Charles Spencer has insisted he is telling the truth about an alleged remark by King Charles that Diana, Princess of Wales, would be forgotten soon after her death, calling the comment monstrous. The claim, which appears in Spencer's memoir, has drawn an extraordinary rebuttal from Buckingham Palace and a fresh round of public argument over the private conduct of the royal family at a moment of national grief.
At the centre of the dispute is Spencer's account of a telephone call with Charles, then Prince of Wales, in the days following Diana's death in 1997. According to Spencer, Charles said: «Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough.» Spencer has described the remark as monstrous and has refused to withdraw it, saying he is telling the truth. The allegation is set out in his book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail.
Buckingham Palace responded with an unusual public statement that did not directly deny the conversation but questioned Spencer's recollection. The palace said the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise. The wording stopped short of calling Spencer a liar, yet it clearly challenged the reliability of his account and signalled that the royal household would not let the claim pass unchallenged.
Spencer has said his memoir was written to correct untruths told about his older sister. That framing places the book in a long-running contest over how Diana is remembered and who has the authority to describe her final years and the aftermath of her death. By presenting the book as a corrective, Spencer has cast himself as a custodian of his sister's reputation against what he regards as a sanitised or distorted public narrative.
The intervention by the palace has raised the stakes. Royal statements of this kind are rare, and the decision to issue one suggests the claim was judged damaging enough to require a formal response. The palace's language about grief and memory also serves a defensive purpose, allowing it to dispute Spencer's version without engaging in a direct factual fight over a private telephone call that took place nearly three decades ago.
The dispute has revived scrutiny of the royal family's conduct in the week after Diana's death, when public mourning in Britain reached extraordinary intensity and the monarchy faced widespread criticism for its initial silence. Spencer's allegation touches directly on that period, and his decision to repeat it in a BBC interview ensures the argument will continue as the memoir is serialised and reviewed.
For readers, the episode is less a simple factual dispute than a collision between two accounts of grief. Spencer speaks as a brother who says he was told something callous at the worst possible moment. The palace speaks as an institution warning that memory is fallible under pressure. Neither side has produced independent evidence, and the passage of time makes verification unlikely.
What is clear is that Spencer is not backing down. His insistence that he is telling the truth, made in a broadcast interview, has turned a book serialisation into a public confrontation with the palace. The memoir's wider argument, that Diana has been misrepresented, now carries an additional charge: that the royal family itself sought to diminish her memory. The palace's rebuttal ensures that claim will be contested for as long as the book remains in the news.