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Charles Spencer opens up about Princess Diana’s life, death and legacy, revealing why he felt compelled to tell his sister’s story in his new memoir, ‘Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.’
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00:00My telephone rang again and it was Prince Charles and he said,
00:03I gather you've got a problem with the funeral.
00:06And I just sort of held the phone like that and let it go on.
00:09Then he stopped and then I thought,
00:12oh, he's going to pull himself together.
00:14And then he said, we'll forget her soon enough.
00:18At first I resisted the idea of writing the book
00:20because I thought, oh, maybe just keep it all quiet.
00:23And then I realized I could actually do it for Diana.
00:30I very much doubt there's been a day since Diana died
00:32where I haven't thought about her.
00:34Even for a second, you know, it may be a short thought that pops up.
00:38We interrupt this film to tell you we are getting reports
00:41that Diana, Princess of Wales,
00:43has been badly injured in a car crash in France.
00:46When I wrote the eulogy for Diana's funeral,
00:49I sort of worked out the purpose of that.
00:51We will all feel cheated, always, that you were taken from us so young.
00:55And yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all.
00:59That was to give Diana a voice at her funeral
01:02in front of a shattered world of grief.
01:04It is a tribute to her level-headedness and strength
01:07that despite the most bizarre life imaginable after her childhood,
01:12she remained intact, true to herself.
01:15This is much more considered.
01:16It's got much more room.
01:18In some ways, it's a 350-page version of my eulogy,
01:21but it's much more profound than that.
01:24I'd known Diana had died for a few hours,
01:26and I was sort of rushing around the house.
01:28I had four young children.
01:29It was just me and them under the roof,
01:31and I was trying to work out everything, really,
01:33what to do, how to get back to England, et cetera,
01:36because I was living in South Africa.
01:38And then he called, and yeah, I'm sorry to say,
01:42he just sounded really giddy.
01:44I know it's unfortunate, but that's how it struck me,
01:49and it seemed to me so incredibly bizarre at the time.
01:53I can only speculate why.
01:55I mean, you know, maybe he felt that now he could
01:59eventually marry the woman who he was in love with.
02:01That's me speculating, but certainly I've heard.
02:04I don't watch The Crown.
02:05I've heard that in The Crown, for instance,
02:07he's sort of knocked sideways by the news of Diana's death,
02:10and that's just not true.
02:12And so part of this book, you know, people say,
02:15well, is that, should you report that?
02:17Well, part of my duty, I am a historian,
02:19is to lay down facts, you know, and that's what I'm doing.
02:23There's no viciousness.
02:24It's just a straightforward fact that that was the case.
02:27It was devastating at the time, actually,
02:29but I just thought there was so much going on that day,
02:31of course, that I just thought, this is really weird.
02:35I've never believed in the conspiracy theory
02:37because I think if somebody was conspiring to kill somebody
02:41very high profile like that,
02:43I don't think that would be the manner that it would happen in
02:45because, first of all, nobody planned for Diana
02:47to go through that tunnel that night.
02:48So I've never, I've never seen that.
02:51I mean, I, and I, I love to think broadly
02:54and work things out, and I just don't see it fitting.
02:57The fact that it ended up, tragically,
02:59being a car crash, I think is purely a coincidence.
03:02And by the way, if I thought otherwise, I would say so.
03:05I just don't see it.
03:06I was the sort of liaison of my family
03:09with the funeral arrangements
03:10and it was really being arranged by Buckingham Palace
03:13and the Prime Minister's office and all that
03:15because, fair enough, it was a public funeral.
03:17And then I got a call from somebody working
03:20at Buckingham Palace, very nice man,
03:22who at the end of our conversation threw in the fact,
03:26he said, oh, and the two young princes
03:28will be walking behind their mother's coffin.
03:30And I said, well, no, they won't, just instant,
03:33because of course it's monstrous as a, as a concept.
03:35It just doesn't make sense.
03:37And I also had the confidence
03:38because I knew Diana had left me as their guardians.
03:41And yes, being a guardian has no legal status
03:43when the other parent's alive,
03:44but I thought she wants me to stand up for them.
03:47And then this flustered man said, well, I, I, I,
03:52well, the Prince of Wales wants it.
03:53And I said, well, it's just his, Diana wouldn't want it.
03:56And that's all I care about.
03:58And so he sort of hung up and went on with his life.
04:01And then my telephone rang again.
04:03And I thought, oh, I don't know what that is.
04:05Picked it up, it's a dedicated line,
04:07which nobody has the number of really.
04:09And it was Prince Charles.
04:11And he said, I gather you've got a problem with the funeral.
04:14And I was thinking, not really.
04:16And I said, no, I think that it's all going okay.
04:19And then he said, but you don't want William and Harry
04:21to walk behind the coffin.
04:23And I said, well, of course not, sir.
04:25Diana wouldn't have wanted it.
04:27And then he said, well, I walked behind Lord Mountbatten's coffin.
04:33And I said, yes, but you were 30 and he wasn't your mother.
04:37Well, then he went nuts, really.
04:39And so I had a good rant.
04:41And I just sort of held the phone like that and let it go on.
04:45And then I, then he stopped.
04:48And then I thought, oh, he's going to pull himself together.
04:51And then he said, we'll forget her soon enough.
04:56And I found that really astonishing and so awful.
04:59And I just said to him, I cannot believe you said that and hung up on him.
05:04So that sets the scene, really, for why I wrote the eulogy as I did.
05:09Because there's a line in there where I didn't want William and Harry immersed in royal tradition
05:14to lose their souls, really, which Diana was nurturing.
05:18On behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to
05:24continue
05:24the imaginative and loving way in which you are steering these two exceptional young men,
05:29so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition, but can sing openly as you planned.
05:36I thought it was important to include that interchange with the then Prince Charles, now King,
05:42because it sets the tone of really why I spoke like that.
05:47And also why I'm writing this book, because he said, we'll forget her soon enough.
05:52Well, I know people who like people do not forget her.
05:57And although there is a death, there has definitely been a campaign among certain members of the royal family
06:02to have her erased from history. It won't happen.
06:07Prince Charles, as he was then, was determined to walk behind Diana's coffin.
06:11I still don't understand it to this day. He was an ex-husband.
06:15It just seems entirely inappropriate.
06:19And then I learned that people advising him were saying,
06:23well, you can't do that because the public will shout things out against you as you walk.
06:28And then there was a thought that maybe if William and Harry walked beside him,
06:34then of course nobody was going to shout insults.
06:36There was an awful lot of less than straight talk going on at the time.
06:42So I was told that they had decided that they wanted to walk behind their mother's coffin, William and Harry.
06:48And so I remember saying, well, as long as they haven't been dragooned into it,
06:52I mean, nobody now can possibly think that was the right thing to do.
06:55And I just remember this tiny, Harry was so small,
06:58and this tiny dot of a boy walking in public behind his mother's coffin.
07:03It's monstrous. I mean, it was awful at the time.
07:06And I just, there was so little I could do.
07:10And I remember there was one bit where I thought, right, thank you know,
07:13we're halfway through or something through this terrible long walk.
07:16And we went under one of those magnificent arches in London,
07:20and I gave Harry a hug and I said, you're doing so well.
07:23He was just going as quick as he could, which breaks my heart now.
07:26You know, it just shouldn't have happened. And that's that.
07:29And I feel a bit guilty in a way, but I was told they wanted to.
07:34You could feel this tsunami of grief coming in from both sides
07:38and the crowd reacting differently as we walked along.
07:43So you'd just hear sobbing.
07:44And then another stretch where people would be shouting out really lovely
07:49but sad things to William and Harry or about Diana.
07:53And it's very hard to feel that amount of emotion and not to look at it.
08:00So I used to have lots of nightmares about that,
08:03because it was just too much, too overwhelming for a brain to take that in.
08:08So goodness knows what it was like for two young boys.
08:12It was all so much.
08:13You know, there had been the build-up for nearly a week after Diana's death
08:17of the emotion in London.
08:19I mean, London was unlike anything I've ever experienced.
08:21It's like the energy had gone out of the place
08:23because of what people were dealing with.
08:26And I would say Diana had no idea how popular she was when she died.
08:30A lot of the British media had really turned on her.
08:32And even those of us who loved her said, just don't read it. She did.
08:36And it must have been brutalising to read such horrible things.
08:40I mean, even the day she died, the initial headlines on the Sunday papers in England
08:44were anti-her and very, very horrendous.
08:46And then they quickly turned it around and went,
08:48Diana's dead and all of that.
08:50So I think it would have been an absolutely extraordinary thing for Diana
08:54to know that people really cared like they did.
08:57Very early on in Diana's career, if we can call it that,
09:00I managed to uncouple the Diana I grew up with and knew from the Lady Di
09:06or Princess Di or whatever it was of the media.
09:09So I knew she was a global phenomenon.
09:12And she really was from day one of the wedding, really.
09:15You know, before that, I think the British royal family had sunk into a bit of a rut.
09:20They were doing their duty and it was all a bit old fashioned.
09:23And then in blue, this superstar who walked down the aisle at St. Paul's on my father's arm
09:30as this sort of unknown English aristocrat and then emerged as this global superstar.
09:37And people were amazed that somebody so human could be in such a position.
09:42I think part of the secret here is that Diana had a quarter American blood.
09:47My mother's father was American.
09:48And I think that gave us as a family, particularly Diana,
09:52an easier connection with American culture than might be obvious from all that's around me right now.
09:58My mother was very unconventional, half American,
10:01and could see the big joke that the British class system was really.
10:06And I think Diana always had that questioning mind about what this all meant.
10:11And I think that was the American quarter of her.
10:13She was rebellious with a little bit of American turbocharging going on.
10:20Diana's been written about an enormous amount.
10:22The bits that have come, the snippets that have reached me through the wider media.
10:26I realised that the very unhappy childhood is part of the myth.
10:31And I can't speak for Diana as to whether she found our childhood unhappy,
10:38and maybe she did, but the childhood I remember us sharing was a really happy one.
10:43Of course there was the blight of my mother leaving home,
10:47but my father was a really caring father to both of us and to all of us,
10:53and made the house really joyful.
10:56I think his example of parenthood would have rubbed off on Diana unconsciously.
11:01I also think perhaps my parents' divorce made her want to give even more to her sons
11:06in terms of loving maternal stability.
11:09Of course, you know, even though we did see our mother for half the school holidays,
11:13half the vacation, and a weekend a month in term time, all of that,
11:19that's not a lot.
11:20And I think that Diana maybe in some unconscious way was trying to make up for that in the next
11:26generation.
11:27Diana was born in 1961, and certainly the private school system in England
11:32was not tuned in to children's needs as they are today.
11:38I think Diana suffered from dyslexia.
11:40She found spelling and word orders and letter orders quite tricky.
11:44And I think ADHD.
11:45I was only found out to have very severe ADHD late in life,
11:49and I know it's exactly what Diana had. It's so similar.
11:52I've got really upset when people have tried to say, you know, because Diana could get very hurt and emotional,
11:59they would say, oh, maybe she had bipolar or borderline personality and all these.
12:06Who knows? I know it's not those, by the way.
12:10But these people throw out these theories.
12:12I think it's more humdrum in a way. I think it was ADHD.
12:14And rejection for people with ADHD goes very, very deep.
12:19I wish I had known that she had that. I certainly didn't during her lifetime.
12:24Because some things were really, you know, jarring.
12:27And this isn't a criticism.
12:29It's a recognition that she was struggling with a condition that was totally undiagnosed.
12:33And, you know, she could turn on a pin.
12:37If she felt her friend had let her down, that was a really big deal.
12:41And it was difficult to come back from that.
12:43I mean, I'm very straight in the book, you know.
12:45There wasn't a single member of my family who Diana didn't fall out with
12:48and turn her back on for some time.
12:51But I suppose as family, we weren't going anywhere.
12:53So we came back into favour or whatever.
12:55But understanding the ADHD aspect of that is really helpful.
13:02And also the extraordinary pressure she was under.
13:05You see, that's what I really came to appreciate when writing this,
13:08was she was living this unique life of pressure, actually,
13:11where she was dissected every day globally.
13:15And then she was propping up, at the time, a very rotten media industry in the UK.
13:21You know, they were far worse than they are now.
13:24And they were feeding off her.
13:25And they didn't care.
13:27And also, attitudes were so different.
13:29I think that a lot of British society was much more misogynistic then.
13:33She was just this, you know, good-looking girl who had married the royal family.
13:37And when she was out the other side of the royal family,
13:39I think some in the media thought, well, she's turned her back on that.
13:43We can pulverise her, you know.
13:45And so when you look at that and how impossible it was,
13:48and I think she was definitely an early victim of phone hacking without knowing it.
13:53People said, oh, she was paranoid.
13:55No, she wasn't.
13:55She was sensitive to rejection.
13:58And she felt very let down by people.
14:02Because of her ADHD, because of her personality and her character,
14:05she felt these things very deeply.
14:07And I think particularly so because she was giving so much of herself in her public life.
14:11The strain so unbearable, the princess withdrew from public life.
14:15I hope you can find it in your hearts to understand and to give me the time and space
14:24that has been lacking in recent years.
14:27I used to feel this extraordinary thing about Diana,
14:33that it was almost like people had no idea how much they were taking from her.
14:38And I'm talking about innocent members of the public or whatever, who adored her.
14:42But she felt the need to give.
14:46I think it made her feel better about life.
14:49But it was draining.
14:50You know, when she was at home alone in Kensington Palace,
14:53she'd often go to bed by nine because she was just done.
14:55And then the next day she'd go into a public event and be the life and soul of the day
15:01and make these peoples, give them life memories, you know.
15:04This is not done without cost to the individual.
15:07So I respected on a far greater detail.
15:09When I looked at the detail of what she was coping with day in, day out,
15:14I really understood that this was a heroic effort, actually.
15:18And that, of course, she was going to have moments of recharging, I guess.
15:24Her academic results were what they were, but she had a genius for people.
15:30And that was recognised at school, actually.
15:33She won the prize for being the kindest girl in the school to the younger years.
15:39And that obviously blossomed in later life.
15:43There's book smart.
15:44But Diana was people smart and she had this huge heart.
15:47She was an empath and she could see what mattered to people.
15:50And she could connect with that and make them feel not only validated for what they felt,
15:57but also celebrated.
15:58And that was a very rare gift.
16:01That's very humbling as a brother to have seen her in action up close.
16:04You know, she was so good with people.
16:06It wasn't studied. It wasn't false. It was just immediate.
16:10She had a brilliant sense of humour.
16:12She used her royal position to champion causes that really mattered.
16:18And I thought that was really, that was one of the standout legacies of hers.
16:22Holding the hand of the man stricken with AIDS and the child with leprosy.
16:28This is extraordinarily powerful stuff.
16:31And it was unheard of for a member of the royal family to do that.
16:34If you look at old pictures of the royal family, they're always wearing gloves.
16:37They don't really want to touch the person who's proffering their hand.
16:40And Diana would embrace them. And that shows huge emotional openness.
16:45The Princess of Wales has decided she wants a divorce.
16:48So Diana asked me to come and meet her for lunch.
16:51And then she said, I'm going to get divorced.
16:55And I was thinking in every way, trying to look at it from her point of view.
17:00And I said to her, well, I totally understand because I obviously knew she was very unhappy.
17:05But I said, I've got to warn you.
17:06I don't think the public are going to necessarily understand this.
17:10And they may resent you for ending their fairy tale.
17:14And then she said, well, my husband's in love with his valet,
17:19which is a member of staff, household staff.
17:22And to be honest, at the time I thought, well, that's another reason.
17:26That was all it meant right then.
17:27I remember thinking, wow, I didn't know about that.
17:30And I actually don't know who she was referring to individually.
17:34But it just sounded like another nail in the coffin of the marriage, really.
17:38Diana had really been unhappy for a long time.
17:40That's why she gave all of that information to Andrew Morton for that book.
17:46You know, that was a cry from inside the gilded cage to say, I am really miserable in here.
17:51And please recognize it.
17:53She said to me, please help Andrew Morton with my book.
17:57And I said, well, I don't want to.
17:59And then she really did beg.
18:01And she was very good at persuading people to do things.
18:05And so I compromised.
18:06And I said, look, I will talk, because you want me to, about our childhood years.
18:11And I'll go all the way up to when you get married and that's it.
18:15Because, you know, marriages are so difficult for other people to gauge.
18:18I knew she was unhappy.
18:20I knew some of the problems.
18:22It's not something I want to talk about in depth, because I know how individual a marriage is, really.
18:28When Diana got divorced, they removed her royal title, really, which was Her Royal Highness.
18:34And, of course, if you think about that, it's quite an ancient sort of construct.
18:39But that hurt Diana because she was still Princess of Wales and she was still the mother of the future
18:45king.
18:45I'm sure Buckingham Palace will criticise me for putting anything about the king in the book.
18:51They should just be very grateful I didn't put what I know about him in it.
18:54This is correct in terms of the story of Diana's life that I'm portraying.
18:59If I wanted to write a scandalous book about Prince Charles or King Charles as he is now, it would
19:05really be a jaw dropper.
19:07But I'm not here to do that.
19:10I see him as an ex-brother-in-law and I have really nothing to do with him at all
19:14now.
19:14Both his sons are middle-aged.
19:16They may not like that description, but they are.
19:18And, you know, I don't have anything to do with him.
19:20I mean, I've seen him at family weddings or whatever.
19:23And, I mean, that sounds very dismissive, but he's just not part of my life and I'm not part of
19:28his.
19:28I think I, you know, I mean, I wouldn't want to say what he thinks of me, but I tend
19:34not to think of him.
19:35It's very awkward because when people come and ask me, you know, from the outside,
19:40because the royal family is such a big thing, people must think that somebody vaguely connected to a part of
19:47the royal family,
19:47such as myself, must be really interested in it.
19:50And I'm not.
19:51It's not out of rudeness.
19:52I'm just not interested.
19:54I'm married to a wonderfully feminist, socialist Scandinavian, and she and I have such an interesting life anyway
20:00that the royal family is not really a feature.
20:06I still have people coming up to me nearly 30 years later with tears in their eyes still about the
20:13loss.
20:14They still can't believe Diana died, even though it's so long ago.
20:19I hope they know that I would never let Diana down.
20:22I have felt the spirit of Diana at times. Maybe it's wishful thinking. I do feel Diana on my side
20:31in tricky moments.
20:32If I have to really go into something really important, I always wear cufflinks she gave me in the late
20:3980s.
20:40Do I think I'll see her again? I don't know. I think my theory about life and death is that
20:47we're all so terrified of death,
20:49but it's going to be a very, very long time when we're in that state.
20:52And so I cannot believe that we're alive and then that there's nothing left.
20:58But I do feel that it seems an awful lot of effort for us to be the people we are
21:03and then to become literally nothing.
21:05Above all, we give thanks for the life of a woman. I'm so proud to be able to call my
21:10sister, the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana,
21:16whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds.
21:21Thank you very much.