I have to say, I find these revelations from Earl Spencer genuinely shocking.
Whatever one thinks of Charles, Diana or the bitter history between them, reading an account from Diana's own brother of those days and of what she had told him about her marriage is deeply disturbing.
The suggestion that Charles was not in love with Diana when they married, Diana's belief that his heart was elsewhere, and particularly her extraordinary statement that her husband was “in love with his valet”, are revelations that I would never have expected to see put into print in this way.
But perhaps most upsetting is Spencer's account of Charles's reaction to Diana's death and the alleged words he later used about her: “We'll forget her soon enough.”
These are, of course, Spencer's recollections and accounts of what Diana told him, and they should be treated as such. They don't prove every interpretation that will inevitably be placed upon them.
Nevertheless, I find the whole thing profoundly sad. Whatever had happened between Charles and Diana by then, she was the mother of his two sons and had died in extraordinarily tragic circumstances.
After everything that has been written about the Royal Family over the past thirty years, I genuinely thought there was little left that could shock me about the Charles and Diana story.
I was wrong.