Diana’s brother says the way the press treats Harry and Meghan looks like what it did to his sister. He called it “a cancerous influence in their life,” and he’s saying it days before a memoir lands that makes far more serious claims about King Charles.
Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer, told the BBC in an interview airing Sunday evening that press coverage of the couple has “echoes” of what Diana went through. He said tabloid stories about Diana or about Harry and Meghan “can be really, really unpleasant,” and that for anyone being torn down daily, “it must be such a cancerous influence in their life.”
He described the same pressure as a “destructive influence” that “already destroyed Lady Di in her day,” and said she was “really brought low by all that criticism.” His conclusion was that it should be “beholden on people to learn from Diana’s example.”
The book is the bigger story
Swan Song: Diana, My Sister comes out Tuesday from Michael Joseph, timed ahead of the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death next August.
Excerpts published by the Daily Mail contain the claims that will drive the coverage. Spencer writes that Charles told Diana he didn’t love her before their wedding, that Charles sounded “elated” at the news of her death, and that the now-King told him Diana would be forgotten “soon enough.”
Asked about that last one by the BBC on Friday, Spencer said he was “telling the truth.”
These are one man’s recollections of private conversations from nearly thirty years ago, published in a book he is promoting. They’re serious allegations and they’re also unverifiable, and both of those things need saying in the same breath.
Where Harry and Meghan actually are
For context on the comparison he’s drawing: King Charles confirmed this month that Harry and Meghan remain non-working royals, after reports in August that the couple were considering a move back to the UK.
The BeezLoop Take
The comparison he’s making is fair as far as it goes. The British tabloid model that hounded Diana was never dismantled, the same papers are still standing, and Harry has spent years in court proving unlawful information-gathering rather than just complaining about tone. Anyone dismissing this as celebrity whining has to explain the settlements.
Our reservation is about the messenger and the week. Spencer delivered the most famous indictment of the press in modern British history at Diana’s funeral in 1997, and he has standing nobody else has. He is also doing a BBC interview three days before his book goes on sale, and the press cycle he’s criticizing is the one selling it. That doesn’t make him wrong. It does mean the timing is a choice.
On the claims about Charles, we’d hold the line: report them as claims. A recollection of what someone said at a funeral thirty years ago is not evidence in the way a court record is, and outlets running “King was elated” as a headline are converting one man’s memory into established fact. Buckingham Palace has not responded, which is its longstanding practice and shouldn’t be read either way.
What to watch
Whether the Palace breaks its silence. It almost never does, and a response would tell you more about how seriously they take the book than anything in the reviews.
Sources: BBC via FMT · ITV News · Swan Song publication details
