Ingrid Bergman as a woman whose controlling husband makes trips into the attic to search for hidden jewellery, igniting a gaslight and causing lights elsewhere in the house to dim.
The wife notices the dimming lights but the husband convinces her she is wrong and is instead losing her mind.
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‘At the end of the day, people are missing a fundamental point, which is that Diana was my sister and I have every right to write about my own sister.
‘I can tell you that Diana would be cheering from the rafters at this book, I have no doubt about that.
‘She loved it when we stuck up for one another and I really felt it when I read my eulogy to her privately in a chapel before her funeral.
‘I sensed so strongly that day that she would have applauded those words and I feel equally strongly today that she would be fully behind this book.’
The MoS can today reveal that, in his memoir, the earl voices his regret at removing Diana’s boyfriend Dodi Fayed’s name from his eulogy.
He also details an extraordinary conversation with Prince Charles at his father John Spencer’s funeral, in which he claims the future king told him he was ‘so lucky’ to be inheriting his family’s estate while he was in his twenties.
Earl Spencer claims that during the exchange at his family seat at Althorp, Prince Charles stamped his foot like a ‘petulant’ child.
Meanwhile, a string of establishment figures have leapt to the King’s defence.
Veteran BBC broadcaster David Dimbleby yesterday described the earl as ‘a curious fellow’ who he said has questions to answer over ‘the extent to which he is a genuine defender’ of Diana.
The broadcaster, who covered major royal events for decades, questioned Earl Spencer’s actions in 1995 when rogue BBC reporter Martin Bashir showed him forged bank statements in a bid to persuade him that people close to Diana were being paid to spy on her.
Dimbleby said: ‘He [Earl Spencer] didn’t go to the police, he didn’t go to the prime minister, he showed it to Diana and said ‘give an interview to BBC Panorama‘… and Diana at her most paranoid at that point accepted it.
‘So I think Charles [Spencer] has got some questions to answer himself… about the extent to which he is a genuine defender.’
Former Tory MP Rory Stewart, who tutored Prince Harry and Prince William, told the BBC that he ‘simply cannot believe’ that the King said what Spencer claims.
‘It’s just not his character, it’s not his personality. Never ever have I heard him say anything like that.’
In a statement released last Wednesday, the Palace said: ‘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.’
The Palace has declined to comment on further claims in the memoir.
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