Earl Spencer claims Charles said Diana would be forgotten ‘soon enough’

Earl Spencer shares words Charles uttered after the Diana's death

The allegation appears in an extract from Spencer's upcoming memoir, published by the Daily Mail.

Swan Song: Diana, My Sister is due out next week and is expected to be highly critical of the Royal Family, BBC News reports.

What Earl Spencer says happened

In the first extract to be made public, Spencer says a senior Palace aide told him that Princes William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12, would walk alongside their mother's coffin.

He objected, arguing Diana would not have wanted it, and says he then received a phone call from the then-Prince of Wales.

"He [Charles] unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death," Spencer writes.

"'Rest assured,' he hissed, 'we'll forget her soon enough'."

A Palace spokesperson said: "While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss."

Prince Harry has previously said that walking behind his mother's coffin aged 12 was something no child "should be asked to do".

Spencer's defiant funeral speech in 1997 added to a period in which the royals were accused of failing to show empathy and seeming out of touch with the public mood.