Growing up, Charles Spencer was quite close with his sister, Princess Diana. In August 1997, when she was just 36 years old, Diana died after a car crash. During a recent appearance on Loose Men, the 9th Earl Spencer, now 60, opened up about grief and his relationship with his late sister.
He addressed the media scrutiny Princess Diana faced.
Leading up to her death, Princess Diana faced persistent media attention that often seemed obsessive and intrusive. Her brother Charles addressed this during his eulogy at her funeral. “I don’t think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down,” he said at the time. “It is baffling.”
He added, “It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this — a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.”
Charles also addressed the harmful press coverage during his recent Loose Men appearance. He said some journalists seemed to forget that Princess Diana was a person, just like anyone else. “I remember just before she died, a female journalist wrote a really horrendous article,” Charles recalled. “Because by that stage I don’t think that journalist was thinking of Diana as a person. She was something to make money off or whatever.”
Charles felt like it was his responsibility to stand up for his sister, whom he was close to. “I wrote to her in outrage,” he said. “I think particularly as a brother of a sister, you always feel like you want to get stuck in really.”
He compared the loss of his sister to ‘an amputation.’
Of course, loss is always hard. But for Charles, losing a sibling felt like “a really extraordinary thing.”
“You expect obviously first grandparents and then parents to go, and there’s the awful tragedy you mentioned of children going, but siblings, it’s a really extraordinary thing,” he said. Because he and Diana grew up with each other, after he lost her, he felt like he no longer had any connection to his childhood.
“It’s such an amputation,” Charles said. “You grow up with these people, they are your flesh and blood, they’re with you forever, and then they’re gone.”
He explained that he loves his two older sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, 70, and Lady Jane Fellowes, 68, but because they’re quite a bit older than he is, they didn’t share as many childhood experiences with each other. “I have two sisters who I adore but they’re quite a lot older than me, so I don’t share my childhood with anyone anymore, and that’s a great loss that you can never really put right,” he explained.
For years after Diana’s death, he still wanted to call her.
Getting into more detail about how his grief impacted him, Charles said he felt the urge to call his sister and share things with her for years after she died. “For years after Diana died, I would think, ‘Oh I must ring her and tell her something,'” he recalled. “Because we shared the same sense of humor. And you just realize of course, that’s not going to happen.”
