Earl Spencer says press treatment of the Sussexes ‘echoes’ Diana

Earl Spencer said the relationship between the press and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex “echoes” the way the media treated his sister, Diana, Princess of Wales.

In an interview with the BBC, set to be aired on Sunday evening, the earl described the press’s coverage of Harry and Meghan as having a “cancerous influence”, adding it would be “beholden on people to learn from Diana’s example”.

He said: “If you look at an article in a tabloid about Diana or the couple that you were mentioning, Harry and Meghan, you know, they can be really, really unpleasant.

“And I think it would be really beholden on people to learn from Diana’s example.

Earl Spencer has claimed that the King said ‘we’ll forget her soon enough’ in a conversation following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales (Jonathan Brady/PA)

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“I’m not here to speak for Harry and Meghan, but for anyone who’s being destroyed in this way daily, it must be such a cancerous influence in their life.”

The earl said Diana was “really brought low” by the “criticism” she received from the media, adding it was a “pity” to see “echoes of that” in the press coverage of Harry and Meghan.

The Sussexes, who returned to the UK from the US on August 26, have long been critical of their treatment by the media, with Harry in 2021 telling Oprah Winfrey the tabloid press had created a “toxic environment”.

In July, he and six others, including Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley, lost a privacy case against the publisher of the Daily Mail, but Harry has previously won legal battles against the Mirror Group and News Group.

The earl’s latest comments come after he accused the King of gaslighting him following Buckingham Palace’s response to explosive claims that Charles said “we’ll forget her soon enough” after Diana’s death.

The earl has made a series of damning claims about the King in a new memoir chronicling Diana’s life that prompted the palace to push back, saying “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason”.

He accused the King of gaslighting him and called the response a “rather poor imitation of the ‘recollections may vary’ quote” – the late Queen’s response to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s allegations in their Oprah Winfrey interview, The Mail on Sunday reports.

He said: “It is not every day you wake up to find you’ve been gaslit by the King.

“It was astonishingly provocative and below the belt because it was essentially trying to say I’d lied without the King being able to deny what I’d said.

“I also thought it was a rather poor imitation of the ‘recollections may vary’ quote, which was a much more elegant way of putting things, but in these circumstances entirely out of place.”

He also said “Diana would be cheering from the rafters at this book”.

In response to the claims made in the memoir, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said on Wednesday: “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.”

In an extract of the BBC interview released on Friday, the earl insisted he is “telling the truth” and described the King’s comments about his sister as “monstrous”.

Earl Spencer, Prince William, Prince Harry and the then-Prince of Wales wait as the hearse carrying the coffin of Diana, Princess of Wales prepares to leave Westminster Abbey following her funeral (Fiona Hanson/PA)

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Speaking about an alleged row over Diana’s funeral arrangements involving her sons, the earl said: “(The King) went ballistic, would be the right term, and started really going for my family as a whole, about their sense of duty, not being adequate enough, and ranted for a while, I have no idea how long, but it was a significant period, and I just listened.

“And then he stopped, and I thought, ‘Oh now he’s going to pull himself together and say something more appropriate’.

“And then he said, ‘We’ll forget her soon enough’.”

Asked whether he has “evidence” of the King’s comments, the earl told the BBC: “I told friends and family straight away, close friends and family, about what had been said, because it was so monstrous.”

He added: “I’m telling the truth.”

Charles is said to have made the comments about his ex-wife in a row with the earl over whether the then Prince William and Prince Harry should follow Diana’s funeral cortege.