SWAN SONG

Swan Song: Diana, My Sister (Penguin Press, September 2026) is Charles Spencer's memoir of his sister Diana, Princess of Wales, told from her younger brother's point of view. It's built around his 1997 funeral eulogy, and it runs from their childhood at Althorp through her marriage, her global fame and the week she died. Publication drew a rare public rebuttal from Buckingham Palace and a split critical reception: some reviewers found a tender portrait of a sibling, others a score-settling self-portrait.

Bear witness

1. Write your own account down before other people's versions harden into the accepted story. Spencer says he finally put his memories on paper rather than keep watching accounts 'based on untruths' circulate, and called it a duty he owed as an eyewitness to history. (source, source, source)
2. When you write or speak about someone you loved, speak for them rather than merely about them. Spencer's first eulogy draft was a conventional tribute, the 'she was good at this as a child' kind of memory. He judged it hollow, reframed the task as voicing who she really was, and finished the final draft in about ninety minutes. (source)
3. A tribute can be honest without becoming an attack. Spencer says he could have written something far more devastating and chose what he calls the considered version. He rejects the 'tittle-tattle' framing and insists his job was to celebrate Diana, not to write a hit piece on the King. (source, source)
4. Sibling grief is often the least acknowledged kind. Spencer dedicated the book to people who have lost a sibling. Even the Palace's rebuttal framed the dispute around 'fraternal grief'. Brothers and sisters carry losses others rarely think to ask about. (source, source)
5. Treat any witness account, your own included, as an interpretation rather than a verdict. Reviewers read the book's repetitive circling as trauma resisting closure. Spencer concedes that some disturbing stories may only be what Diana believed, and that grief distorts recall in ways the mourner can't see. (source, source)
6. Verify checkable details before you publish or repeat them. Spencer had to apologise for a factual error about Piers Morgan's editorship and still faces a threatened lawsuit over it. One wrong specific can overshadow an entire testimony. (source, source)
7. Don't assume you know how someone close to you is really doing. Ask. Spencer had no idea how unhappy Diana was until Andrew Morton's 1992 book. He regrets having been absorbed in his own life, and notes she confided in their mother and sisters rather than in her younger brother. (source)
8. Set boundaries around your own mourning. Spencer describes funeral arrangements being managed for him by the palace, his decision to disinvite Fleet Street editors from the service, and the overwhelming public emotion as a form of mental torture rather than comfort. (source)
9. Judge people as individuals rather than by their titles. Spencer says he deliberately set status aside while writing and treated his subjects as people. He wanted readers to meet Diana as a complete human being, and to remember that her sons are human beings too. (source, source)
10. When you see a destructive pattern repeat, say so. Having watched the press pursue his sister to her death, Spencer warns the same treatment is being applied to Harry and Meghan. Watching it as their uncle, he says, 'sets the alarms going'. (source)