Earl Spencer's book on Diana is stolen

[JustHereForTheShitsAndGiggles]

Warning - DM link ahead...
Copies of Earl Spencer's sensational book about Princess Diana have been stolen from a lorry – just before its exclusive serialisation in the Daily Mail.
The memoir – Swan Song: Diana, My Sister – includes revelations about Diana's deeply unhappy marriage with the then Prince of Wales.
It also describes the crisis that engulfed the Royal Family after her death in a car crash almost 30 years ago.
Last night a publishing insider said: 'Earl Spencer has kept his silence for nearly 30 years and what he has to say about the King's reaction when Diana died is utterly devastating.'
But, in an astonishing development, the Mail can reveal that a truck packed with thousands of copies of the book was broken into after it was parked overnight in a lay-by in the Netherlands earlier this week.
Just four copies, which had been wrapped in black plastic to hide their contents, were stolen in what publishing sources believe could have been an audacious plot to steal the highly anticipated book of the year before it hits the shelves.

Earl Spencer's bombshell new book is stolen: Several copies of Earl's explosive book about his sister Diana - and how King reacted to her death - are taken in raid on a Dutch lorry | Daily Mail Online

Cash cow 🐄 🤣 💯 a better title

Yes, as we've seen on this thread, conflicting ideas about what did or didn't happen. It was a maelstrom of emotions and guilt and loss.

It is quite clear from the investigation into Bashir that Diana was fed lies which made her distrust the noticed and actions of those around her. I don't think it is unfair to say she was paranoid, and if her son feels it's a fair description of her mindset at a specific moment in time then why do people argue with that? Paranoia is a very understandable reaction to what Bashir told her. I feel that William knows better than most what his mother was like at that time.

I don't like calling individuals victims because it takes away their agency and reduces their stories to black and white stereotypes. Diana, particularly after the divorce, revealed a complex, formidable character and was doing a lot of good in the world. To reduce her to the naive victim of a pantomime villain royal family takes away her complexity and diminishes her.

Women who aren't virgins can be manipulated, too.

Very good points. It's easy to be simplistic - Diana was a saint, CW was a sinner, CS has her back.
Very much more complex than that.

Very well said.

Patrick Jephson has spoken at length about a coordinated smear campaign against her.

And some of the criticism of Diana has a very nasty misogynistic tinge to it reminiscent of Victorian times when women who “did not go quietly” were locked up in asylums.

King Charles never gets criticised for having affairs with married women and yet he famously had a little coterie of married mistresses he would sleep with before Camilla became “the one”.

And Prince Philip’s behaviour throughout his marriage is always skipped over by monarchists too.

The double standard is extraordinary.

Absolutely. And the man has been married FOUR times. He does not have the emotional maturity to have treated this topic properly, even were he not personally involved.

@Musketpipeanddrum

Your comment about people feeling complicit because they bought the newspapers jumped out at me.

One of the things I remember most about the period around her death is that it was the first time I realised how powerful the newspapers/media were.

When she first died people were angry at the media. Photographers were getting shouted at and told they should be ashamed of themselves. The narrative was very firm - the photographers and newspaper editors were to blame.

Then the papers quickly started the “where is our queen?” and “where is the flag?” hysteria and it was remarkable how quickly the mood turned and the anger was directed at the royal family.

The manipulation of the anger was really quite remarkable. The newspapers went from “look at what this silly woman is doing now with her posing in swimsuits on another holiday with her unsuitable boyfriend” to “the royal family are choosing to disrespect our Diana personally by not flying a flag that they’ve never flown before” via the huge public outcry that they killed her in less than a week. It was something else.

Patrick Jephson who sold her personal stories for money?

Quite.

I wonder how well it well sell as a book. I can see the serialisation getting a day or twos traction and then fading out.

I see Diana as an historical figure now - her short dramatic life was was such a long time ago in such a different era. I am nearly 60 ahe was a large part of the media and cultural landscape when I was growing up - but 30 years later people there at the time will have passed on or have had their own personal tragedies that life has throw at them to deal with. I can’t see it selling to anyone under 50 - is that enough for a best seller?

There will be plenty of ‘noise’ from royal correspondents / SM bloggers etc - but that might be where it starts and finishes - how much of that will translate into book sales?

I note that the timing of the launch a year ahead of the anniversary is aggressive marketing strategy to get ahead of any competition it a potentially opportunistic crowded market next year.

I do think that CS holds a valid and unique perspective. He shared a close but bleak childhood with his sister - his recollections of her as a child would be unique. He also now has possibly a better lens to review thru as he has been through his own therapeutic healing journey after CSA at boarding school which he has eloquently written about.

He was also uniquely placed ‘in the room where it happened’ when her death rocked the RF and when funeral plans were made. So he has something tangible and unique to add - of course everything is his own perspective but arguably he was the person who knew her the most in depth for the longest time.

Agree with this

people say all sorts of things in the heat of an argument, and people reporting their version of an argument will tend to make themselves sound calm and reasonable while fhe other party rants and raves.

I suspect this was a really nasty argument between ex BILs who couldn’t stand each other, where tempers boiled over and horrible things were said in order to hurt the other party.

I don’t think that any of us would come across very well if the worst things we had ever said or done, at times of emotion or stress, were selectively served up for the public to read.

With regards to the boys walking behind the coffin. I am their age, I watched it on TV. I think it was different times then, as a parent now I can see that they of course were children and it was inappropriate, but at the time it just registered as how royal things are done. I was more surprised that not long after their mother passed away, those boys were out shaking hands and speaking to the public, that actually seemed worse somehow.

I suspect there was a lot of panic about what to do, if Diana had a dignified, private funeral I imagine it would mean a lot to the boys to follow tradition and walk behind the coffin. The massive overblown state funeral it became really was not appropriate for that.

I totally agree it was a complex story MrsLeonFarrell but what I dislike is people trying to deny the fundamental injustice of what was done to Diana, by Charles as an individual, who was thirty-two years old when he became engaged to nineteen year old Diana, when he was seriously in love with someone else, and made serious vows in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury to that end, and Diana was also horribly used by the institution whose sole focus was to continue the line and produce heirs.

She was nineteen when she became engaged and I can testify that not many nineteen year olds of my acquaintance were getting married at that age, particularly to 32 year olds!

And when the marriage broke down because Charles had a long term mistress, the Palace wanted Diana to keep quiet and play happy families! That is utterly monstrous if you think about it. And when she spoke up she was ostracised and smeared, Happily she had more guts then they anticipated. But she paid the ultimate price.

Diana was chosen by the institution precisely because she was young, naieve and they thought her to be malleable. Honestly the entire exercise was incredibly cynical and we the public are complete suckers for a royal wedding and should know better.

Excellent points, @Jadedmoorhen👌🏼
Times were different, emotions were running high.

He has been one of the few loyal enough to speak up for her. How else would he be able to do that without writing his recollections down and getting them published?

The royals after all have friends in high places and tame journalists to leak their stories for them.

To be fair, I think many people who suffered sexual abuse as children have difficulties with subsequent intimate relationships.

Tit for tat? How depressing.

Wow. Unnecessarily nasty comment about someone who can’t answer back.

I agree that Charles wasn't a good husband. How much better would it have been if he was free to marry whoever he liked rather than having the ridiculous need to marry a virgin? No wonder he ended up with a 19 year old, there was probably no one his age qualified. I'm not trying to absolve Charles from his part in what happened, I am just pointing out that it isn't fair to blame him for everything. I do think he tried at first with Diana but they were simply too different and too damaged as individuals to make even a marriage of convenience work, particularly when they didn't go into the marriage with that agreement.

What are you talking about? A dead woman must love everyone wailing? That’s a very weird thing to say and says a lot about your character.

She was nineteen when she became engaged and I can testify that not many nineteen year olds of my acquaintance were getting married at that age, particularly to 32 year olds!

One of the difficulties in discussing this is that looking back 50 years we have a tendency to conflate what was normal for us personally, what is normal for society now, and assume that both would be normal for Diana as a member of the aristocracy.

For most people at the start of the 1980s, reaching the age of 18 meant you had reached adulthood and had finished education.
Only 15% of the population went on to any form of higher education at that time (about half of that number to university).
For the rest of the population that would have meant finding employment. For Diana, an aristocrat, that would have meant enjoying her life until she found a husband.

Diana left school at 16. At 19, she had already been abroad to finishing school, had been living independently in an apartment in London with friends and had worked in several jobs.

Edit to add: I forgot to add two other things that were normal for Diana but not for others.
She grew up on the Sandringham Estate (not Althorp), and played with Andrew and Edward as a child, so knew the family well.
There was also a history of age-gap marriages in the family (parents and sister).

Yes and many men who grew up in abusive homes go on to abuse their wives and children.

His disastrous personal life shows he lacks credibility. His mistress sued his wife?!

Absolutely. And she could no more have been in love with him than he could with her. This was an arranged marriage. Many turn out to be strong and lasting. This one did not. It’s sad, but none of us will know what went on and I view it has simply a poor match between two immature people.

I think Charles and Diana were both victims of their arranged marriage. Their grandmothers plotted to bring them together and totally ignored that they were utterly unsuitable for each other.

Charles thought he was marrying a woman who understood what marrying a prince of wales meant as she’d grown up around sandringham - you got dresses and tiaras, you give the heir and the spare, and you each turn a blind eye to the others affairs.

Diana thought she was marrying someone who would grow to love her and make her the centre of their life.

The grandmothers totally ignored that Diana was young for her age and badly craving love, security and affection after the brutality of her parents divorces, and also that Charles was immature and not very able to see outside the box.

Being older Charles shoulders more of the responsibility, but QEQM and Lady Fermoy desperately let down their grandchildren.

I agree with all of that MrsLeonFarrell

But again, I have to agree with a pp, that however convenient it is for people to smooth over what actually happened and make it out to be a situation where the faults lay equally on both sides, at the time of the wedding this wasn’t actually the case at the all, and there was a huge power imbalance between Diana aged nineteen, plucked out of relative obscurity, and Charles aged thirty-two, heir to the Crown, with the power of that institution behind him, in love with someone else.

Diana was used.
There is no getting around it.

And outrageously, having served her purpose, and confronted the dawning reality that her husband wasn’t in love with her, and buckled down to do a good job, Charles had the audacity to be jealous of Diana and complain when she became more popular than him!