Diana book sparks royal row between King Charles and Earl Spencer - The Latest

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0:30tend to follow story breaking memoir being published you know it can plunge the royal family back to a place where they're mired in scandal from the guardians today in focus this is the latest with me lucy hoff we've got yet another royal family drama playing out involving this very controversial and highly publicized memoir from earl spencer the brother of princess Diana. Aaron Sharpe, you're our senior national news editor. It revolves specifically around these remarks that are alleged to have been made by the then Prince Charles around the time of Diana's death. What's been said? This book will and does revisit one of the most painful chapters in the recent history of the royal family and as you rightly say revolves around the time of Diana's death and in particular the preparation for her funeral.

1:23The conversation that's outlined in the The book is one between L. Spencer, Diana's younger brother, and Prince Charles, as he was then, her former husband, King Charles, as he is now. And there's a discussion about whether or not the sons of Charles and Diana, Harry and William, should walk behind the coffin during the funeral. Charles, now the king, was very supportive of the idea that they should, in fact, insistent that they should. their uncle Earl Spencer felt very differently. And so the book says this resulted in an almighty row between the two. And that row came to its conclusion with some pretty devastating language, allegedly from the now king.

2:04Yeah. And that line being specifically, rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough. He hissed is how that's raised in Earl Spencer's memoir. So it's pretty damning stuff. And I think, you know, playing into that row is what people might remember from Princess Diana's funeral, where Earl Spencer stood up and spoke about her treatment at the hands of the media, that she was one of the most hunted women of her generation. And perhaps, you know, that revolving around wanting to protect Harry and William from the same treatment at the hands of the press. It's quite unusual. In fact, it's very unusual for Buckingham Palace to comment on something like this.

2:48When Prince Harry published his very controversial and very damning memoir, Spare, the palace said absolutely nothing and said, by protocol, we do not talk about books of this nature. But in contrast, they have issued a very strongly worded statement to this. Why do you think that is? Yeah, I think what we may be seeing is the end of the never complain, never explain era, which was famously the maxim of Queen Elizabeth, the way that she dealt with negative stories in the press. The king was very quick to respond to the allegations outlined in the book. He 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, which for the royal household is quite a striking rebuke to the claims which are outlined in the book.

3:40Yeah, yeah. The only other comparable phrase is recollections may vary after the Oprah Winfrey interview with Harry and Meghan, which has become part of my daily parlance in quite a useful way. So thank you for that, Buckingham Palace. I think the strength of that statement is because it brings us back to a time, 1997, the year of Diana's death, where the then Prince Charles was profoundly unpopular. Princess Diana was an adored figure who died so suddenly the whole nation was sort of plunged into grief. The royal family were very criticised at that time. Tony Blair, the then prime minister, described her as the people's princess.

4:22so it brings us back to that moment where also now Queen Camilla was also unpopular and I think you know there could be some real damage to their reputation or some reminders of their unpopularity of that time. Absolutely and I think the strength of the statement and the sort of immediacy of the statement that was issued probably speaks to the idea that the palace do not want to reopen that wound because it was a very painful episode but the royals people will only have to cast their mind back a few decades as as you rightly say to recall a moment where the royal family were being accused of being cruel and callous in their reaction to the death of diana they famously stayed up in balmoral after she died and didn't come back down to london then there was a row over whether or not the flag of buckingham palace should be flown a half mast and all of this was quite bruising for charles at the time and and really it's taken him those intervening decades to undergo something of a image rehabilitation he's got married camilla is now his wife.

5:23She's now the queen. And he's overseen what could be quite a difficult succession, you know, relatively smoothly. The last thing that he needs are the kind of allegations which are outlined in the book, which remind people that it's not always been such smooth sailing. Yeah. And that there were three people in that marriage that he had an affair and that Diana was famously, you know, for much of her life, not a happy woman. The timing of this book, And, you know, her brother's decision to write a memoir about his relationship with her is particularly interesting because it coincides almost exactly with the return of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan to the UK after six years of living abroad, for the most part in Montecito in California.

6:11that return has caused some headlines to do with their security. But do you think we can read anything into that timing? Because it is reported that Earl Spencer does have quite a good relationship with Harry and Meghan and does support them behind the scenes. Yeah, I mean, it's tempting to see all of these things as one issue. And the issue is that there are negative news stories and clouds swirling around the royal family in a way which is not going to be helpful to them as they go about their daily duties. Obviously, when Harry and Meghan came back to the UK, with them comes the media circus, comes the story, comes the headlines.

6:50We've already seen that the palace have had to issue a letter in itself, a kind of unusual thing to do to reassure the public that they are not full-time working royals. We think that's probably to get ahead of any suggestion that Harry and Meghan might be here at the taxpayer's expense. The position of the palace is that they're not. Then there have been these stories around the schooling. The kids were enrolled in a UK school. Now they've been pulled out of that school because allegedly the traffic around the school was too bad for them to get in and out of the school gates in a way that was safe.

7:24And now, of course, we've got Earl Spencer's book. And as you rightly say, Earl Spencer is close with Harry, has been all of his life. They have that shared hostility to the press. the hostility which was laid out in L. Spencer's eulogy at the funeral all those years ago. Yeah, so as you mentioned, when Harry and Meghan returned to the UK, the palace issued the statement reminding people that they're not working royals, something that Harry and Meghan expressed their sort of surprise that that had been issued as a public statement. But I think this week we've seen probably what the palace were worried about in action a bit, because on Thursday we had Prince Harry speaking at Invictus Games awards ceremony on the same day that his dad, the king, was at a kind of a major event about artificial intelligence, which he would be hoping would make headlines.

8:14But as ever, the gossip around the family tends to supersede whatever the palace would like to lead the headlines. That's right. And it's always the risk when you've got a story like that of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex back on home turf because wherever they go, headlines tend to follow. And from the Royal's family's point of view, they want to be getting on with the kind of active service which they'd like to be known for and seen to be doing. However, there is now always the heightened risk of a story breaking, a memoir being published, an event being spoken at where, you know, it can plunge the royal family back to a place where they're mired in scandal and having to issue statements and generally is a kind of distraction from the stuff that they really want to be seen to be doing.

9:06Yeah, absolutely. Well, Aaron, thank you so much. You're welcome. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Aaron Sharp, The Guardian's senior national news editor. You can keep up with all our reporting on this story over at theguardian.com. And before I go, I really recommend that you listen to our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America, which is looking at Trump's AI obsession and what it means for the world. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus will be back in your feeds on Monday morning. The Latest will be back on Monday night. Have a lovely weekend. This episode was produced by Angus Neal and Bryony Moore.

9:39The senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin. The executive producer was Zoe Hitch. And it was presented by me, Lucy Hough.

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