Charles Spencer to publish memoir of Diana

[OccasionalHope]

Could be interesting.

After her death, friends were quoted as saying Dodi was lovely man, but just a fling in Diana's eyes, although Al Fyed allegedly had ideas that they would marry.
The very day after the accident was the day she would be back her boys, I beleive 😪

It turns out that she was rather well cut out for the job itself though. Patrick Jephson who was her private secretary for eight years wrote in his book that she brought huge energy and commitment to her charity work and that she was upbeat and extremely well organised with the admin associated with the job. And she had a very natural empathy with the people she met.

What she couldn’t cope with was discovering that her husband had a long term mistress and married her purely to produce heirs and that many staff, some members of the family, and many so-called friends all knew about this before she did. How would that feel to any twenty-one or twenty-two year old? Especially one from a dysfunctional home.

And she couldn’t cope initially with the huge press intrusion in her life before she began to take back some of the control.

And she couldn’t cope with being rejected by the institution for speaking out and being made out to be intrinsically mentally unwell when the situation she found herself in was making her so.

I suspect that she could have had more than two weeks with them, had she asked. Boarding school holidays are long.

Let's hope he's honest about the fuckers royal family and their treatment of her.

I agree, I've read two of his History books, about the English Civil War. He's very well read and a good writer.

I think, very wrongly and very ironically as it turned out, that for her it was about the family having enough clout to protect her, a bit like Jackie O.

Yes, that was absolutely shocking, wasn't it? It fed into her fears and led her to make certain choices which sadly contributed to her death.

He has a way with words, should be an enjoyable read.

Thanks - that's interesting, I didn't know that.

Absolutely. The Spencers are social climbers and opportunists.

If Diana was indeed planning the Dodi affair as just a summer fling, I bet Mohammed Fayed would have turned very unpleasant once she’d dumped him. We know now what a horrible man he was (well, tbh the revelations were no surprise to many).

And I refuse to call him Al Fayed which is posh in Egypt. He was only ever Fayed - he added the Al to aggrandise himself.

Yes, a repulsive man.

I think CS probably does have something to contribute that no-one else has, what it was like at home before and after their parents’ divorce, the awful train journeys between households. Whether it needs saying is another matter, but he seems to feel the need to set certain things straight.

I wonder how his other books are selling? I imagine a successful book about Diana might give them a bounce.

Social climbers? They couldn't be any higher up socially unless they all became royal. They're about the most aristocratic family in England.

They might be many things but I don't think they are social climbers, they're already sitting on the top of the ladder.

Yes I don't doubt he'll have lots of gossip to share, lots of titbits about how miserable their childhoods were then obviously the disaster that was her marriage etc.

You'd just think he'd consider William. You'd think he'd understand how painful this will be for him.

Just seems in such bad taste and inappropriate.

Reminds me of the bit in '4 weddings' where fluttering boy says 'different Charles I think'.😶

I don't think it was a virginity test as such, but a test that fertility, conceiving and giving birth would be okay. Producing heirs is, after all, the first duty of a monarchy. The virginity issue was more about protecting the reputation of the royal family, including Diana's. You may not have been around at the time, but just before Di came onto the scene, there was an issue with Caroline of Monaco. One of Caroline's boyfriends had gone to the press and announced that he was Caroline's first lover. He made a lot of money off this claim. Caroline's father, Rainier of Monaco, took him to court to stop him. If that,s an issue for the Grimaldis, imagine what it would have been for the Windsors, it would have been world wide news.

The paranoia whipped up be Bashir and his cronies is what ultimately created a sequence of events that led to her death.

In particular the faked documents that led Diana to believe that many people were being paid to spy on her (ironically Bashir faked documents implicating employees of Earl Spencer himself being paid to spy on her). Anyone would feel paranoid in these circumstances and it led to her refusing to have Royal Protection when William and Harry were not with her. If she had kept her RPOs then I doubt she would have been in a car with a drunk driver.

I feel sorry for William as I think both parents involved him at much too young an age in their issues. William is only 2 years older than Harry - had just turned 15 weeks before she died. Yet was treated like an adult in comparison to Harry. Diana used William as her companion and confidante during her divorce and she even took him to her meetings and lunches with tabloid journalists.

So William is more than entitled to his views on that interview

I’m just glad that CS has taken it upon himself to protect his sister and write the definitive version himself.

But it's not a 'definitive version' is it? It's a book by an individual with his own biases and blind spots, as well as a reputation of his own to consider.

Besides, he and Diana were in separate boarding schools from around the age of 8 so wouldn't have seen that much of each other in their late childhood and teens. They also don't appear to have been very close in adulthood. Sure, Earl Spencer obviously has something to say about his sister that nobody else can, but it's hardly a 'definitive' account.

The Spencers described as social climbers? This is hilarious!

In terms of lineage, they are not the oldest of England’s noble families, but they are one of the wealthiest and most prominent, with direct ancestry going back to the fifteenth century, and one of the half jokes circulating in Diana’s time was that the Spencers regarded the RF, with their direct male-line ancestry being Hanoverian and descended from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, as parvenus. 😀

A biography of Charles Spencer and his multiple marriages would also be interesting, especially written by the daughters who don't even want him at their weddings! Not a nice person at all, just an upper-class Paul Burrell, still leeching off Diana.

They are not 'about the most aristocratic family in England '. They are just one family amongst the roughly 800 aristocratic families in England. And if you know anything about the order of titles, they are somewhere in the middle......and yes, they wanted to get into the Royal family. There's a lot of social climbing even amongst the nobs.

Apparently, her grandmother, Lady Fermoy, warned her against it. Lady in waiting to the QM.

Sarah dated KC and Jane's husband worked for the Queen and that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of connectivity.

If you were going to ask anyone whether the then Prince Charles was still with Camilla, what the RF were 'like'- who'd be on your list? The Spencers would surely feature somewhere. And yet later it was like: we had no idea. Charles Spencer's speech at the funeral was a disgrace, in this context.

I think they just didn't care enough at the time to intervene or - I'd venture - know her well enough to really say if PC was suitable. I mean in that sort of intimate, close family way. All very sad.

I'd be very keen to know if the story that she wanted to call it all off a week before and they told her she had to continue as her 'face was on the tea towels' is true.

@IcedPurple

Besides, he and Diana were in separate boarding schools from around the age of 8 so wouldn't have seen that much of each other in their late childhood and teens. They also don't appear to have been very close in adulthood. Sure, Earl Spencer obviously has something to say about his sister that nobody else can, but it's hardly a 'definitive' account.

^ this.

On the day she died the papers had to do some very quick work withdrawing articles published in the early editions criticising her. I don't think all the criticism was merited, but she was an ordinary, fallible, human being living a very comfortable life.
So true, the first Private Eye issue after her death had all the pre-death headlines from the Sunday papers that were rapidly re-written. It happens a lot, death seems to remove anything the person has done wrong, the same thing happened last weekend when the professor died.