Charles Spencer's book Diana Swan Song etc etc . Thread the second.

[BasiliskStare]

There has been interest from some who engaged with the topic , so I'm starting a new thread as we are on page 10 . I honestly didn't think it would engender so much interest.

Let me be absolutely clear here. Threads meander , and sometimes go off topic and sometimes amusingly and interestingly so. My intention with this thread is to discuss the book , related matters eg contemporaneous accounts, reviews , interviews etc I'm also , frankly, interested to see how Piers Morgan's reaction to it goes.

As has been so often said anyone is allowed to post whatever they like on a public forum. I'm just explaining why I have started this thread. I have no intention of policing it .

Let's see how it goes 😎

A bit off-topic, but I notice that the review mentions the memoir of Alathea Fitzalan Howard, The Windsor Diaries, My Childhood with the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. This is a fascinating read. I highly recommend it.

I would love to know when he started writing this. Before or after his own memoir and its success. Given it came out in 2024 and he said he had a breakdown requiring residential care after his own book that doesn’t seem like a long time to write it.

Also would be interesting to know if it was always intended to come out now.

Robert Fellowes died 2 years ago.

It may have been started before he died, but I suspect it was never going to be published while he was still alive.

Fellowes was in a unique position. He was part of the Spencer family, and he was involved in much of the organisation of Diana's funeral (as well as other Royal Household discussions) as a private secretary to the Queen.

He would have been able to confirm or deny many of the statements in the book.

ETA I feel a great deal of sympathy for Jane Fellowes (as well as her sister). Charles S says his sisters were hurt when he told them about the book. He doesn't strike me as someone who would pick up on subtle signs of others' upset, so they may have been quite distressed.

Surprised there were no comments on Diana’s affairs with married men

I'm not

Why ? Because he adored her? He also criticised her

He doesn’t seem to have criticised her particularly after she was married in the book if I understand correctly. He seems to have then pointed her as a victim. Probably so he could continue with his pantomime villain port of Charles

He revealed to all that she was a married mother-of-two when she assaulted her step-mother by pushing her down the stairs.

i do wonder if he realised that most people assumed that had happened when Diana was a child.

I can’t imagine that the biggest revelation about his sister personally was meant to be that one.

No I agree. I wonder if he forgot that revealing her age when she pushed Raine meant revealing that she did it when she was married with children?

I didn’t think it was made up- why would he do that?

@LambriniBobInIsleworthISeesYaThere are photos of Nelson Mandela at Althorp and he is walking across a bridge

It would be very odd if he meant to announce to the world that she was a fully grown adult at the time.

Popularity and childhood bedrooms are irrelevant to primogeniture.

It's odd as surely the Spencer children already had their rooms before Raine moved in?

Two of her children were adults & I think the younger two remained with their father.

I haven't gone back and checked ( Kindle - inexpert at search function and tapping to and fro a pain in the arse ) but I would say yes Johnny did want a son. I also recall CS referring to D being the apple of his father's eye . I'm not convinced from my reading Diana's early life was miserable because she was not a boy. But those who have read / listened please correct me if I am wrong.

I just finished it in a couple of days. CS doesn't dwell on the issue of possible parental disappointment in Diana's sex, but I'm assuming from the circumstances and from other things that I have read that surely they wanted Diana to be a boy. However, it doesn't appear from anything in the book that her parents loved her any less because she was a girl. By all accounts, Johnny Spencer was a doting and involved father, and he and Diana had a particularly close relationship.

From what I have read in other accounts, it appears that Diana's unhappy childhood stemmed primarily from her parents' divorce, not from being treated differently because she was a girl. However, I can certainly understand that a system (agnatic primogeniture) which inherently values males over females could certainly make a girl think that she was perhaps surplus to requirements. I cannot imagine growing up or raising children in such an environment.

I think there are a few interesting issues here. The primogeniture issue obviously looms large as Spencer wanted a male heir, but it must have been made even worse as Diana was conceived as a direct replacement for her brother who died. The fact that she was a girl also meant that there was pressure on her mother to conceive again, which may have caused some resentment from
her mother towards her. The primogeniture issue also, ironically for Spencer, shows the aristocracy as more backward thinking than the monarchy today. It also, in my view, highlights how sad it is when any parent is disappointed in the sex of their child, be it male or female. There are lots of threads on here where people express their dismay that they have had “another” boy or girl. People forget that the sex of a child doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good relationship with them. It would seem that Diana was close to her father, even though she wasn’t the longed for boy

Good points, but don't forget how ambitious Johnny Spencer was, and Diana was a healthy and robust child, she would no doubt make a good marriage. Why did the family call her "Duch"? Why did she say she had to keep herself "tidy"? She was going to marry well and she was going to marry young.
It was essential to have a male heir, but useful to have daughters.

Didn't dhe behave like one do the family called her that. Also, yes, she would have been expected to marry well. But none of her sisters married particularly well. Like a certain mileau obviously but they didn't marry into great estates or anything. At the time I guess you were expected to stay what would now be chaste. Diana was undereducated and actually wasn't even working at posh jobs. She cleaned and worked at a nursery after her mother bought her a flat. There was only really one thing for to do.

Her sister Jane married the Queen's Private Secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes.
She was 21 and he was 37. She married well.
Sarah dated the then Prince of Wales. She could have married well.

Charles Spencer has said he did phone piers Morgan and ask him not to come to Diana's funeral after the royal family had invited him.

What Spencer got wrong was his conjecture about how outrageous it was for piers to be invited when he was editor and a story of private leaked footage of Diana was published. Piers was not editor at the time. That is the inaccuracy.

What does she married well mean?

Absolutely. Plus Morgan clarified that it was the Lord Chamberlain who invited them, as was the practice, but he agreed to stay away out of respect.
You're right about the timeline, which Spencer got wrong.

In aristocratic parlance, someone with a title or at the very least, linked.
Diana's mother was only 18 when she married the 30 year old Johnny Spencer. There was an even bigger age gap between her mother, Ruth, and Baron Fermoy.
Famously Ruth Fermoy took Spencer's side against her own daughter in the custody dispute, which Frances lost. She was disgusted that when Frances remarried, it was into "trade".
An attitude somewhat replicated by Frances' attitude to Diana's boyfriends.

@Constantrunner It usually refers to trading up in terms of social status. Slightly odd it’s used about Sarah Spencer. She was the daughter of an Earl but didn’t up her status. She seems to have been happily married though. I hadn’t appreciated the age difference.

Yes.

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned is that while the invitations naturally were going out from the Lord Chamberlain, as it was a royal ceremonial funeral, we don't know if it was the Royal Family or the government wanted the editors of the main newspapers of the day to be invited.

I suspect there may have been a standard list for who would usually be invited to such a funeral.
I would be surprised if the royal family (small f) wanted the editors there any more than Spencer, but they wouldn't be calling to uninvite them.