Earl Charles Spencer Warns ‘Unpleasant’ Media Scrutiny of Harry and Meghan Echoes Tragedy of Princess Diana
Appearing on BBC News alongside chief presenter Laura Kuenssberg to discuss his forthcoming biographical memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Charles, the 9th Earl Spencer, drew explicit parallels between the relentless tabloid hostility currently directed at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and the devastating media siege endured by his late sister, Diana, Princess of Wales. Speaking from the family’s ancestral Althorp estate, the 62-year-old peer—who famously characterized Diana as “the most hunted person of the modern age” during her 1997 funeral eulogy—cautioned that society has failed to internalize the lessons of her tragic death.
Addressing Harry’s public grievances over institutional abandonment and Meghan’s recollection of being “the most trolled person in the world”, Spencer described sustained media persecution as a destructive, corrosive force: “If you look at an article in a tabloid about Diana or the couple that you’re mentioning, Harry and Meghan, they can be really, really unpleasant. I think it would be really beholden on people to learn from Diana’s example.
For anyone who is being destroyed in this way daily, it must be such a cancerous influence in their life.” He recalled witnessing Diana’s private “tears of despair,” explaining that contrary to public perceptions of effortless glamour and supreme privilege, the late Princess was exceptionally sensitive to external condemnation and was routinely broken down by relentless hostility.
Addressing widespread speculation that his public support leans toward the Sussexes amid the unresolved divide between William and Harry, Earl Spencer firmly clarified his neutral, paternal stance: “I think there is a perception in the media that I am on Harry’s side. Well, I’m on my deceased sister’s sons’ side, both of them, and if either of them wanted anything, I would be equally there for them. I never get involved in one camp or the other except as a benign figure, I hope. That’s my role.”
With the memoir scheduled for worldwide release on September 22, Spencer’s comments underscore an enduring instinct to shield his nephews from the very forces that shadowed their mother’s life.