Diana's Brother Claims Lack of Care for Prince Harry After Her Funeral Led to 'Spinning Out of Control'

Princess Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, claims that Prince Harry was left to "spin out of control" after their mother's funeral due to a "lack of obvious care" for the then-12-year-old royal. The allegations appear in an excerpt from Spencer's forthcoming book, "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister."

Spencer recalled being concerned for his young nephew during the train journey from London to the Spencer family estate, Althorp, where Diana was laid to rest in September 1997. "My chief memory of that train journey is of being concerned at the lack of obvious care for Harry, as he decompressed from the ghastliness of the morning," he wrote, according to the Daily Mail.

He suggested that Harry needed "Diana's hugs" and that instead of "calm and nurture, he was allowed to spin out of control." Spencer posited that the young prince could have benefited from "a more caring hand" to cope with the profound loss.

Earlier that day, Harry and his 15-year-old brother, Prince William, walked behind their mother’s coffin in a procession to Westminster Abbey. They were accompanied by their father, then-Prince Charles, their grandfather Prince Philip, and Spencer.

Spencer described Harry's appearance during the procession as particularly vulnerable. "I could not get over how tiny, and slight, and bereft, Harry looked," he wrote. "Too small to be doing this, I thought, and wondered how on earth this heartbroken child could bear the ordeal of that moment, or how he could possibly be expected to deal with the agony that the day ahead would insist upon."

Prince Harry has previously spoken about the trauma of walking behind his mother's coffin. In 2017, he stated that he did not believe a child should be asked to do such a thing under any circumstances.

Spencer's new claims follow earlier allegations from his memoir regarding King Charles. He claimed that in the days after Diana's death, Charles made a remark about her during a heated discussion about the funeral procession. Spencer alleged that Charles told him, "Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough!"

Buckingham Palace responded to those earlier claims by stating, "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."

Spencer has since maintained the accuracy of his recollections, asserting in a BBC interview that he was "hyper alert" during the alleged conversation with Charles and that the words were precisely as he reported them.

Spencer also questioned Charles's role in Diana's funeral, given the bitter divorce between the former couple. He wrote, "This ex-husband, from a marriage that had collapsed so bitterly four years before and finally ended in divorce a year earlier, surely had no place at his ex’s funeral."

Diana and Charles married in 1981 and divorced in 1996. The Princess of Wales died in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997, at the age of 36.

"Swan Song: Diana, My Sister" is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.