The British Press Sold Diana for Decades. Now It Accuses Her Brother of Cashing In

For nearly 30 years, Princess Diana has been a publishing phenomenon of mammoth proportions. Biographers, royal correspondents, former employees, acquaintances and many writers who never met her have reconstructed her marriage, her mental health, her friendships, her arguments and her final days. Tina Brown built The Diana Chronicles from more than 250 interviews. She also recently pushed the unconfirmed story that Meghan Sussex lost a Gentlemen role over “backlash.”

Yet when Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer, writes his own account in his book titled Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the “King’s allies” suddenly accuse him of “peddling Diana’s privacy” and exploiting her memory. Apparently everyone could tell Diana’s story except the brother who actually shared part of that life with her.

Charles Spencer Is Not an Anonymous Palace Source

Spencer is not telling readers that “a friend of Diana remembers.” He says he personally took part in the disputed call. He had only two telephone conversations with Prince Charles and was therefore “hyper alert.” The alleged “we’ll forget her soon enough” remark was so “monstrous” he immediately repeated it to close friends and relatives. Asked whom to believe, he said: “I’m telling the truth.”

Look at the bookshelf. Diana has inspired an enormous publishing industry spanning five decades, with books by Penny Junor, Robert Lacey, Andrew Morton, Tina Brown, Paul Burrell, Patrick Jephson and Ken Wharfe. The “people who knew Diana” panel includes Morton, Wharfe, Jephson, Burrell, several of whom have since become regular commentators on Prince Harry and Meghan Sussex, sometimes invoking their memories of Diana to criticise or interpret her son’s choices.

Royal journalism has spent decades asking readers to trust people whose names we never learn, and treating familiar royal commentators as inherently credible when they criticise Diana’s son. Spencer is doing the opposite: putting his name to it. Not proof that every recollection is infallible. But it is a level of transparency that anonymous Palace sourcing does not provide.

When Memory Didn’t End the Story, Suddenly It Became About Money

‘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.’

Daily Mail

The title itself is revealing. A ‘swan song’ traditionally means a final significant performance or act. In the context of Spencer saying he wanted to write this while he still could, the title reads as an attempt to put his account on the record rather than leave it unwritten.

Allies of the King have accused Spencer of “peddling” Diana’s privacy and questioned whether the memoir is motivated by money or revenge. Spencer’s answer is emphatic: money was “never even the remotest consideration.” He is a historian, he says, correcting myths while he can, writing about his own sister.

Where was this sudden moral panic while publishers spent decades selling books about Diana written by reporters, servants, acquaintances and biographers? Writing about Diana apparently becomes exploitation only when the author is her brother and some of his memories are inconvenient for the King.

Outsiders absolutely have a place in historical research. Journalists, historians, staff and witnesses can preserve important evidence. But their work does not somehow outrank firsthand testimony simply because the firsthand witness is inconvenient. Spencer is Diana’s younger brother, shared her childhood, participated in the funeral negotiations, and was a published historian long before this memoir, his tenth book.

The Press Has Already Published False Stories About Spencer and Had to Correct Them

In 2018, Associated Newspapers accepted that its implication that Spencer callously refused Diana somewhere to live was defamatory and untrue; although he did not provide the Garden House, he offered alternatives including Wormleighton Manor. In 2021, The Times corrected another version, and Spencer said it was the third legal correction of the same recurring allegation.

That means newspapers and commentators like Dickie Arbiter should be especially cautious before reviving familiar narratives about him as the selfish brother who failed Diana. Scrutiny means checking evidence. Repeating allegations newspapers have already had to retract is something else.

For decades, Diana’s memory has been mediated through Palace biographies, former staff, unnamed sources and royal correspondents interpreting what she allegedly thought. Spencer is disrupting that structure because he is not hiding behind anybody. There is no anonymous “friend of the family” to blame if readers dislike his account. Charles Spencer signed his name to it.

Diana Became History Long Before the Palace Was Ready for It

The controversy is larger than one disputed phone call. It is about who gets to shape the historical record once a royal scandal becomes history rather than current affairs.

Diana now occupies a cultural space far beyond the monarchy of the 1990s. Like Anne Boleyn, Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, she has become one of those women whose image, treatment and legacy continue to be reinterpreted long after the events themselves. Some historians have placed Diana within a much older tradition of ‘wronged royal women’ whose reputations continued to evolve long after their deaths.

That is why Spencer’s allegation that Charles told him, “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough,” is so striking. If the recollection is accurate (which I believe it is), time delivered the opposite verdict. Diana did not fade into the background. Her death altered the monarchy’s relationship with the public, and arguments over her treatment still shape royal coverage today.

There is also a historical irony here. Henry VIII could not prevent Anne Boleyn from becoming one of the most studied women in British history, despite her execution and the uncertainty surrounding her surviving likenesses. The comparison is not exact, but the broader sentiment is familiar: powerful men and institutions often underestimate how stubbornly history remembers women they expect to disappear.

Nearly 30 years after Diana’s death, that process is still unfolding. Charles Spencer is not claiming the final word on his sister. He is adding his own testimony to a historical record that will continue to be debated long after today’s Palace briefings and newspaper headlines have disappeared.