Prince Harry’s first reaction to Earl Spencer’s bombshell memoir about Princess Diana has finally been revealed, with the Duke of Sussex reportedly asking his uncle one surprising question before the book was published.
Speaking to People, Spencer disclosed that he told Harry, Prince William and Diana’s sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, about Swan Song: Diana, My Sister at exactly the same time.
The revelation is significant because Spencer’s memoir revisits some of the most painful chapters of Diana’s life and includes controversial claims about her relationship with King Charles and events surrounding her death.
According to Spencer, however, Harry’s immediate concern was much more personal. Rather than questioning what his uncle had written about Charles or other members of the Royal Family, the Duke wanted to know whether the book contained anything embarrassing about him.
“I can say that Harry is completely fine about it,” Spencer told the magazine, explaining that Harry asked whether there was “anything embarrassing about him” in the memoir.
Spencer said he reassured his nephew that there was not, apparently easing any concern Harry may have had about how he would be portrayed in the book.
The Earl also suggested that Harry and William were naturally curious about the memoir before publication because neither knew exactly how far he intended to go when discussing their mother’s life and the events surrounding her death.
“I think they were actually worried about where I was going up to with the book,” Spencer said, explaining that the memoir largely ends in 1997, when Diana died, apart from a short postscript concerning her grave.
For Harry and William, the uncertainty may have been particularly significant because they have spent decades dealing with intense public interest in their mother and the circumstances surrounding her death.
Spencer insisted, however, that he had no intention of compromising the privacy of his nephews, describing them in the book simply as “two little boys who had the most exceptional mother.”
The Earl’s comments suggest that Harry was ultimately reassured that the memoir would focus on Diana rather than expose personal details about his own life.
But the conversation reportedly took a different turn when the subject of King Charles came up, with Spencer acknowledging that the portrayal of Diana’s former husband was something that could understandably concern both brothers.
“Yeah, that was a concern,” Spencer said when asked whether Harry and William had worried about how their father would appear in the book.
Spencer then made another extraordinary claim, saying there was “an awful lot” he could have included about the monarch but deliberately decided not to put it into the memoir.
He went even further by suggesting that some of the information he knows about Charles would be a “jaw-dropper,” although he insisted that revealing those details was not his purpose.
The comments are likely to fuel further speculation about what Spencer chose to leave out of Swan Song, particularly after the memoir already sparked controversy over its claims concerning Diana and the Royal Family.
Yet Spencer’s account of Harry’s reaction presents a notably different picture from the wider family drama, suggesting the Duke was reassured after learning that his uncle had not included embarrassing material about him.
For now, Harry’s reported question may prove one of the most intriguing details surrounding the memoir, because it reveals that his biggest concern was apparently not what Spencer had said about the King, but whether the book had exposed anything personal about him.
