5 heartbreaking takeaways from Charles Spencer's book 'Swan Song: Diana, My Sister'

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Set us as preferred Although the details of Princess Diana’s life have been scrutinized for decades, it’s been nearly 30 years since her untimely death, and her younger brother, journalist and author Charles Spencer, is telling his side of the story in “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.”The explosive and heart-wrenching tell-all, released this week, has reportedly ruffled feathers inside Buckingham Palace, and its not hard to imagine why.The book delves into Princess Diana’s upbringing, her red-flag-ridden engagement and marriage to then-Prince Charles, the 1997 car accident that ended her life and the aftermath.Here are five takeaways from Spencer’s book, including his regrets over not addressing Princess Diana’s eating disorder and his memory of a private reading of the eulogy he’s so well known for delivering at her funeral.

Shocked by ‘the seething mob’ that was the press around Diana“The British press’s cat-and-mouse relationship with Diana’s privacy — and her life — had been an issue since the moment she came onto their radar,” he wrote.By Spencer’s account, in the early days of Diana’s relationship with Prince Charles, and because she was only his “latest girlfriend” rather than his fiancée or wife, she was not entitled to police protection, and the media could hound her as they pleased.

“The reports failed to capture the terrifying energy of a seething mob of men around a fragile young woman,” he wrote.“To view it in the flesh was truly shocking.” Spencer writes that William said of his childhood: “I sadly remember most of the time that she ever cried about anything, it was to do with press intrusion.” Spencer claimed that William’s childhood memories include “photographers not only shooting at his mother, but even spitting at her.

“Anorexia and bulimia were ‘de...