Diana’s Brother Says King Charles Sounded Like a Lottery Winner the Night She Died

The world still remembers how it felt when news broke that Princess Diana had died. In the early hours of August 31, 1997 a Mercedes crashed inside the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. Diana and Dodi Fayed were in the back. Their driver Henri Paul and bodyguard Trevor Rees Jones were in front.

Paparazzi had been chasing the car after it left the Ritz. Fayed and Paul died at the scene. Rees Jones survived. Diana was still alive when rescuers reached her but she suffered a cardiac arrest in the ambulance. She arrived at Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital around 2:06 a.m. Doctors found massive internal injuries. They gave her a transfusion and operated. Another arrest followed. Surgeon Monsef Dahman and his team used shocks and massage. Her heart would not start again.

William and Harry were at Balmoral with their father and grandmother that night. They were 15 and 12. They lost their mother while the rest of the world learned the same news in waves. Diana’s own mother lost a daughter. Her brother Charles Spencer, Earl Spencer, lost a sister. An estimated 2.5 billion people watched the funeral on September 6. William and Harry walked behind the coffin. Spencer walked with them.

Spencer’s new book Swan Song: Diana, My Sister is due out next week. Daily Mail excerpts have already circulated. In one passage he describes the phone call he received after the death was confirmed. He was in South Africa. Other callers could barely speak. Charles, then Prince of Wales, sounded different.

“Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated,” Spencer wrote. He remembered thinking the prince “sounded like a lottery winner.” Charles told him he had already spoken to William and Harry in their bedrooms at Balmoral first thing that morning. Spencer wrote that the tone felt strangely matter of fact given what had just happened. Looking back he suspects the prince’s first thought was how the event might free him to marry the woman he loved rather than the loss of the woman 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.

In another extract Spencer says that days later, during an argument over whether the boys should walk in the funeral procession, Charles told him: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.” Spencer says he hung up.

Buckingham Palace almost never answers books. This time it did. A statement said: “While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss.”

Spencer has since told the BBC those were exactly the words he heard. Former palace press secretary Dickie Arbiter has called the account hogwash and said Charles was devastated at the time.

The divorce had been final a year earlier. Camilla was already part of the public story. Diana remained part of the family story long after she was gone. The book is expected to keep that argument alive.