Princess Diana’s Brother Recalls the Heartbreaking Way He Found Out About Her Death
Millions of people around the world were shocked and saddened to hear the news about Princess Diana‘s death more than two decades ago. Many still recall exactly where they were and how they heard the news.
The princess’s brother Charles, 9th Earl Spencer will always remember the way he got the tragic news as well. Here’s what he said about the moment he learned Diana had died.
The first person told about Princess Diana’s car accident
The very first person told that Princess Diana was badly injured in a car accident was not one of her immediate family members and it wasn’t her former mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, either.
Reader’s Digest reported that the first person alerted about the terrible crash in Paris and Diana’s horrific injuries was Britain’s ambassador to France, Michael Jay. He was awoken at 1:45 in the morning to the news that the princess was still alive but her injuries were life-threatening and doctors were working to try to save her.
Before Jay and his wife got dressed and headed to the La Pitie-Salpetriere hospital where Diana was, he notified the queen’s private secretary, Robin Janvrin, about what happened.
Diana’s brother recalls how he heard the news
The princess was pronounced dead at 4 a.m. on Aug. 31, 1997. During a televised interview years later on CNN’s Larry King Live, Spencer talked about hearing the news from his other two siblings.
“I was in Cape Town, South Africa with my four children, just the five of us in the house, and the telephone went very early in the morning,” he recalled. “And somebody from my property in England said, ‘Look, I’ve got some bad news. It seems as though your sister and Dodi Fayed have been in a car crash in Paris.’ So I went downstairs and turned on the television and was following, in fact, on CNN, and watching the broadcast, and they were quite adamant at the time that she had been seen walking away from the car and was obviously hurt, but fine.
“And then one of my other sisters called me a little later while I was watching this unfold on television, and she said, ‘Look, I’m afraid it’s bad news. We think she may even have brain damage.’ And that was obviously a huge blow. And then I called my other sister, my middle sister, who was actually married to somebody who was working for the queen, and I said, ‘Look, what’s going on?’ And she said, ‘Well, he’s on the other line, right now.’ And then she stopped talking, and I’ll always remember hearing my brother-in-law Robert say ‘Oh, no,’ and then my sister Jane said, ‘I’m afraid that’s it. I’m afraid she’s dead.'”
Earl Spencer walked with Diana’s sons behind her coffin
The funeral for Princess Diana took place on Sept. 6, 1997. One of the images from the day that so many people cannot forget is Diana’s two sons, Princes William and Harry who were then just 15 and 12 then, walking behind her coffin. The princess’s brother also walked alongside his nephews in the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey but said he was not told the truth about what the princes wanted to do.
“I was lied to and told that they wanted to do it, which of course they didn’t,” Spencer told the BBC’s Radio 4.
He went on to say that it was a “bizarre and cruel thing” for the royals to force William and Harry to join him, adding: “It was the worst part of the day by a considerable margin, walking behind my sister’s body with two boys who were obviously massively grieving their mother.”
