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Buckingham Palace has rejected passages from a forthcoming memoir by Diana, Princess of Wales’s brother that claim the then-Prince of Wales dismissed public grief after her death. The book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, is due to be published on Tuesday 22 September.
Claims in the memoir
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The excerpt circulated ahead of publication quotes Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, describing a phone call with the prince in the days after Diana’s 1997 death. According to the passage, the prince reacted angrily when told the princess’s sons would not take part in the funeral procession.
Spencer recounts that the prince compared the situation to walking in the procession for his great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, and then—after a pause—said, “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough!” That line is presented in the excerpt as evidence of contempt for Diana and frustration at public mourning.
Palace response
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson has pushed back on the memoir’s account, warning that intense sibling grief can blur memories. The statement reiterated that, as a rule, the palace does not comment on books, while adding that “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.”
Royal schedule this week
Meanwhile, senior royals are scheduled to carry out public engagements on Thursday. The King is set to meet executives from leading artificial intelligence firms, including Nvidia, Anthropic and OpenAI, for discussions about the technology’s future.
The Prince and Princess of Wales will visit the Isles of Bute, where they will be known by their Scottish titles as the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay. Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, continues a visit to Zambia focused on strengthening ties between the country and the United Kingdom.
The memoir’s publication and the palace’s rebuttal arrive amid continued public interest in Diana’s legacy and in how the royal family remembers those events.
