Royals set to carry out engagements after book claims

Senior royals are set to carry out engagements on Thursday after explosive claims from a new memoir by the brother of Diana, Princess of Wales were published.

Buckingham Palace has pushed back at claims that just days after Diana’s death in 1997 Charles told her brother, Earl Spencer, “rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough”.

A palace spokesman 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 colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.”

On Thursday, senior royals are set to be seen in public carrying out official engagements after the palace took the rare step of responding to the allegations in the upcoming book.

The Prince and Princess of Wales are in Scotland (Justin Tallis/PA)

PA Wire

Diana’s son William and his wife Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales who also hold the titles of the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay in Scotland, are set to make their first official visit to Isle of Bute.

The day is to include visiting their namesake town of Rothesay and follows their visits to the Isles of Mull and Iona last year.

The Duchess of Edinburgh’s visit to Zambia, to try to celebrate the relationship between Zambia and the UK, is among other royal engagements.

Meanwhile, the Princess Royal will attend the opening of a new History Centre at the German Military Cemetery in Staffordshire.

In the book – Swan Song: Diana, My Sister serialised in the Daily Mail – the Earl claims that Charles, then the Prince of Wales, subjected him to a “stream of anger” after he insisted Diana would not have wanted Princes William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12, to walk in her funeral procession.

According to a book excerpt, one of Queen Elizabeth II’s senior aides told him that William and Harry were to walk in the procession, prompting the Earl to state “that’s not going to happen”.

Charles called minutes later and told him that 18 years earlier he had walked in the funeral procession of his great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, it is claimed.

In the book, the Earl claims: “Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped.

“I assumed the pause signalled an effort to bring himself under control, but then he unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death. ‘Rest assured’, he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough!’.”