Prince William is determined to put his best foot forward while the furore over Earl Spencer’s bombshell book about Princess Diana rages on. Friends say the father-of-three, who was just 15 when his mother died, is “struggling” having so many old wounds reopened and has made a private plea to his uncle to leave the past alone.
“William’s heartbroken this is all being dragged up again,” an insider says. “He’s begged Uncle Charlie to just let his mum rest in peace. He doesn’t want her turned into another chapter or make family tensions worse.”
In the memoir, the Earl claimed that Charles had said that Diana would be forgotten “soon enough”, and that on the eve of their 1981 wedding, Charles had told her that he “was not actually in love with her”.
The Earl has already had to backtrack over inaccuracies in the book, with a factual error about journalist Piers Morgan ringing alarm bells for the other revelations. Still, that’s little consolation for William right now.
“He’s not looking for a public row – only for the circus to stop at her grave,” the source adds. “He has spent his whole adult life trying to protect her memory. This has undone a lot of that. He can’t see himself ever trusting his uncle again.”
On Tuesday, the Earl issued a formal apology statement via the BBC to Piers Morgan who was wrongly named in Swan Song as editor of the UK’s Daily Mirror when “highly intrusive” photos of Diana in her gym gear were published in 1993.
“The photographs were published by the Sunday Mirror on 7 November 1993. Mr Morgan has pointed out that he did not join the Daily Mirror until October 1995,” the statement read.
“As an historian, accuracy is important to Earl Spencer. He therefore wishes to clarify that his assumption was incorrect. Earl Spencer apologises to Mr Morgan for this error.”
Taking to X on Tuesday UK time in response, Piers wrote, “Earl Spencer has apologised to me for his defamatory lies published in his new book, Swan Song, published today. But I am pursuing legal action against him and his publisher Penguin to have the lies removed, and damages paid to the King’s Trust.”
In Swan Song, Charles Spencer alleges that Piers was “surly” when he called him to un-invite him to Diana’s 1997 funeral, writing that the newspaper editor “snarled with annoyance before he hung up”.
“I assumed Morgan must be feeling particular guilt because, four years earlier, he and his Sunday Mirror counterpart had published photographs taken with hidden cameras by a gym owner. They were of Diana working out in a leotard.
“This was such an intolerable invasion of her privacy that Diana instructed lawyers to sue the Mirror Group and to block further use of the images.”
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