Charles Spencer Says He Fought to Keep William and Harry From Diana’s Funeral Walk as Palace Feared Anger at Charles

Charles Spencer’s new memoir is reopening one of the most haunting images from Princess Diana’s funeral: Prince William and Prince Harry walking behind their mother’s coffin through London.

Spencer says he initially objected to the idea and described it as “utterly barbaric.” According to him, Palace official Malcolm Ross told him that it had already been decided the boys would walk. Spencer refused, saying Diana would never have wanted her sons put through such a public ordeal.

He says then-Prince Charles later called him directly after hearing about his objections. Charles allegedly pointed out that he had walked behind Lord Mountbatten’s coffin. Spencer replied that Charles had been 30 years old and Mountbatten was not his mother. Spencer says the argument became heated from there.

During one of our phone calls, Colonel Ross seemed about to ring off when he added: ‘Oh! Another thing. It’s been decided that the two young princes will walk behind the princess’s coffin.’

‘Well, that’s not going to happen,’ I said, in a ­matter-of-­fact tone. It was a suggestion that struck me as utterly barbaric, and quite out of the question.

By this stage I had learnt that Diana had left me as her sons’ guardian. This was a role without legal function while the other parent lived, but it made me feel empowered to speak on Diana’s behalf with William and Harry in mind. I knew that she would never have wanted her boys to have to undertake such a public ordeal.

‘Well, the Prince of Wales says it is,’ Ross repeated, assuming that would end the matter.

-Charles Spencer, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Part One, serialised in the Daily Mail

Eventually, he was told that William and Harry had agreed to walk provided Prince Philip joined them. Spencer says he accepted that, but only after writing down that they must not be “dragooned” into doing it.

That account is already uncomfortable enough. But what makes it even more striking is that Alastair Campbell’s contemporaneous diaries support the broader picture of Palace officials worrying about Charles’s reception from the public.

Campbell recorded discussions in the days before the funeral showing that St James’s Palace feared Charles could face hostility if he walked without William. Charles’s press secretary, Sandy Henney, was sent to Balmoral to talk to William, who was reportedly reluctant to take part.

According to Campbell’s account, William’s presence was also seen as something that could reduce the risk of Charles being publicly attacked by the crowd. And that changes the picture considerably.

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William and Harry Became a Shield for Charles

For nearly 30 years, the public has been shown that funeral procession as an image of duty. Two grieving boys walked behind their mother’s coffin because that was what was expected of them as princes. But behind the scenes, the Palace was also dealing with a major problem: Charles was deeply unpopular after Diana’s death.

That means William and Harry’s presence was not only emotionally significant. It was politically useful to the institution. Who was going to shout abuse at Charles with his two grieving sons standing beside him?

Spencer has also been making versions of this claim for years. He said as far back as 2002 that he believed Palace officials had misled him about whether William and Harry really wanted to walk.

So this is not something he suddenly invented for a memoir in 2026. The new book simply gives us more detail about how bitter that fight apparently became.

Harry has already made clear that the procession was traumatic. In Spare and later in The Me You Can’t See, he described being 12 years old, grieving his mother and having to walk behind her coffin in front of the world, something he has said no child should have been asked to do. Spencer’s account adds another troubling layer: while Harry and William were being asked to perform that public duty, Palace officials were also considering how their presence might shield Charles from hostility in the crowd.