Charles Spencer has shared that he had originally written a different eulogy for his late sister, Princess Diana, and revealed details about the one he ended up changing.
He shared his initial plans for the funeral
The 9th Earl Spencer, 61, shared in a Friday, October 24 appearance on Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast that he had different plans for the eulogy of his late sister Princess Diana.
It was initially ‘very different’ than what he ended up reading at her funeral.
He flew from South Africa
Spencer said, “I flew back [to the U.K.] – I was living in South Africa – I flew back from Cape Town overnight. [I had a] very sweet stewardess help me, because I was in bits.”
He didn’t want to do it at first
Spencer shared that he initially looked for someone else to give the eulogy.
He said, “I had a big, thick address book, and I thought, ‘I want to find someone who’s going to make the speech for her.’ And I got to ‘Z’ and I hadn’t found anyone.”
Their mother decided he would give it
“[I] got off the plane in Heathrow [Airport], called my mother, I said, ‘I can’t think who’s going to give the eulogy. And I’ve got an awful feeling it’s going to have to be me,’” Spencer recalled.
“And she said, ‘Well, it is going to be you. Your sisters and I have decided it.’”
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It was going to be traditional at first
Spencer went on to say that when he initially put together the eulogy, “[It was a] very traditional eulogy, almost … ‘She was very good at this as a child’ and all that. And then I thought, ‘Well, this is ridiculous, that’s not who she was.’”
He then decided it would be different
He said that he then ‘realized’ his job at that difficult moment wasn’t to speak about Diana, but to ‘speak for’ her.
Princess Diana died at the age of 36 in a car crash that took place in Paris in August 1997.
Spencer wanted to be a ‘guardian’
Referring to his nephews, Prince William and Prince Harry, Spencer continued, “And I knew I’d been left at that stage – it had no legal standing – but I knew she’d left me as guardian of her sons.”
He felt a duty towards them
Spencer explained that his sense of ‘duty’ towards his nephews made him change the tribute. “Obviously, the other parent being alive, that meant nothing, but it meant something to me,” he said.
“That sort of duty, I think. And then I wrote it in an hour and a half and, yeah, that was it, really.”
