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Earl Spencer has made a dramatic allegation about the then-Prince Charles’s reaction in the immediate aftermath of the death of his sister, Diana, Princess of Wales.
In a newly published passage from his forthcoming memoir, Spencer recalls speaking to Charles by telephone shortly after Diana was killed in Paris on August 31, 1997. According to Spencer’s account, the future King sounded unusually upbeat during their conversation, prompting him to compare Charles’s manner to that of someone who had just won the lottery.
In the extract published by the Daily Mail, Spencer wrote: “The phone rang constantly. Prince [King] Charles caught me as I crossed the landing upstairs.
“Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated – like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time.”
Spencer went on to explain why, in his view, Charles may not have appeared as visibly devastated as others following Diana’s death. Looking back on the conversation years later, he suggested that the then-Prince might initially have considered how the tragedy could affect his future personal life.
He wrote: “Looking back now, I suspect the prince’s first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not.
“It can be hard to feel too much sympathy for an ex-spouse, or those who care for them profoundly, after bitter divorce.”
Charles and Diana had formally ended their marriage in 1996, a year before the Princess’s death. At the time of the fatal Paris crash, Diana was in a relationship with Dodi Fayed, who was also killed in the accident.
The latest allegations from Earl Spencer have already drawn a response from the King. On Wednesday, the Palace pushed back after another claim emerged from the memoir concerning Charles’s alleged reaction to Diana’s death.
Spencer has also alleged that Charles remarked that Diana would be “forgotten soon enough” in the days following the tragedy.
READ MORE: William and Harry Caught Off Guard as Earl Spencer Reopens Painful Chapter of Diana’s Final Days
Prince Harry was reportedly not caught off guard by the controversial claims contained in Earl Spencer’s forthcoming memoir.
According to Page Six, several sources have claimed that the Duke of Sussex already knew what his uncle had written, meaning the revelations now emerging from the book were unlikely to have come as a surprise to him.
Harry is said to have spoken about the memoir directly with Earl Spencer when he visited Althorp, the Spencer family’s ancestral estate, in July.
Whether Prince William received similar advance knowledge remains unclear. It is not known if the Prince of Wales was familiar with the contents of his uncle’s book before its recent revelations became public.
