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Princess Diana’s younger brother, Charles Spencer, released his memoir “Swan Song,” about the beloved royal this week revealing new details about the late royal’s life behind palace walls.
From claims about then-Prince Charles’ treatment of Diana to an American politician who reportedly courted her after her divorce, here are some of the memoir’s biggest revelations.
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“Swan Song” is out now. (Steinway)
Charles’ reaction to Diana’s death
Spencer wrote that on the morning Diana died, then-Prince Charles sounded “giddily elated – like a lottery winner,” he remembered thinking at the time.
He wrote that Charles was “strangely matter-of-fact, given the enormity of the disaster.”
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Charles Spencer wrote a memoir about his sister Princess Diana called “Swan Song.” (© The Spencer Family; Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)
In hindsight, Spencer wrote, he believed that Charles’ first reaction to her death was that it likely freed him up to “marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not.”
He also wrote that while they were arguing over funeral arrangements, Charles told him, “Rest assured … we’ll forget her soon enough!”
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Spencer said he was stunned for a few seconds before responding, “I can’t believe you just said that,” before hanging up.
Earlier in their conversation, Spencer wrote that Charles accused the Spencer family of having no sense of duty because Spener had objected to Princes Harry and William walking behind their mother’s coffin.
A photo of Princess Diana and Charles Spencer smiling together as kids. (Central Press/Getty Images)
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Spencer wrote that he believed the diatribe was the result of Charles’ “pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death.”
After the excerpt from the book was released last week, Buckingham Palace issued a rare statement.
“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,” the statement said.
Diana considered moving to South Africa with heart surgeon boyfriend
Prince Charles and Princess Diana ride in a carriage on their wedding day. (WireImage)
Spencer wrote that after falling in love with heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan following her divorce, Diana had the “naïve yet impossible” dream of moving to South Africa — where Spencer lived at the time — with her boyfriend because England had become “intolerable” to her.
“Might they, she dared hope, move there together, and carve out a life?” he wrote.
He said she dreamed that Khan could work at a hospital in Cape Town, and they could live “happily — normally — nearby” her brother.
“The other side of the world seemed to offer the possibility of asylum,” he wrote.
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One of Diana’s post-divorce suitors was an American politician
Spencer said that Diana once asked him if he thought she’d make a good American first lady, explaining that one of her “many powerful aging American suitors, keen to secure her as the ultimate trophy wife, had told her he was sure to win the presidency if she married him.”
Princess Diana and Prince Charles seen together in 1991. (Getty Images)
He said that Diana was more “titillated” by the idea of living in the White House than by the prospect of marrying the “would-be elderly husband.”
Diana, he said, had a “mischievous attraction to reinventing herself in a role that would make her enemies in the British Royal Family sick with jealousy, while ushering in an era of glamour in the White House that would surely have surpassed even that of the Jackie Kennedy years.”
Diana almost canceled the ‘Panorama’ interview
Despite “Panorama” reporter Martin Bashir allegedly telling Diana a series of falsehoods, including that she was being surveilled by MI6, that Prince William was unwittingly bugging her through a device on his watch and that her children’s nanny had aborted Prince Charles’ child after an affair, Diana almost canceled the interview, Spencer said.
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He wrote that the princess pulled out a few days before the interview was scheduled to take place.
But Bashir and the show’s executive producer persisted, Spencer wrote. He said they arranged a clandestine meeting in a parking garage, where Spencer believes they persuaded Diana that her life was in “imminent” danger and that doing the interview was the best way to protect herself.
A view of Spencer’s handwritten eulogy notes for Diana’s funeral. (© The Spencer Family)
Spencer depicts then-Prince Charles as resentful of his position
Spencer said he had a conversation with Charles after his own father’s funeral, during which Charles told him he was “lucky” his father had died because he got to inherit when he was “so young.”
Charles allegedly said that while Spencer was inheriting his ancestral home of Althorp in his 20s, the prince complained that he was 43 and employed 50 people, “but my parents insist on treating me like — like a child!”
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He also wrote that when a senior courtier told Queen Elizabeth that Charles resented a reprimand she had delivered through the courtier, the queen dismissed the concern, telling him: “He even resented it when I taught him the alphabet.”
Spencer also wrote that Diana told him early in her relationship with the prince that the queen had once considered having Charles’ ears pinned back because their “protrusion” had caused him to be teased at school and mocked by the media. Prince Philip put a stop to it, however, according to Spencer.
Spencer added that he didn’t know whether the story was true, but said Diana believed it.
Earl Charles Spencer’s book “Swan Song” was released this week. (Getty Images)
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Diana claimed then-Prince Charles was ‘in love with his valet’
Later in the book, Spencer wrote that when Diana first told him she planned to divorce Charles, she claimed that the prince was “in love with his valet.”
Spencer said he found the claim improbable, but didn’t press her for more information because he was focused on the realization that she was ending her marriage and her “dreams.”
Princess Diana sits on the steps of Highgrove House. (Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)
Diana’s interests were ‘traditionally feminine’
Spencer wrote that his sister had “traditionally feminine” interests, which included collecting numerous stuffed animals as a child. She loved flowers, especially forget-me-nots, listened to the Beatles and David Bowie, and liked the soap opera “Crossroads.”
As she got older, Spencer wrote that she “devoured” romance novels by Barbara Cartland, whom he said mainly wrote about aristocratic men pursuing virginal women and eventually living happily ever after.
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She also once told Spencer that she had watched the equally romantic “The Sound of Music” 16 times.
Spencer’s book was released nearly a year before the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death. Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997.
Buckingham Palace told Fox News Digital, “We won’t be offering any further comment.”