Earl Spencer's book on Diana is stolen

[JustHereForTheShitsAndGiggles]

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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

I've no idea if the Mail was Diana's paper or whether she even had a paper or how relevant that is 30 years on, but it's quite interesting that Spencer - who is supposedly supportive of his nephew Harry in his struggles - is having his book serialised in the Daily Mail, Harry's current bête noire. I guess it's the only mid-range, non-paywall option available.

His last book was serialised in the Mail on Sunday, so it may be part of an overall deal

Yes it is a bit odd but I suppose if you get financial reward then fair enough. They have made enough money off stories about him and his sister in the past!

Or he is just following his agent’s instructions

Harry and Meg were leaking to Charlotte Griffiths at the Mail certainly last summer (the balcony meeting of 'the teams' for the doomed 'project thaw') and then HaM blamed the leak on the Palace. Griffiths fessed up after the ANL verdict. Then I think it was Tom Sykes who confirmed it, and revealed the existence of the Sussex PR WhatsUp group for tabloid journalists and various media outlets like Chris Shit at ITV.

ETA: they are all raging hypocrites.

I've no idea if the Mail was Diana's paper or whether she even had a paper or how relevant that is 30 years on

By 'Diana's paper' he didn't mean that she had it delivered - she had a close relationship with them, regularly called in to their offices, and they supported her during the 'War of the Waleses'.

Because it makes a good story.

Turns out that KC is a real wrong-un who knew ? What a utterly heartless man.

Charles told Earl Spencer 'rest assured, we'll forget Diana soon enough' in incendiary phone call days after her death, claims devastating memoir

www.dailymail.com/news/article-16136479/Charles-told-Earl-Spencer-forget-Diana-soon-enough.html

The Earl says he insisted to the then Prince of Wales that Diana would not have wanted her young sons to endure such a public ordeal. It is claimed Charles then questioned the Spencer family’s sense of duty before saying his ex-wife, whose death sparked a global outpouring of grief, would soon be forgotten.
Earl Spencer says the comments ‘unleashed’ by the King almost 30 years ago reflected ‘his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death’.
The astonishing account of the King’s alleged outburst is included in Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which Earl Spencer, 62, says he has written to correct ‘untruths’ told about his older sister.
The Daily Mail can disclose that it includes a string of further extraordinary claims about Diana’s failed marriage to King Charles and the tumultuous aftermath of her tragic death in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

SOME MORE; In his book, Earl Spencer writes that when one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides told him in the days before the funeral that William and Harry would take part in the procession, he responded: ‘That’s not going to happen.’
But minutes later he received a phone call from Prince Charles who insisted that 18 years earlier he had walked in the funeral procession of Lord Mountbatten, his great-uncle, who he affectionately called ‘uncle Dickie’.
The memoir describes how Charles ‘went nuts’ after Earl Spencer pointed out that the Prince had been 30 at the time of Lord Mountbatten’s funeral in 1979.
In one of the book’s most extraordinary passages, Earl Spencer writes: ‘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!”’
Earl Spencer said that he was ‘so stunned’ by the alleged remarks that he took a few seconds to reply.
‘“I can’t believe you just said that,” I said flatly, before hanging up,’ he writes.
Earl Spencer’s description of the shocking outburst threatens to reopen the wounds of the so-called War of the Waleses and Prince Charles's bitter split and eventual divorce from Diana.
Described as ‘historic’ and ‘extraordinarily moving’, Swan Song is due to be published worldwide next Tuesday – in the UK by Penguin Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House – with the Daily Mail’s exclusive serialisation starting tomorrow.
It comes as police in the Netherlands investigate what publishing sources say is the ‘extremely suspicious’ theft of four copies of the memoir from a lorry earlier this week.
The Daily Mail revealed how a lorry packed with thousands of copies of the book, which were wrapped in black plastic to hide their contents, was broken into after it was parked overnight in a car park while the driver slept in the cab.

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Well, that's what I mean, I don't know to what extent Dacre's claim is true.

Bit weird for a newspaper to take a "side" in a divorce.

Incendiary stuff.

Just possible he said 'they' as in the public rather than 'we'?

What we do know is that Charles was committing adultery with a married woman from the outset, and Diana was the innocent party here. For him to then effectively blame her brother in anger after her death shows a level of callousness and entitlement that any normal person would find disturbing to behold.

And Harry, first as a child and then as a developing adult, was growing up in the middle of all this the breakdown of his parents' marriage, the hostility and recriminations surrounding it, and the extraordinary pressures of royal life. Given that environment, perhaps it is little wonder that he later described leaving the royal system as "finding freedom".

I'm sure Lord Spencer isn't an angel either, but that's not the point. He isn't our head of state. He's just another aristocrat.
That said, this whole story does rather reek of an insdie job being done to promote the book and its serialisation in the Daily Mail. The timing and the way the material is being presented certainly make that look like a reasonable interpretation.

I'm not sure what Earl Spencer is trying to achieve (apart from £££ ), but let us not forget that his own marital track record isn't exactly sparkling...... there may well have been "words" between two bereaved, stressed, angry men but it serves nobody to peddle this stuff now.

Agreed. It is going to upset William hugely apart from anything else . What a tawdry lot they are.

Apparently he's worth north of £100m, so I can't see money being his motivation here. More likely, it's revenge against the person who, in his view, more than anyone else was responsible for the death of his sister.

Whoever he is, and whatever his faults may be, is largely irrelevant to the point. He's neither the head of state nor someone living off the public purse. He's simply another aristocrat with a very personal grievance.

And I can see no obvious reason why he would lie about what happened. The bare bones of what we already know appear to give at least some credibility to his account. That doesn't mean every allegation he makes is necessarily true, but it does mean his version shouldn't simply be dismissed out of hand.

What can't be avoided, at least among some royalists, is the uncomfortable sight of a figure who has been worshipped by some being revealed as an intemperate , vicious angry man with the emotional intelligence of a rock.

I’m afraid I just don’t believe Earl Spencer - he needs money and he has failed to mention this in all the years since her death.

he was so angry after she died and I really can’t imagine he would have held that in - not even to protect the boys.

they should really let her rest in peace

Just been reported on itv news that the Palace has responded to this leak with a spin on “recollections may vary” but with knobs on. KC is not going to take this lying down

The Palace statement:

'While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.'

No and nor should he. I remember Charles Spencer's sanctimonious speech at Diana's funeral - he's a pretty unpleasant man and perhaps should reflect on the things he's said about his own wives before chucking out shit of this sort.
I'm not sure why he feels it necessary after so many years to write about the whole tragedy of Diana's death and the breakdown of her marriage. He knows he has got one nephew whose mental health is clearly very bound up in paranoia and the idolising of his mother beyond reason. If not for the £££s why make it worse for Diana's own 'blood family' by muckraking and casting her once again as a doomed victim without agency?

Recollections may vary

I find his decision to write a book about his sister bizarre as given their age gap and boarding school he wasn’t around her much in childhood (which seems to be confirmed in his book). He was 16/17 and still at boarding school when she got married so won’t have been around much.

Nothing over the years has suggested they were remotely close as adults.

His new penchant for books and doing lots of self repair doesn’t seem to be remotely helping his relationships with his children. This one is very unlikely to help his relationship with his nephews (or at least one of them) and it’s absolutely selling out his sister, just as he accused others of doing.

Fake news

“Accused” and “Revealed” mean very different things.

Just as “royalists” may not find Spencer to be a reliable narrator, some types* will be pleased to believe anything negative that they read.

*is there a special word for those?

@foxylady2
Diana was committing adultery with Will Carling.