Princess Diana’s brother claims Charles was ‘giddily elated’ after Diana’s death.
Charles appeared “giddily elated like a lottery winner” when he spoke to Princess Diana’s brother shortly after her death in 1997, according to a new memoir by Diana’s younger brother, Charles Spencer. Charles also told him that he had informed his sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, of their mother’s death that morning at Balmoral. Spencer says the conversation sounded “strangely matter-of-fact” given the circumstances.
In an extract from his forthcoming book Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Spencer recalls receiving a call from the then Prince Charles after Diana died in a car crash in Paris.
The book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, is due to be published next week, with the latest extracts likely to renew scrutiny of the relationship between Diana, Charles and the wider royal family.
Charles and Diana married in 1981 but separated in 1992 after years of marital difficulties. Their divorce was finalised in 1996, just a year before Diana’s death. Looking back, Spencer writes that he suspected Charles’s immediate reaction may have been focused on what Diana’s death meant for his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. The claim comes nearly three decades after Diana’s death and forms part of Spencer’s highly personal account of his sister’s life and her troubled marriage to Charles.