In case you don't have it already here its is - part 1.
WORLD EXCLUSIVE
‘On the night Diana died Charles sounded giddily elated… like a lottery winner’
PART ONE
By Charles Spencer,
Princess Diana's brother
I was at my home in Cape Town, alone with my four children, when I learnt that my sister had been killed.
The phone next to my bed rang in the middle of the night. It was my sister Jane, calling to let me know that Diana (whom we called by her childhood family nickname Duch, short for Duchess) had been involved in a car crash in Paris.
She apparently had an injury – it might possibly be a broken leg, but nothing more than that.
Diana wearing an iconic royal heirloom, the Lover's Knot tiara, and a white Catherine Walker dress on an official visit to Hong Kong, 1989
Jane’s husband, Robert Fellowes, was the Queen’s Private Secretary, so I felt confident that he would have access to accurate information.
Despite the reassurance, I padded quietly downstairs and turned on the kitchen TV.
The gravity of the crash had yet to sink in. The tone was, as had somehow become normal since her divorce a year earlier, patronising, misogynistic and dismissive.
Such constant, carping criticism had long been encouraged by Diana’s enemies in the Palace. There was no compassion for a human who must be in distress.
Jane and I spoke frequently as the situation became more worrying. The brutality of the crash became clear when it was confirmed that Diana’s boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and the French driver of their car, Henri Paul, had died instantly, on impact.
And then, on perhaps our fifth or sixth call that night, when escalating dread had us both floundering a bit for words, I heard my brother-in-law, Robert, talking in the background on the work line in their home. ‘Oh, no!’ he half bellowed, half sighed in disbelief.
Dodi Al Fayed and Diana entering the Ritz Hotel in Paris, on the day they were killed in a car crash
And Jane, witnessing the completeness of his shock, relayed to me, in a soft voice: ‘That’s it… it’s curtains… Duch is dead…’
‘Rest assured,’ Charles hissed, ‘we’ll forget Diana soon enough!’
To many, the death of an icon who had become a backdrop to their lives might have been too bewildering to comprehend that morning. But to me, awake for hours, it was immediately clear that the paparazzi had recklessly endangered, then snuffed out, Diana’s life, claiming the driver and Dodi as collateral damage.
Police remove the crumpled wreckage of the Mercedes-Benz which had been carrying Diana and Dodi from the Pont d'Alma tunnel
The phone rang constantly. Prince Charles caught me as I crossed the landing upstairs.
Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated – like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time.
He let me know he had informed William and Harry of their mother’s death, first thing that morning, in their bedrooms at Balmoral. It all sounded strangely matter-of-fact, given the enormity of the disaster.
Looking back now, I suspect the prince’s first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not. It can be hard to feel too much sympathy for an ex-spouse, or those who care for them profoundly, after bitter divorce.
A distraught Earl Spencer addresses journalists gathered outside his Cape Town home on the day his sister died
I was chosen to be the point of contact for my family when it came to Diana’s funeral arrangements.
Once it was correctly decided, after my family appreciated the public need for it, that Diana’s service should be a full-blown national ceremony, Buckingham Palace and Prince Charles’s offices felt entitled to take the lead.
Diana remained theirs, in Buckingham Palace’s eyes, even in death. Her family, despite her divorce, were simply expected to fall into line with any royal decisions.
It is at moments like this that even the most ardent monarchist finds that questions about arrogance and entitlement arise.
My sisters knew that Diana had always wanted Mozart’s Requiem to be played for her, after her death. But when I passed this on, it was rejected as a possibility: ‘No part of a requiem can be played at a Church of England funeral,’ I was told.
Diana and Charles in South Korea, in November 1992, on their final royal tour together. The couple announced their separation the following month
I later found out that was not the case – the first of several untruths that the authorities would push my way at that time.
Meanwhile, there were very serious tensions between the two principal royal teams: the Queen’s, in Buckingham Palace, and Prince Charles’s, in St James’s Palace. These were caused by the heir to the throne’s growing frustrations at being a middle-aged man still waiting to reign.
Against this backdrop, there was no thought of anyone in the Royal Family talking to me directly about the funeral arrangements. As was usual, such a delicate and personal interaction was farmed out to a courtier.
Lieutenant Colonel Malcolm Ross proved to be a classic, clipped voiced Old Etonian Guards officer whose role at Buckingham Palace, then, was Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. This placed him in charge of ceremonial and official events that the Queen was to attend.
He always treated me with extreme courtesy. When, during our first conversation, he passed me his condolences on Diana’s loss, he clearly meant it.
There were others in the Palace, I already knew, who were relieved – indeed, pleased – that she had gone.
A sea of flowers left by the public built up in front of Kensington Palace, Diana's former residence, in the days after her death
During one of our phone calls, Colonel Ross seemed about to ring off when he added: ‘Oh! Another thing. It’s been decided that the two young princes will walk behind the princess’s coffin.’
‘Well, that’s not going to happen,’ I said, in a matter-of-fact tone. It was a suggestion that struck me as utterly barbaric, and quite out of the question.
By this stage I had learnt that Diana had left me as her sons’ guardian. This was a role without legal function while the other parent lived, but it made me feel empowered to speak on Diana’s behalf with William and Harry in mind. I knew that she would never have wanted her boys to have to undertake such a public ordeal.
‘Well, the Prince of Wales says it is,’ Ross repeated, assuming that would end the matter.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid it’s not happening. Diana would never have wanted to put them through anything so ghastly.’
On the day before Diana's funeral, Charles accompanies his sons at Kensington Palace to view flowers and mementoes left by mourners
Ross, clearly perplexed now, politely and speedily said his goodbyes.
A few minutes later, my direct line rang again. It was Prince Charles, sounding markedly less upbeat than when we had last spoken, on the morning of Diana’s death.
‘I gather you’ve got a problem with the funeral arrangements,’ he said testily.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said, my mind on the structure of the service as it was coming together.
‘But I gather you’ve said you don’t want William and Harry to walk behind Diana’s coffin.’
‘Well, of course not, sir. Diana would never have wanted that.’
‘But I did it at Lord Mountbatten’s funeral!’
‘But you were 30, sir, and he wasn’t your mother.’
He went nuts. ‘That’s the problem with your family. They’ve got no bloody sense of duty!’ he started, before descending into a general rage.
As he ranted, I thought of my family and its long history of duty.
Of my father, a soldier and a courtier who years before, as an equerry, had had a romantic connection with the future Queen Elizabeth II, which was ended by Lord Mountbatten.
He summoned my father and told him that any ambitions he had for securing her affections were out of the question. He must end whatever nonsense he was part of.
Perhaps Mountbatten was clearing the way for his nephew, Prince Philip. Whatever, my father, brought up on a code of respect for the Royal Family and having spent years in the military obeying senior officers, stepped aside as commanded.
Afterwards, he loathed Mountbatten with a passion.
I thought of my two grandmothers – stalwart servants and companions to this bellowing buffoon’s grandmother. Also of all the generations of Spencers who had served King, Queen and Country dutifully, as ambassadors, admirals, courtiers, politicians and viceroys.
Above all, I thought of Diana, who had been the epitome of duty during her time as princess. However complicated the course of her public life, she had always tried to put her duty to the Queen first.
Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped.
I assumed the pause signalled an effort to bring himself under control, but then he unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death: ‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough!’