Almost 30 years after Princess Diana’s death, her brother Charles Spencer is making one of the most explosive claims yet about how the royal family processed her loss. In his upcoming memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister — due out September 22, 2026 — Spencer alleges that then-Prince Charles told him, days after Diana died, ‘Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.’ Buckingham Palace has already responded. And the world, clearly, never forgot.
The Phone Call Spencer Says He Never Got Over
According to excerpts from Swan Song, the alleged comment came during a heated argument between Spencer and then-Prince Charles in the days immediately following Princess Diana’s death on August 31, 1997. The flashpoint was the funeral procession: Spencer says he was told that Prince William, then 15, and Prince Harry, then 12, were expected to walk behind their mother’s coffin. Spencer’s reported response was immediate — ‘That’s not going to happen.’
Charles allegedly called shortly after to push back, reportedly pointing to his own experience walking in the procession for Lord Mountbatten in 1979 as precedent. Spencer writes that the conversation escalated quickly. It was during that argument, he claims, that Charles made the remark about forgetting Diana. Spencer says he responded that he couldn’t believe Charles had said it — and ended the call. Despite Spencer’s objections, both William and Harry did walk behind the coffin on September 6, 1997, alongside Charles, Prince Philip, and Spencer himself. That image became one of the defining photographs of the entire decade.
Spencer frames the alleged comment not as an offhand remark but as a window into what he describes as Charles’s deep contempt for Diana — and his discomfort with the scale of worldwide grief that followed her death. That’s Spencer’s interpretation, not a verified statement of Charles’s inner state. But it’s a damning one, and it’s already circulating globally.
What Else the Memoir Alleges — and Why the Palace Responded
Swan Song doesn’t stop at the phone call. Spencer also writes that Charles sounded unusually upbeat in the aftermath of Diana’s death, describing him — according to People.com’s coverage of the excerpts — as ‘giddily elated — like a lottery winner.’ Spencer speculates in the book that Charles may have seen Diana’s death as clearing the path toward a future with Camilla Parker Bowles. Again: Spencer’s recollection, Spencer’s interpretation. But the specificity of the language makes it hard to dismiss.
The memoir also relays a belief Diana reportedly shared with her brother during her lifetime — that she thought Charles was in love with his valet. Spencer is careful to present this as something Diana told him, not as established fact. Still, the accumulation of these details paints a portrait of a marriage and a family far more fractured than any official account has ever acknowledged.
Buckingham Palace took the unusual step of responding publicly — something it rarely does for books. A spokesperson said the King is mindful that ‘fraternal grief can affect reason, judgment and memory.’ That’s not a denial. It’s a carefully worded suggestion that Spencer’s grief may be distorting his recollection — which is itself a remarkable thing for a palace to say about a sitting king’s late ex-wife’s brother. Spencer says he wrote Swan Song because the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death is approaching and he wanted to set down his own memories before more false narratives calcify into received history. Whatever one makes of the allegations, Penguin Random House is releasing the full book on September 22, and the conversation it’s already started will only grow louder. Diana, as always, refuses to be forgotten.