JAN MOIR: On his American tour, Charles Spencer's critiques of the Royals chime with the grievances of Harry and Meghan

Published: 01:00 BST, 2 October 2026 | Updated: 14:49 BST, 2 October 2026

Like a puffing tinpot general at the head of an expeditionary force of toy soldiers, the Earl Spencer has marched off to invade and conquer America.

He is a man on a three-pronged military mission; to promote his book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister; to make lots of lovely money; to continue to pour ordure upon the Royal Family in general and King Charles in particular.

‘They have to gaslight,’ he fumed in one interview. ‘They have to pretend there’s something wrong with my mind or my memory. There’s nothing wrong with either.’

Cripes! What an awfully big adventure for little brother Charles, who packed his trunk with his posh boy blazers and his shiny buckled loafers, then set off for the new world, fizzing with old animosities.

Television, radio, podcasts, broadcasts, newspapers and mags, our hero is ready, willing and able to appear on them all, to sing his song of royal woe and to give his former brother-in-law a kicking at every opportunity, for this unedifying War of the Charleses is far from over.

At the book launch in New York this week, the Earl was interviewed by royal biographer Tina Brown in front of a live audience, and wasted no time in getting to the real nugget of meat on his payback kebab.

Not about the glorious wonder of Diana, but more about the horror of then-Prince Charles. Once more, we were transported back to who said what in the days following Diana’s death in 1997.

‘So, I was very calm,’ the earl tells Tina. ‘And we know that Prince Charles can be not calm. We all bow our heads in respect at what that pen had to endure when he had his tantrum.’

Charles Spencer is on a self-serving trajectory, and he is making an impact, writes Jan Moir

Not the pen, again? I’m afraid so. Tina giggled at this petty slight. So did the audience. Spencer carried on. ‘But the point is, this is a man with a temper, and I was very even that day.’

Of course you were, sire. As even as the reading on your in-person bile-o-meter, which seems to be approaching nuclear fission levels when it comes to the King.

Earlier that day, Spencer was on the CBS Mornings television show with presenter Gayle King, Oprah’s best friend and therefore a champion supporter of the Sussexes.

It’s all very cosy, especially as Spencer’s critiques of the Royal Family chime so precisely with the grievances of Meghan and Harry; they seem to believe the Royals only look after their own, that they have all been frozen out and never accorded the respect and homage they feel they deserve.

In the TV studio Earl Spencer is resplendent in his blazer, Gayle is in a pink power trouser suit. Her manner is very buddy-buddy while he is a polished performer, but slick. Gayle proceeds to butter him up as if he were a slice of toast.

She certainly gives good grease. She tells him how marvellous he is for protecting his blood family nephews William and Harry, she instructs viewers to buy the book which she ‘highly recommends’ because it is ‘sensational’, she worries that he has been ‘heavily criticised’ for said book, but Spencer disputes this.

‘I’m getting a lot of criticism fed by Buckingham Palace but not from other people and not from readers.’ This is patently stretching the truth somewhat, but Gayle does not challenge him. ‘Well done, Charles,’ is what she says instead.

Next, he is interviewed by Matt Galloway for The Current, a Canadian radio show listened to by 10 million people every week.

Here, the earl postulates that Diana had ADHD and dyslexia, that her phone was possibly hacked, that she did not manipulate and collaborate with the media as has been widely reported, she only ‘harnessed their power’ to spotlight good causes instead. He offers absolutely no evidence for any of this.

And then in his curiously fluting voice, although he sounds more camp duchess than man in love with his valet, Spencer doubles down on his incendiary written claim that Prince Charles was ‘giddily elated’ at Diana’s death when they spoke on the phone.

‘He was really relaying to me how he had told William and Harry about their mother’s death,’ Spencer told the radio station. ‘I just noted his tone as being sort of buoyant... he did sound upbeat.’

Buoyant, upbeat? As Diana lay on a mortuary slab in a Paris hospital? I’m still finding this bitter interpretation of events and emotions very hard to believe.

When pressed by Galloway, Spencer admitted that he cannot remember what this jaunty, happy cheeky chappy Charles actually said in those dark moments, he only remembers the tone. ‘It was so jarring.’

Then, of course, there was the row about the funeral procession. According to Spencer, Prince Charles was ‘totally out of control, you know when somebody’s lost it. I mean, we know this is a man who loses it. We saw him lose it with a fountain pen...’

‘...signing documents just after he had become king. It was a bit like that. Sort of a rant is a good word... and he was rude about Diana and her sense of beauty...’

‘Then he came in with that killer line, [‘we’ll forget her soon enough’]and that was really upsetting.’

Charles Spencer appears on CBS Mornings to promote his book alongside Gayle King

Spencer thinks it is up to King Charles, not him, to explain these words. Yet we had a revealing moment of clarity when Galloway challenged Spencer’s portrayal of the King as a callous individual who disparaged Diana.

‘I didn’t set out to criticise the King,’ huffed the author. ‘And they’re not criticisms. They’re reportings of fact. I’m sure people in Canada will never remember but I was a TV journalist for a decade. I’m a historian, I’m a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I’m not a salacious gossip, I deal in fact, and these are facts that I thought were really illuminating.’

Darlings, he is not a gossip, he’s a historian. That’s a bit like saying, I’m not a stripper, I’m an exotic dancer.

And while he vehemently dislikes the royals, he wants you to know he’s a member of a royal society. What a hypocrite.

If he were a true historian, would he want to rewrite history to suit himself and his own agenda? Wouldn’t he want the whole truth, not supposition and innuendo supplied by himself?

Elsewhere on this tour, Earl Spencer claimed never to have read Prince Harry’s best-selling autobiography Spare, which was published in 2023. What historian would turn away from his own family history and the important role he himself plays in it? None of it makes much sense.

As Earl Spencer continues his publicity tour, I seethe with the same annoyance and frustration as when Meghan and Harry were out on the stump, airing their peeves, implying the Royal Family was racist, belittling an entire country they found unbearable, intolerable.

Charles Spencer is on the same self-serving trajectory, and he is making an impact. His book now tops US bestseller lists while he spreads his grim message about our King and the monarchy across America.

After the Tina Brown interview, one commentator wrote; ‘We should never invite the British Royal Family to any American state occasions again.’ One feels that is precisely what Charles Spencer wants, along with destroying an elderly man who once got annoyed at a leaky fountain pen.

Esme Creed-Miles attending the Australian premiere of Sense and Sensibility this week

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect... Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience, or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope... If a book is well written, I always find it too short.

Oh, la! There is barely a word in Sense and Sensibility that is not as relevant today as it was more than 200 years ago, when Jane Austen wrote her first novel.

A sumptuous new film version has just been released, starring radiant Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor Dashwood and George MacKay as Edward Ferrars.