Is the King gaslighting Diana's brother?

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1:05Jackie Annesley:Why would you suddenly produce a book about your dead sister? The Queen used that brilliant phrase, recollections may vary, as a way of saying, I don't think so. We have seen that the King has got a temper. And what Charles here is doing is trying masterfully to shut down that whole episode.

1:23Gavin Esler:Is it conceivable that the Prince of Wales, the King as he is now, said those comments, Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough.

1:30Jackie Annesley:I was talking to a good friend of the King's who said he's very upset. That tension, from what I'm hearing, is still present. It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana,

1:44Gavin Esler:perhaps the greatest was this. A girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age. She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys, William and Harry, from a similar fate And I do this here, Diana, on your behalf We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair And beyond that, on behalf of your mother and sisters I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men, so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition, but can sing openly as you planned.

2:34Jackie Annesley:That was Princess Diana's brother, Earl Spencer. His eulogy at her funeral on the 6th of September 1997 changed the entire tenor of that moment and set up a historical rift between those two families.

2:55Gavin Esler:Now, 29 years on, that rift has grown ever wider, with Earl Spencer producing a memoir in which he claims that the king said, rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough. Why are these two families still fighting over the legacy of a woman who died nearly 30 years ago? Welcome to The News Agents.

3:30It's John.

3:31Gavin Esler:It's Maitlis. And we learnt yesterday that the Mail was going to serialise a memoir from Earl Spencer, Charles Spencer, who we heard there in that clip giving the eulogy in Westminster Cathedral after Diana died. And an explosive claim that apparently the king, then the Prince of Wales, said, rest assured, we'll forget about Diana soon enough. And that wasn't the end of it. The palace fired back almost immediately, saying maybe grief had clouded the reasoning of Earl Spencer and he wasn't remembering things properly. This was a conversation, allegedly, that took place between Charles Spencer and Charles Windsor.

4:21Gavin Esler:And only those two people on the call knew what was said. But why now? Why is Earl Spencer bringing this out at this particular time when the king is on the throne and by all accounts in very poor health?

4:41Jackie Annesley:It was really interesting, that statement, and I think we should sort of dig into it a little bit further, because in essence, he was said to be mindful, a very Charles sort of use of words. Earl Spencer's grief for his sister could cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory. On the surface of it, it sounds almost affectionate. It sounds like you're worrying about somebody who's in the depths of their grief. What he's really doing, I think, is updating that statement that the Queen herself made after Meghan and Harry came out with their accusations of racism, the royal family. And the Queen used that very brilliant phrase, recollections may vary.

5:37Jackie Annesley:And recollections may vary. I think it's now entered common parlance, hasn't it, as a way of saying, oh, you know, I don't think so. She doesn't have a clue or not quite. And what Charles here is doing is trying, I think, masterfully to shut down that whole episode and shut down the phone call and also remind us that if this man is still in profound fraternal grief 30 years on, what is this book about? You know, where does the book come into it? Why would you suddenly produce a book about your dead sister and have it serialised in the mail? I think contained in that phrase by the king were all these sort of offshoots of the bigger question.

6:25Jackie Annesley:But it does take us to the heart of something that I guess our younger listeners won't know about, certainly won't remember from the time, which was the funeral itself. And the controversy around the weeks preceding it, after Diana's death, the role that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh played, and whether they were present enough, whether they were part of the public sort of vision of Diana's death enough, whether they were trying to protect Diana's children enough. And this whole question that we remember really well, which was the boys made to walk behind part of the funeral procession, carry their mother's coffin.

7:10Jackie Annesley:And apparently that question was right at the heart of what Earl Spencer was talking about. and the phone call where he was telling Charles that should never have been allowed. It's something I think Prince Harry has also reflected on, like how was a nine-year-old kid put in a position of having to be stared at by the entire world, billions of eyeballs around the world whilst he was essentially part of his mother's funeral procession?

7:38Gavin Esler:Yes, I think that that is absolutely spot on. And that phrase from Charles Spencer's oration, their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you'd planned Diana that was absolutely a shot across the bowels of the royal family of do not turn these kids into kind of just these manufactured mannequins who only ever do royal duties and don't have the chance to be their own people and the really telling thing about that and I remember it vividly was he said those words, and it's obviously silent in the cathedral, but then applause ripples out from the tens of thousands of people listening outside.

8:25The unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana,

8:30Gavin Esler:whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds.

8:48Gavin Esler:And it sounded like a gauntlet being thrown down to the royal family by Charles Spencer, because as you say, Emily, at the time, there was a lot of discontent about the fact that the royal family hadn't come back to London quickly enough, whether the flag could be flown at half mast. And then, of course, they started talking about all this absurd protocol about which flag flies on Buckingham Palace when the Queen is not in residence. And it just seemed like the Queen was out of touch. That was the charge that was made. When in fact, actually, I think probably what the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were doing is saying, look, you're in Balmoral.

9:23Gavin Esler:You can be kind of, you're safe here. This is a safe space for you in which to let the boys cry, let the boys cry and keeping the way from the public glaze. But then you come spin forward 29 years to today and what is so unusual is in the statement from the palace is that the normal mantra of the royal family is never complain never explain you take it people can write what they bloody well like in the papers if you're going to dignify everything that is ever written in a newspaper about you you will never be doing anything other than issuing statements or rebuttals and yet on this they have issued a rebuttal and i think what it speaks to is one absolute rage and fury that charles spencer has done this and i was speaking to someone last night who's close to the royal you know the leading figures of the royal family who said he is a vile man um it speaks to that and it speaks to the fact that they probably realize that today is thursday there will be serialisation tomorrow, there'll be serialisation on Saturday, there'll be more revelations on Sunday, and so it will go on.

10:32Gavin Esler:And I think they just wanted to get their defence out quickly, fast, and, you know, and strongly and powerfully, which is what they've done.

10:41Jackie Annesley:Yeah, I mean, if you go back to that line, not simply immersed by duty and tradition, but can sing openly, that really takes us to the dichotomy, really, that face those boys when the parents split up because Charles was seen as, you know, very erudite, bookish, clearly wedded to tradition because he was going to inherit the throne. And Diana was seen as the free spirit, the woman who would go in the dead of night and visit the homeless, shake the hands of the AIDS victim. I can't tell you how powerful that was as a gesture to, you know, young gay men in the sort of 80s and 90s that she broke all protocol.

11:25Jackie Annesley:She took her kids with her often. She said, these are not victims that we shun. These are people that you try and understand. And it really shifted the debate on AIDS, just as it really shifted the debate on homelessness. And I think there was a wariness amongst the sort of more traditional members of the royal family as to what are you doing? Are you just trying to court the public? It's a little bit like the conversation we're having now about the TikTokification of politics. You know, are you just a very good communicator? Are you trying to sort of, you know, get round the palace by by sort of doing all your touchy feely stuff?

11:59Jackie Annesley:You know, she was called the Princess of Hearts, you know, that that whole thing sort of stuck. And I think what's interesting is now, if you look at the division still between the boys, you've essentially got that same pull, which is, you know, how much of you has to remain rooted in protocol and tradition and saying and wearing the right things and how much of you runs off to Oprah and spills your heart out. There was this sort of the Diana Charles thing is still sort of very present. And I was told, actually, I mean, I was talking to a good friend of the King's who said he's very upset. That was what I heard.

12:38Jackie Annesley:He's very upset about this. That's why you've got this statement now. He thinks that Earl Spencer is trying to sell books. But I think he also realises that some people will hear that phone call, you know, and go, yeah, that probably could have happened. It doesn't sound impossible. I could sort of believe Charles. And I think there is this debate right now about the direction that William is pulling in, where he wants to devote a lot of his attention to homelessness. You know, he wants to do homelessness and mental health, the stuff that was very close to his mother. And the king is actually also trying to say, yeah, but, you know, kind of look at the big picture.

13:16Jackie Annesley:A lot of people are doing homelessness. A lot of people are doing mental health. You can actually do stuff that has a sort of longer, a longer legacy in the land, in the country, in the sort of shape of Britain. And so I think that tension from what I'm hearing is still present.

13:32Gavin Esler:Yeah. And I think that's interesting. The question, you know, is it conceivable that the Prince of Wales, the king as he is now, said those comments, rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough. and you kind of think, well, we have seen that the king has got a temper. There have been plenty of accounts where he has been petulant. When Princess Di died, I mean, the tensions were extraordinary in this country. I mean, you know, Britain went mad for two or three weeks. We were all grieving. We were all going to sign books of condolence.

14:07Jackie Annesley:I think it's fair to say we were grieving different things. For some people, it was literally the disappearance of Diana. For some people, it kind of unlocked something. It was the most un-British thing. It was the most un-British thing.

14:18Gavin Esler:It was the end of the stiff upper lip.

14:20Jackie Annesley:Exactly.

14:20Gavin Esler:It was the weak, wobbly lip that suddenly had predominance in Britain in the weeks after her death. So is it possible a conversation took place with Charles, who had to go to Paris to bring the body back to London, you know, lost his rag a moment in a conversation? It's possible. We don't know for certain. It's just one person's word against another. But I come back to that question. Why now? Why, 29 years later, do you want to give air and ventilate that particular comment that was made in the heat of despair and fraughtness and just, you know, the madness that was taking and gripping Britain and the royal family at that time?

15:08Gavin Esler:And you think, well, what is Charles Spencer doing? Why is he doing it now? Well, we know that he's quite close to Harry.

15:15Jackie Annesley:I mean, look, I think... I mean, it does feel a bit of that, doesn't it? There's a lot of things that we should kind of say, the boring sort of, you know, housekeeping in this, which is that A, the book will have been written probably a year ago. B, he won't have chosen which headlines were serialised by the mail. The mail will have gone for the most sensational thing and will have picked that out. And maybe he'll be happy about that. Or maybe he'll feel that, you know, he got his pound of flesh and he received the money for it, but he wouldn't have chosen that line himself. You don't know what went on in those conversations beforehand.

15:45Jackie Annesley:And I would also say that obviously Harry coming back in September wasn't meant to be timed exactly with this book. So sometimes you can add things together and they make a bigger sum of the parts than the truth actually permits.

15:58Gavin Esler:But it's easy to portray this as Team Harry and Team William. And Team Harry being Harry and his uncle, Charles Spencer, and Team William being William and the King and all of that side of it. I mean, it really is, you know, it does look like they're kind of people are taking sides here again.

16:16Jackie Annesley:Yeah. And I think, I mean, to your point about we lost our collective mind, it's also we're sort of talking a little bit about Tony Blair's part in this, Alistair Campbell's part of this, because Blair was new to the, I was going to say the throne, but you know what I mean? He was just in number 10 as of May the 1st, 1997. And this was his first sort of big public act to essentially go to tell the Queen, go to tell the senior royals that they had to be more visible. They had to be more present and they had to be sort of, you know, on the streets with their grieving public. And I think it was Alistair Campbell.

16:51Jackie Annesley:I'm sure we'll hear from him if it wasn't or if I've got this wrong. But I think it was him that coined this phrase, you know, the people's princess. and he was sort of very helpful to Blair, to setting this narrative of like, do you realise the scale of what has just happened? I wonder whether if it hadn't been Blair and if it hadn't been sort of three months into the job and if it hadn't been that sort of cool Britannia age where London was buzzing and everything was happening and Noel Gallagher was hanging around Downing Street and the Union Jet was on the front of Vanity Fair, we would have sort of entered into that whole debate in quite the same way.

17:33Jackie Annesley:Because as you say, I think now we're actually less wowed by the comms of it and we're probably more in favour of privacy. And maybe the Queen's own response was absolutely right, which was, this is a private thing first. We'll come out when it's time to come out. But a lot of, I mean, as you know, So, you know, a lot of religions and a lot of sort of traditions have a period of intense mourning, you know, before it becomes sort of public again.

18:05Gavin Esler:Just one other aspect to this, and it goes to the question that we've been talking about, about why the royal family and while the king or through his, you know, comms department responded so quickly and so firmly, is I think there's such a difference between attitudes in Britain and attitudes in other parts of the world. this will be playing huge in America where I couldn't believe it when I moved to the States which was you know 20 years after Diana died and people were still saying to me well what do you think of what he did to her I'm saying sorry what do you mean what what what Charles did to Diana well that was that was history and for an awful lot of people it's no no that with they're still debating that and Australia too it's a huge story today about this in a way that I think in Britain People without quite enough history of their own, dare I say.

18:56Gavin Esler:Yeah. Sorry. Exactly. But I think that you think, you know, I think in Britain we think, I know the Charles Diana thing was awful and it was, you know, a breakup of a marriage and it was painful and agonising and awful what happened in the Alma Tunnel in Paris and that car chase and the paparazzi, et cetera, et cetera. But we've moved on. I mean, you know, Charles is the king, Camilla is the queen, and that is sort of part of history. whereas I think that you know Charles Spencer is probably very shrewdly thinking this is going to sell a lot of books in America it will sell a lot of books everywhere else and you know to get this book out just before the 30th anniversary of her death when there'll be a huge amount of stuff being published is probably very smart and shrewd on his part.