{"id":632505,"date":"2026-09-22T14:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T14:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/632505\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T14:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T14:18:09","slug":"swan-song-by-charles-spencer-review-a-furious-exercise-in-score-settling-by-dianas-brother-autobiography-and-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/632505\/","title":{"rendered":"Swan Song by Charles Spencer review \u2013 a furious exercise in score-settling by Diana\u2019s brother | Autobiography and memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Spencer\u2019s Swan Song, a memoir of his relationship with his sister, the late Diana, Princess of Wales<\/a>, is a fascinating document that tells us a little about Diana and a great deal about Charles Spencer \u2013 perhaps more than we needed to know. If that sounds snarky, after 400 pages of score settling, chest thumping, wild indiscretion and some truly touching passages about his late sister, the reader is left with a head-spinning story of the world that created Diana and a certain sourness at the manner in which it is told.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the headlines in last week\u2019s Daily Mail, the newspaper to whom Spencer sold serialisation of a book which includes a line describing tabloid journalists as \u201cthose who inhabit the murky swamps of malevolence, and who need to suck their victims dry of their souls\u201d. Perhaps he meant a different set of hacks. Anyway the top line in the Mail was that, shortly after Diana\u2019s death, King Charles insulted her in a phone call to Spencer: \u201c\u2018Rest assured,\u2019 he hissed, \u2018we\u2019ll forget her soon enough.\u2019\u201d Your take on this quote will likely dictate how you receive the book, and here\u2019s mine: I\u2019m willing to believe the king behaved badly, but \u201chissed\u201d is a red flag, one of those embellishments, like \u201csnarled\u201d or \u201cflounced\u201d, that writers tend to use to make those they\u2019re writing about appear worse. Spencer, always the injured party, has so many axes grinding away in this book that at times it\u2019s impossible to hear what he\u2019s saying.<\/p>\n

Before we get to that, the question on everyone\u2019s lips is: why write this book now? Spencer maintains it\u2019s because, as the 30th anniversary of Diana\u2019s death drew near, he kept being asked to contribute to other people\u2019s projects. Rather than allow the narrative to be guided by \u201csome TV producer\u201d from a network \u201cI will never watch\u201d he promptly got on with his own. Likely that\u2019s not the sole reason; elsewhere in the book he writes about how, back in the day, his father was always at risk of running out of cash to run Althorp, the family\u2019s Northamptonshire estate, and one wonders if the present earl is having similar difficulties.<\/p>\n

Never mind. For fans of petty grievances, among whom I count myself, the book is an absolute corker of resentment, and in Spencer we have a hero who, decades after the fact, is still harping on about a great many things involving a large cast of characters who he has absolutely not forgiven for any of it. While telling the story of his and Diana\u2019s relationship, there are drive-bys on Peter Carter-Ruck, Princess Michael of Kent, Princess Margaret, his three ex-wives, whom he describes in an amazing parenthetical take down as \u201call double divorcees\u201d, and members of a police protection squad who, in 1986, let sniffer dogs jump all over his furniture.<\/p>\n

double quotation markSpencer writes that Charles\u2019s poor behaviour towards his sister began from the very start of their courtship<\/p>\n

If too many words are spent on, for example, the perfidiousness of Martin Bashir, I could read an entire book on the subject of Spencer\u2019s horror at what his stepmother, Raine, did to the interiors at Althorp, including installing \u201cexceptionally ugly double glazing\u201d, \u201cshiny velveteen\u201d upholstery, and \u201cunsightly wall-to-wall carpeting\u201d. (This is before we get to the scene in which Raine, standing at the top of the staircase in search of breakfast, bellows to staff below, \u201cwhere\u2019s my fucking egg?\u201d)<\/p>\n

Interspersed with these delights is a portrait of Diana that is affectionate, sad, and lovely in places. Spencer suffers the pain of the less famous sibling who doesn\u2019t want to give up his own version of their childhood and there\u2019s a stiffness to some passages as Spencer insists it was all less unhappy than the record implies. His portrait of their mother, Frances, feels like a useful corrective to a figure who has been publicly maligned, and who comes across in the book as the parent most responsible for Diana\u2019s gifts: spirited, mildly eccentric, a more interesting character than the plodding males in the Spencer line. (Charles, winningly, allows that this is the case, pointing out that the men in his family have always been outclassed by the women.)<\/p>\n

And of course there is the devastating account of the coldness and aggression of the then Prince of Wales. Spencer tells us that Charles\u2019s poor behaviour towards his sister began from the very start of their courtship, during which he commented on her weight, ignored her at parties and told her he didn\u2019t love her, to the extent that, Spencer writes, Diana tried to get out of the engagement. Their father told her it was too late. This all chimes with other accounts of the doomed marriage, albeit in gorier detail, and explains the fury of Spencer\u2019s finest hour, the speech he gave at Diana\u2019s funeral in which he lambasted not only the press but the royals, reclaiming the young princes William and Harry for their mother\u2019s \u201cblood family\u201d.<\/p>\n

At his best, in these passages, Spencer acts as a proxy for the rest of us by registering the absolute lunacy of those days after Diana\u2019s death \u2013 by which I mean not the public outpouring, but the behaviour of the royal family, who remained deaf to the nation\u2019s needs until they were forced to change course.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was Prince Charles actually doing there?\u201d writes Spencer, incredulously, in relation to his former brother-in-law\u2019s prominent role at the funeral, pointing out to some comic effect that no one wants their \u201cex\u201d at their funeral? Diana\u2019s former husband was there because the young princes were there, walking for two miles behind their mother\u2019s coffin while mourners wailed and shouted out at them, an outcome Spencer had vigorously argued against. Now, he writes flatly, \u201cIt all seemed mad to me \u2013 the more so as I began to appreciate the extent of the ordeal we had embarked on.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be honest, at times in this book, they all seem quite mad. \u201cThat\u2019s it … it\u2019s curtains … Duch is dead,\u201d Spencer reports his sister Jane as saying to him on the phone when news of Diana\u2019s death was confirmed. Before the funeral, per Spencer\u2019s account, Prince Charles wanted to walk behind the coffin in the middle, centre stage, until brought up short by his father, Prince Philip, who said words to the effect of don\u2019t be so bloody silly, and put Charles Spencer in the centre, with the boys either side and Diana\u2019s ex-husband and ex-father in law on the outside. There was a split second, writes Spencer, when it seemed as if the pall-bearers might buckle under the weight of Diana\u2019s reinforced, lead-lined coffin. All of this is fascinating and Spencer tells it well.<\/p>\n

Still, the book suffers from problems of self pity and self regard (I won\u2019t get into the passages about Spencer\u2019s ADHD or the weasily justifications he gives for telling Diana, in her hour of need, that she couldn\u2019t move into a property on the Althorp estate; the main house has 90 rooms). Every few chapters we return to the unfolding play-by-play of how he wrote his speech \u2013 the decision he made to substitute the word \u201cpower\u201d for the word \u201cstrength\u201d; how his oratory gathered, his greatness formed, and look, it was a fantastic speech, but at some point in the book you start to think, alright Alexander Hamilton, give it a rest. Before the funeral, Spencer visits Diana lying in her casket and reads out his speech to her, sensing that his dead sister is \u201capplauding my words, with soft insistence\u201d. Even here, Spencer manages to take centre stage.<\/p>\n

After the book\u2019s litany of bitter grievances I came away wondering whether Spencer has been in the ear of his nephew Prince Harry these last few years. Mostly, however, I felt sadness for the insurmountable difficulties his sister faced marrying into that family. The king is peevish all the way through and Spencer is peevish right back at him. You come away feeling the pair thoroughly deserved each other. And in the middle Diana, 30 years dead, frozen in time and \u2013 as she ever was \u2013 at the mercy of other people\u2019s interpretations.<\/p>\n

Swan Song: Diana, My Sister by Charles Spencer is published by Michael Joseph (\u00a328). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Spencer\u2019s Swan Song, a memoir of his relationship with his sister, the late Diana, Princess of Wales,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-632505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}