PR disasters thread 28

[BigWillyLittleTodger]

Are the bets on or off for an invite to Balmoral?
Will Meghan bake a humble pie for Catherine?
Let’s discuss……!

It will be interesting to see what impact, if any, it has. My impression is that it is all ancient history for most people.

Divorce and remarriage is pretty normal. Relationship breakdown being messy and painful is pretty normal (sadly).

Charles has been married to Camilla - apparently drama and affair-free - for longer than he was married to Diana.

My feeling is that most people don't particularly care, or expect Charles to be inhumanly perfect.

Not sure why Charles Spencer should be holding onto a grudge revgauarding Charles (and Camilla). Sure they had their affair and it was rotten for Diana. No doubt her treatment by the RF was less than kind but divorce is never nice. She was looked after and could have had her royal protection but unfortunately decided to go without and to run with the thoroughly unpleasant Al Fayeds.
That said Anne managed her divorce most amicably (and so did the other one but I don’t count theirs as an example to us lesser mortals). Of course it helps if there is plenty of money to go round, and spare houses for the ex spouse to live on one’s estate. (Mark Philips lived in a farmhouse at Gatcombe for quite a long time after - very handy for keeping children close).

Meanwhile Charles Spencer is on his fourth wife. I don’t know much about the second one but his treatment of numbers one and three seems to have been less than gallant.

Cross post with others!

Heh. I’d read that book too @HoldMyWine

Though perhaps he is in touch with his eldest daughter - I believe she has a small child and CS posted something about his grandchild’s Shetland pony.

CS book was always a when not if. In the broadest sense he does have a unique personal perspective on D - which as everyone else’s is obviously subjective.

I see him as a very damaged individual from a very emotionally poor and brutal childhood - which has fed into the chaos of his life choices / behaviours (same as Diana). Hurt people, hurt people. He has published many books before so this one is only about strategic timing.

I am curious if the therapy he went through to talk about his CSA at boarding school has mellowed him or given him a new more compassionate perspective for his reflections. His new wife seems immensely credible.

I do hope he is on a healing journey for himself and his daughters.

I think his first wedding speech about Victoria being thick and thin showed his character. I hope no one buys this book and it will soon only be seen in the reduced basket in his own gift shop.

Yes it was a long time ago. Diana is in the past. What can he reveal that would shock today's younger audience ? 🤷‍♀️ This audience have been fed a diet of Love Island and Bonnie Blue. They will think - if anything - about Charles that he's just a man. There isn't the aura and mystique about the RF that there was when I was a child.

I can't see why King Charles would have anything to worry about in a book about Diana. It's really really old news now. Released 10 years after she died there would have been a fuss, and I'm sure the tabloids will still have a field day, but today Diana has a far more complex persona than perfect betrayed wife, evil husband. Charles Spencer is making a mistake here in his old narrative that Diana's blood family will look after her boys. This is not looking after anyone, it's making money from misery and death. Shame on him.

Re her blood family - I wonder if the book will re hash the speculation based on how much Jemima Goldsmith looks like Diana.

Yes, I expect it will open the floodgates to the world of social media freely talking about aristocrats shagging around, including Saint Diana, Charles Spencer, Johnny Spencer, Charles Windsor, the whole lot.

This is a ‘blood relation’ saying, ‘hey, it’s ok now to read and review my book and talk about it and the subject, Diana’.

I ventured onto a certain H&M fan site mentioned elsewhere on this forum.

Hilarious to see them fawning all over a nasty, snobbish boor like Earl Spencer. He behaves like the worst sort of old style aristocrat, but then so does their hero, his nephew, so I guess it makes sense.

I think the Earl will likely make most of his money from the book being serialised in one of the Sunday papers. It will probably sell reasonably well, but nothing like it would have sold a few decades ago. He will need to add in some scandalous detail if he wants to shift a lot of copies, because there's a limit in how much people are interested in stories of his childhood with Diana. I had thought the Earl valued his relationship with the royals, so it will be interesting to see how far he's prepared to risk that for a few quid.

I wonder if CS will mention Diana’s numerous affairs with married men , her stalking a wife etc etc ?

I know this book is wrong and Diana should be left to rest in peace. However I would be interested to know if he discusses their childhood because I think it was dreadfully unhappy and that may account for how Diana and Charles turned out.

I think the CS book might have some interesting bits about D's early life, as he remembers it. As to her marriage , who really knows what is going on in their sibling's marriage. If you read many posts on MN a lot of people don't really know what's going on in their own marriage. I think if C&C have weathered the storm of D putting her own side out , the Morton book , the radio ham tape etc , they'll get through this. In RF terms it will be a 9 day wonder. Whether this is a book he has always wanted to write or not, I agree with @Claregalway , this was a when not if book and the timing is strategic. It will be interesting to see how well it sells. The days of people devouring anything and everything written about Diana are gone methinks.

Agree. I wonder if it will be more thoughtful and reflective than we expect. Spencer’s many marriages and broken family relationships surely owe a great deal to his awful childhood. If he’s been working through this, he may have a unique and interesting perspective on how the aristocratic culture of his parents’ era led to relationship difficulties for generations, as they certainly have for him and Diana and arguably Harry as well.

It would be really interesting to have his honest take on H&M’s split from the family in the light of both what’s ‘done’ and ‘not done’ in aristocratic/royal circles and mental illness/trauma/generational pain (or whatever Harry called it).

He’s not an unintelligent man, and I really hope this book won’t just be the same old same old about Diana, and also that it won’t be too hard on King Charles, himself a product of à simultaneously distant and smothering upbringing.

Any reaction from down Montecito way yet?

I hope Cat Jarman Spencer is going to come out of this ok. That’s all

Well, a number of his other wives and children ave been bruised by their experiences with him, @AutumnCrowsMusings, so it's hard not to wonder if Cat will be any different

There's always seemed to me to be a cruelty about the man - just his expression is unfortunate - but then with is father's example and his awful childhood it's perhaps not surprising

That’s a very thoughtful post, @SisterTeatime.

Charles Spencer’s reported experiences at his boarding school describe depraved bullying, sexual assault and brutality. Then after writing the book (2024) he did the residential rehab and got divorced (having met Cat Jarman in ?summer 2023), then I think got sober in 2025 and then married (4th time) in 2026.

I wonder when he wrote Swan Song, and if that was traumatic for him?

I've shared this before, but my MIL very briefly taught Diana (extra Maths group to support learning and help up her grade) and knew her through teaching at the school she attended (West Heath). She was known then to be very much affected by her family situation.
She had a close relationship with the Headteacher that extended to the years after she left (looked to her for advice and confided in her). My MIL remembered Diana saying it was such a shame there were school holidays and she couldn't stay there all the time. Although she was referring to the summer holidays then, she also said another time that she'd much prefer a fun Christmas at school to going home.
So her problems and emotional needs began long before she got married.

I read his book. It was really a hard read. Both Charles and Diana were very badly damaged by their upbringing and experiences. Not so sure about the other sisters, but Sarah had an eating disorder when young which suggests she didn't come out unscathed either.

She totally missed the entire point of the movie. Instead went on a self promotion and spoke about her time as a Girl Scout with her devoted mom as a leader, with plenty of photos to boot. Not forgetting cringey quotes like "lil girl bosses" in reference to the young actresses in the movie

He is far from untalented, he is a respected author and historian.

Can’t hear above the plates smashing .?

Give it time. Harry's wife will be working out how to spin his announcement that he intends to visit the UK more often - because he definitely didn't say she and the HAMlets would be accompanying him.

About 50% of the population were 10 or under when Diana died, and about 30% weren't even born.

At the other end of the scale, the older and more traditional generations who would be most likely to condemn adultery (even if you ignore Diana's own), are dead.

That mostly leaves a potential audience of 40-90yo, not all of whom will be interested, and some who might not be interested in a one-sided account.

A princess who died young will always have a cachet - there will be interest, sure. But I don't think that it's going to cause much of an issue for royal popularity.

I am hoping for something more emotionally intelligent and insightful.

Maybe I am being too optimistic but a reflection on the intergenerational trauma suffered and passed on by parents emotionally stunted by their own neglected / abusive childhoods would be interesting. The addictions, abandonments and sexual incontinence as both a cause and a consequence of dysfunctional behaviour and inflicting trauma on the next generation would be powerful. It would require a Mea Culpa.