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

Well, that's not healthy. He's 42 and a father of two children; he needs to move forward and deal with it. I'm not saying it's easy, or he should pull himself together, but he can afford top level, regular counselling. No waiting list, no worries about time off work etc I know that William has spoken of how therapy has helped him come to terms with issues. It's better than the alternative.

I couldn’t agree more, Agree with every word you say.

“Sneering, sanctimonious and faux compassion” is absolutely right and has struck the wrong chord here.

If he thought Charles Spencer was wrong; just say so. No need to be so condescending.

^Did Frances contact the Queen?*

Why should she? She hadn’t lost her daughter. The protocol would be that it was definitely up to QE2 to write a letter of condolence to Frances, not the other way around.

The fact she didn’t is one of the coldest things I have ever heard tbh. Even if there was emnity between them, any decent person would put that to one side when someone has lost a daughter, at the age of thirty six and and in such shocking circumstances.

Doubt it. The monarchy’s glued to the seabed with primordial superglue.

Charles Spencer has recently sold off part of his estate that he couldn’t farm for £60 million, so I doubt that money was the only reason for publishing.

And? , was Phillip a Nazi? , what is the relevance, apart from revealing your actual position towards the rf!

Anyone who quotes spare as a source of information when it’s literally littered with false information and downright lies that are easily disproven by a casual observer, really can’t be taken seriously.

Seems to be quite the public backlash against Charles Spencer, he doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of support for this particular revelation.

???????

That's fair enough.

My thought process had wandered off down the line of the two opposite side grandparents, slightly forgetting about the mother/daughter relationship when I wrote that question.

I suspect there's going to be a lot of history checking over this book:

Well ! I’m not surprised, however I doubt people who have already decided who is the villain will care about facts at this point.

Why would the man whose sister died mostly due to press intrusion (and not wearing a seatbelt etc of course) give his new book, about her, to the press to serialise?

Who knows?

Really? His nephew allegedly has burnt through that amount in 5 years ( KC funded year one). Maybe it runs in the family.

Juiciest?

I'd say the thieves were looking for other stuff altogether. The literacy level of people who break into parked trucks for a living shouldn't be overestimated.

I have used my little grey cells, and deduced the fate of those 4 missing books which have yet to appear.

The truck driver was at a truck stop. For whatever reason, he was forced to relieve himself in the bushes but had no toilet paper. Rather than risk accidentally pulling up some poison ivy leaves, he remembered he had some books in the back, and figured no one would miss 4 of them. Afterwards, he wrapped the soiled books up in the black plastic, and disposed of the bundle in the truck stop dumpster.

Since he was a Gen Z truck driver, he had never heard of Diana. So the book made no great impression on him.

Edited for grammar.

Why would the man whose sister died mostly due to press intrusion (and not wearing a seatbelt etc of course) give his new book, about her, to the press to serialise?

Well possibly because it being the thirtieth anniversary of Diana’s death next year, there are going to be lots of books written about her by people who didn’t really know her, and he as her brother, wanted to produce the definitive record and make things known that he couldn’t back then?

And because if you are an author and have a major book to sell, your publisher or literary agent will have fixed up a deal on your behalf so that parts of it get serialised? That is standard marketing for bestsellers nowadays along with all of the press interviews and guest appearances where he will be talking about the book. Spencer probably would have had very little to do with the minutiae of the deal himself.

As someone who was an adult at the time of Diana's death, I witnessed the extraordinarily hysterical public response in the days following the news with amazement. People who had never met Diana were weeping copiously at the gates of Kensington Palace for days (multitudes of them). It was really a scene of bizarre mass hysteria. I also remember these same people demanding the royal standard (which was not flying at Buckingham Palace since the Queen was not in residence) be hoisted and flown at half and demanding the Queen (who was looking after her bereaved grandsons in peaceful, private Balmoral) return to London immediately. Tony Blair jumped on the band wagon and went to Balmoral to persuade the Queen to return quickly to London despite her wish to continue caring for her grandsons. Charles flew to Paris to collect the body and I recall footage of him when he landed back with the RAF flight looking genuinely very sad. Lastly, I remember it widely reported (I think just a day or so before the funeral) that the boys had been asked by Prince Phillip if they would like to walk with him behind the coffin (making clear it was entirely optional) and they both decided to do so.

They were grieving CHILDREN. That decision should have been made for them. There is no way they should have been put through that.

Similar age myself and this is broadly how I remember it too. The public wanted the late Queen in London but I think she was right to put H&W first. Blair did not handle Diana’s death well at all in my opinion.
A few years ago I saw an old documentary about those days after Diana’s death, Charles looked utterly shell shocked and his staff at the time who were telling the story were completely devastated. The thing that hit me was that Charles found himself as a single parent overnight at a time when C and D were getting on much better, especially around their parenting roles. No matter how bad a marriage, in my opinion, very few parents would want to parent alone. Something that seems to get lost in all the noise around Diana death.
No idea whose version of events is true but grief does strange things to people and when so sudden, even stranger.

This.

It is interesting to watch the narrative change over the years around Diana.

At the time, I remember how hostile the press has started to become before he death and how they immediately turned on the royal family, demanding public displays of private grief, whilst Diana became a saint in death.

William and Harry did an interview in, I think 2017, where they both said they were glad they had walked behind the coffin, difficult though it was, and how supportive Prince Philip had been. They were grateful to have been given a choice. Harry has changed his mind on this, as is his right. I think that it shows how grief isn't a static thing and how our perspective can change over the years.

I don't know why Charles S has waited so long to write this book, 30 years later the narrative around Diana is far more complex and nuanced than Saint Diana, Dreadful Charles. He may have missed the boat if he wanted to portray his sister as the perfect victim. Certainly his ongoing hostility calls into question the reliability of his memories, particularly as grief distorts everything around us anyway.

I hope that the book is a balanced measured account of Diana's life and that the the clickbait bits in the tabloids do not reflect the whole. Diana deserves that.

After 30 years though what I believe she most deserves is to be left in peace to be privately mourned by those who actually knew and loved her. Instead I suspect we are in for a deluge of dubious revelations and reflections to cash in, once again, on her death.