Prince William and Prince Harry Present United Silence Over Uncle Charles Spencer’s Explosive Princess Diana Memoir
Both the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex declined to address press questions in London this week following the release of their maternal uncle Earl Charles Spencer’s bombshell memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.
During consecutive public engagements in the capital on September 21 and 22, the royal brothers faced pointed queries from reporters tracking the publication. Prince Harry (42) remained resolutely silent as reporters pressed him regarding his recent communication with his uncle outside the WellChild Awards at the Royal Lancaster Hotel.
The following afternoon, Prince William (44) bypassed an identical line of questioning regarding his reaction to the book while arriving at the ActOne Cinema in West London, with both princes maintaining strict public neutrality over their late mother’s family history.
In an interview conducted at the Spencer ancestral estate of Althorp, Earl Spencer (62) revealed that he informed William and Harry, alongside Diana’s sisters Lady Sarah and Lady Jane, simultaneously before the memoir’s release. Spencer stated that Harry was “completely fine” with the project, maintaining only a protective inquiry about whether the manuscript contained embarrassing disclosures regarding his personal life.
Addressing broader family dynamics, the Earl asserted that he deliberately held back extensive private material involving King Charles to avoid gratuitous scandal, framing his nephews primarily as young boys nurtured by an extraordinary mother while vehemently guarding their personal privacy.
The brothers’ coordinated public silence arrives shortly after Buckingham Palace issued an unprecedented rebuttal against an incendiary allegation published ahead of the book’s debut. In the text, Spencer claimed that the then-Prince Charles remarked during Diana’s 1997 funeral preparations that the family would “forget her soon enough”—a narrative the palace firmly disputed by citing how fraternal grief can cloud memory over decades.
Spencer forcefully stood by his account during a subsequent BBC broadcast, insisting the quote was entirely verbatim.
As the 30th anniversary of Diana’s passing approaches, the stark non-reaction from William and Harry underscores their shared resolve to shield their mother’s memory from reigniting long-standing institutional disputes.