A photograph of Diana, Princess of Wales with floral tributes and messages of condolence outside Kensington Palace in 1997. Photograph: Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images
Prince Charles told Earl Spencer days after the death of his sister Diana, Princess of Wales, that “rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough”, it is alleged in a memoir to be published this month.
Charles Spencer’s book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, contains the claim that the comments were made by the now king during a heated argument over funeral arrangements.
The Daily Mail, which is serialising the book, said Spencer insisted to the then Prince of Wales that Diana would not have wanted her sons, William, then 15, and Harry, then 12, to walk in their mother’s funeral procession.
Spencer writes that the comments “unleashed” by Charles almost 30 years ago reflected “his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death” the Daily Mail reported.
In his book, Spencer writes that when one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides told him in the days before the funeral that William and Harry would take part in the procession, he responded: “That’s not going to happen,” the paper said.
But minutes later he received a phone call from Charles, who insisted it should. It was during the ensuing argument between the two men that Charles allegedly made the comment, with Spencer reportedly writing: “Rest assured,” he hissed, “we’ll forget her soon enough!’”
Spencer wrote that he was stunned by the alleged remark and took a few seconds to reply, writing: “‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ I said flatly, before hanging up.”
Swan Song is due to be published worldwide next Tuesday – in the UK by Penguin Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House.
Four copies of the Dutch language edition were reportedly taken from a truck while it was en route from the Dutch publisher’s printers to their warehouse in the Netherlands.
Diana, who died aged 36 after a car crash in Paris in 1997, would have turned 65 on 1 July this year.
Spencer said that he had been inundated with interview requests in advance of the 30th anniversary of her death next year, and wanted to write down his own thoughts and memories rather than “having the discomfort of again reading the opinions of others”.
“The aim of this book is to tell the truth about Diana from her brother’s perspective, just as I attempted to do when speaking at her funeral,” he added, referring to the eulogy he gave in Westminster Abbey.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson 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.”
