LONDON — King Charles III is facing more criticism from Princess Diana’s brother Charles Spencer, with Buckingham Palace bracing for days of revelations from his tell-all memoir.The latest advance excerpt from the book accuses the then-Prince Charles of sounding “giddily elated” and “like a lottery winner,” immediately after Diana’s death in a Paris car crash in 1997, one year after the royal couple finalized their divorce.Spencer, an earl whose aristocratic family has generational ties with Britain’s royal family, writes that he was at his home in South Africa with his children when he learned “in the middle of the night” from his sister Jane that Diana had been in a car crash.
He later learned, “after escalating dread,” that she had died.“The phone rang constantly.
Prince Charles caught me as I crossed the landing upstairs,” he wrote.“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.”On the call, the then-Prince Charles told him that he had informed Princes William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12, of their mother’s death.“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,” he added.Add to GoogleBuckingham Palace hits back at claims in new memoir from Princess Diana’s brother01:25Spencer also detailed feeling shut out by royal protocol during Diana’s funeral arrangements, alleging that royal officials turned down a request to play music loved by Diana — Mozart’s Requiem — during her funeral.“Diana remained theirs, in Buckingham Palace’s eyes, even in death.
Her family, despite her divorce, were simply ex...