He batted away claims that he was acting out of spite or “remembering things wrong” because of his upset, and responded strongly to claims from Buckingham Palace that he was misremembering things because of his grief.
Earl Spencer, brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, said he misses his sister every day during an interview with the BBC but threatened that more outrageous claims could come out next “That’s the thing with sibling loss, you never get over it,” he told Laura Kuenssberg in an exclusive chat aired on BBC One at 6.30pm.
He batted away claims that he was acting out of spite or “remembering things wrong” because of grief, and responded strongly to claims from Buckingham Palace that he was misremembering things because of his grief.
He made the bombshell claim that King Charles said of Diana, “rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough” days after her death, saying he is telling the truth. But Buckingham Palace issued an out of character response, saying “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise”.
But he doubled down on his story in the interview, telling Laura Kuenssberg: “I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said.”
Responding to the palace’s statement, Spencer said: “Well, is he furious? Is he furious, or is he embarrassed?” When asked about the inference that his memory was coloured, Spencer said: “They’ve sort of smudged that one, haven’t they? They’ve said that recollections may vary.”
He then hinted that he has kept worse things out of his book.
“I am not a salacious writer,” he said. “But if I was, there were a lot more things that I could have said.”
When asked if that was a threat, he said: “Not at all. I am not a salacious writer but I have plenty of other things I could have said.”
He also said that there are similarities between the way his sister Diana, Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been treated by the press and voiced “his concern as an uncle” as to the safety of Harry who is “fifth in line to the throne.”
He said Princess Diana was “brought low” by press criticism of her and that it is a “pity” to see echoes of that in Harry and Meghan’s lives now.
He added that people should learn from Princess Diana’s example, and that for anyone being “destroyed daily” by the tabloid press, it must be a “cancerous influence” on their lives.
“As a concerned uncle, I worry about Harry. I would veer towards protection for him. As a man who lost a sister in a very preventable way, I would not want that to happen again,” he said.
His book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, is due to be published on Tuesday and is expected to be highly critical of the Royal Family.
He said one of the reasons the book is called Swan Song is because it is his “sign off” as Diana’s brother and “final take on the situation”.
“This is my swan song too. I’m not here to bang on about Diana, this is my final word, celebration of her,” he added.
When asked if anything else would come out, he said: “No, this is my story.”
The full interview, Princess Diana: My Sister’s Story, is available on BBC iPlayer and will be broadcast on BBC One at 18:30 BST on Sunday.