At issue is Earl Spencer’s account of a conversation with the then Prince Charles after the death of Diana, with the prince accused of telling Earl Spencer: “We’ll forget her soon enough.”
He is accused of sounding “giddily elated” and like a “lottery winner” after the news of her death.
Buckingham Palace hit back with a response, which although dressed in courtier-like politeness, was essentially saying the conversation had never happened like that.
The King was said to be “mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways that others do not recognise”.
Anyone who has lost someone knows how feelings can run high, people can hear different things about the same conversations – and families can fall out, or come together, in the wake of a death.
Psychotherapist Nick Hatter says he doesn’t have a view on which version of events is correct, but he says that during traumatic events memories can be “distorted”. A phone call doesn’t have any of the visual clues or body language to give a fuller picture, he adds.
Hatter says there can be very different and unpredictable responses to grief, including a condition known as “bereavement mania” where someone can seem inappropriately hyper or even euphoric after the loss of a loved one.
The first opinion poll on who to believe has been published by YouGov – and it suggests a very split view, with 31% believing Earl Spencer’s allegations, 36% suspecting it’s not true and 33% saying they don’t know.
Low thinks the book is unlikely to change many opinions, as “people have settled into their camps about how they regard Charles, how they look back on the Diana years”.
There could also be a feeling that it’s “tawdry” to rake up these claims so many years later, he says.
That’s echoed by historian and author Sir Anthony Seldon who says Earl Spencer showed great courage at the time of Diana’s funeral, but says his memoir is a “sad and unnecessary publication”.
Royal commentator Richard Palmer says the book threatens to take the royals back to the difficult days of 1997.
“This book and the run-up to next year’s 30th anniversary of Diana’s death threaten to undermine the Royal Household’s three decades of work to rehabilitate Charles and Camilla’s image,” he says.
Veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby, who led the BBC’s coverage of Diana’s funeral, said it seemed “odd” Earl Spencer would release the book now.
“Why 30 years later for god sake you should do it, well again you have to ask him,” he said, adding he wished the appetite for the “cycle of gossip” would decline and instead focus would shift to what kind of monarchy the country needs.
