Earl Spencer to tell Diana’s story in his own words in Swan Song

The real Diana, according to her brother

Swan Song: Diana, My Sister is due out in the UK on 22 September, published by Penguin, nearly 30 years after Diana died following a car crash in Paris in 1997.

In a statement on Tuesday, Spencer said he had been “inundated yet again” with requests for interviews about his sister as the 30th anniversary of her death approaches.

“This has convinced me to write down my own thoughts and memories, once and for all,” he said, in remarks reported by BBC News, rather than again reading “the opinions of others, many of which are based on untruths that have become accepted over time”. Diana was 36 when she died; her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, were 15 and 12.

Why Earl Spencer decided to write it

Spencer framed the book as advocacy rather than revelation.

“I want to speak on Diana’s behalf and do so in an openly positive way … A one-off, dynamic character, full of love, charisma and self-doubt, who gave life a hell of a go.”

Earl Spencer

The aim, he said, is “to tell the truth about Diana from her brother’s perspective, just as I attempted to do when speaking at her funeral”, the Westminster Abbey eulogy of September 1997 in which he called her the “most hunted person of the modern age”.

He would be “delighted”, he added, if those too young to remember Diana felt they finally “get” who she wa, a generation that knows the family through Prince William and Catherine’s public appearances with their children.

Swan Song: Diana, My Sister is published on 22 September.