Earl Spencer says he felt Charles had ‘giddy tone’ during call after Diana’s death

In a new book published ahead of the anniversary of his sister’s death, Earl Spencer has disclosed that Prince Charles sounded almost giddy during a phone call in the immediate aftermath of Diana’s death, a detail that has reignited questions about how the Royal Family handled one of the most traumatic moments in modern British public life. The revelation places fresh scrutiny on the private conduct of the then-Prince of Wales in the hours after the car crash in Paris that killed the Princess of Wales in 1997.

The call that has stirred fresh controversy

Spencer, who gave an interview to the BBC to promote the book, described the tone of Charles’s voice on the call as unexpectedly light, using the word “giddy” to characterise a moment when many in the family were grappling with a loss that would soon sweep across the country and beyond. The interview was recorded ahead of the publication of his account of the years surrounding Diana’s life and death.

The Earl, who delivered the famously critical eulogy at Diana’s funeral, has long occupied an uneasy position within the institution of the monarchy. As Diana’s brother, he was a grieving member of her immediate family; as a Spencer, he was also a figure whose relationship with the Royal Family was shaped by decades of complex personal and political history. His new book appears to revisit that history with candour.

The phone call in question took place at a moment when the Royal Family was under extraordinary pressure. Diana’s death triggered an outpouring of public grief on a scale that few had anticipated, and the Royal Household’s initial response — characterised by a decision to keep the flag at half-mast at Buckingham Palace and a notably muted public presence in the days immediately following the crash — drew widespread criticism. The family’s eventual return to London and the procession of mourners that followed marked a turning point in the public narrative, but the private communications of that period have remained a subject of fascination for historians and the media alike.

A family at odds with its public face

Spencer’s account adds a new strand to a story that has been told many times, but never quite from this angle. Previous biographies and documentaries have explored the friction between Diana and her former in-laws, the intense media scrutiny that accompanied her life and death, and the long process of reckoning that followed. What distinguishes the Earl’s version is its focus on a single, intimate moment — a telephone conversation — that speaks to a broader question about emotional distance within the institution at a time of national mourning.

The royal historian community has often noted that the British monarchy’s strength has rested partly on its ability to project a sense of emotional continuity even when private feelings are very different. Spencer’s account, by contrast, offers a glimpse of the gap between private conduct and public expectation — a gap that, in the wake of Diana’s death, became the subject of intense public debate and contributed to a long-running renegotiation of the relationship between the Crown and the people.

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Why it matters

This matters because the Diana story never really ended. It reshaped the monarchy’s relationship with the British public, forced a re-examination of the institution’s transparency and emotional accessibility, and left a legacy that continues to inform how royal crises are managed today. Every new account from someone who was close to the events — particularly a family member — is treated by historians, journalists, and the public as another piece of a story that still carries enormous emotional and political weight.

It also matters for the present. Prince William and Prince Harry, Diana’s sons, have publicly navigated their own fraught relationship with the institution, and the years since 1997 have been, in many respects, an extended attempt by the Royal Family to demonstrate that it has learned from the criticism it faced. Spencer’s recollection of a call that struck him as inappropriately light touches directly on that question of learning — of whether the private attitudes of the family have changed in the ways the public was promised they would.

What happens next

The book is expected to attract significant attention when it is published, not least because it arrives at a moment when the Royal Family is again under close public scrutiny. Anticipation of its contents will likely drive a further wave of media coverage and comment, with particular interest in any passages that shed light on the private conversations and relationships that shaped the days and years around Diana’s death.

For the institution, the release will test its ability to manage a story that has the potential to reopen old wounds. The monarchy has become more publicly engaged and more willing to acknowledge its own missteps in recent years, but the Diana era remains a sensitive subject, and any account that appears to cast doubt on the sincerity of the family’s grief or its subsequent evolution is likely to be received with deep public interest and scrutiny.

For Earl Spencer, the book represents a further step into public reflection on a relationship with the monarchy that has never been straightforward. What readers make of his account will depend in part on how it fits with the many other versions of this history that exist, and on whether it is seen as a necessary addition to a record that remains incomplete — or as another intervention in a long-running argument about the Royal Family’s place in modern Britain.