Key Takeaways
- Charles Spencer says his memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, will correct entrenched narratives about Princess Diana through his brother’s perspective.
- Spencer calls the book a personal tribute and says Diana “would, I reckon, have approved of every word.”
- The memoir continues the defense he mounted at Diana’s 1997 funeral, where he condemned the forces surrounding her and vowed to protect Prince William and Prince Harry from being consumed by “duty and tradition.”
Charles Spencer apparently wasn't finished at Westminster Abbey.
Nearly 30 years after Princess Diana's brother stood at her funeral and delivered a eulogy that doubled as an extraordinary public rebuke of the forces surrounding her, the 9th Earl Spencer is picking up where he left off.
Spencer, 62, shared a first look at the physical copy of Swan Song: Diana, My Sister on Instagram ahead of its September 22 release, calling the memoir the most personal of the 10 books he has written. Unlike the endless biographies, documentaries, and royal retrospectives that have interpreted Diana since her 1997 death, Spencer says this one comes deliberately from inside the family.
“At heart, this is a brother’s simple tribute to an extraordinary sister,” he wrote on Instagram.
But “simple tribute” may undersell what Spencer is doing. Swan Song marks the first time he has spoken openly and at length about Diana, and he has explicitly positioned the book as a correction to narratives about his sister that he believes have hardened into accepted fact.
After spending three days recording its audiobook, Spencer said he knew he'd accomplished what he set out to do.
“When I finished the recording, I thought: ‘That is exactly what I wanted and needed to say—and she would, I reckon, have approved of every word,’” he wrote.
That mission will sound familiar to anyone who remembers Diana's funeral.
Standing inside Westminster Abbey in September 1997, Spencer delivered a eulogy that praised his sister while taking unmistakable aim at the institutions surrounding her. He called Diana “the most hunted person of the modern age” and promised that her blood family would help protect Prince William and Prince Harry so their “souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition.”
Harry later revealed just how far that protectiveness went. In Spare, he recalled Spencer “raised hell” when he learned the 12- and 15-year-old princes were expected to walk publicly behind Diana's coffin.
“You can’t make these boys walk behind their mother’s coffin!” Spencer reportedly protested. “It’s barbaric.”
Swan Song brings him back to that same unfinished business. Spencer said the flood of interview requests surrounding another anniversary of Diana's death convinced him to finally put his own account on paper rather than continue watching other people define her.
“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 said.
