Piers Morgan Taking Legal Action Over Claims From Princess Diana’s Brother - Newsweek

Piers Morgan has threatened legal action over claims Earl Charles Spencer made about him in his forthcoming memoir about Princess Diana.

Spencer, Diana's younger brother, claims in Swan Song: Diana, My Sister that Morgan had been “snarled with annoyance” after being asked not to attend the princess's funeral.

In an excerpt of the memoir, Spencer described how he'd personally called newspaper editors and asked them not to attend the service at Westminster Abbey, following years of intense press scrutiny of his sister. He said that most of the editors were “slightly confused” but agreed to stay away.

Morgan, then editor of the Daily Mirror, was the exception, according to the memoir excerpt, first obtained by The Independent.

“The only one who sounded surly, as opposed to merely confused or embarrassed, was Piers Morgan of the Mirror, who snarled with annoyance before he hung up,” Spencer reportedly writes.

Morgan has rejected claims made about him in the memoir and said he is taking legal action, describing the allegations as “demonstrable lies.”

It is not yet clear whether the passage about Morgan's reaction at the funeral is specifically the basis for the threatened legal action. Swan Song is not published until Tuesday, and the full text has not been independently reviewed.

Newsweek has reached out to Spencer, his publisher Penguin Random House, and Morgan for comment.

Spencer's memoir repeatedly returns to the intense media attention surrounding Diana, who was pursued by photographers and subjected to extensive tabloid coverage before her death in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997. He has argued that the experience profoundly affected his sister.

Morgan's dispute with Spencer consequently touches on two separate issues: the specific claims the earl has made about Morgan's conduct in 1997, and the broader argument over the media's treatment of Diana and the Royal Family.

In the book, Spencer alleges that King Charles sounded “giddily elated” when he spoke to him by telephone after Diana's death in 1997. He also claims that the then-Prince Charles told him, “we'll forget her soon enough,” during a disagreement over whether her two young sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, should walk behind their mother's coffin at her funeral.

Buckingham Palace has disputed Spencer's recollection, saying the King is “mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss.”

Spencer has stood by his account. In a BBC interview, he said he was “telling the truth” and said he had told family and friends about the conversation at the time because of what he described as the “monstrous” nature of the alleged remark. The BBC also reported that journalist Richard Kay recalled Spencer telling him about a “furious row” with Charles in the week between Diana's death and funeral.

Dame Julia Cleverdon, a longtime associate of Charles, disputed Spencer's characterization of the King's reaction, telling BBC's Radio 4 that it did not reflect “the language or the behaviours of a man I've known for 40 years.”

Morgan has also criticized Spencer over the memoir's broader content, accusing him of hypocrisy for condemning the media's treatment of Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, while making damaging claims about King Charles.

Spencer recently told the BBC that Harry and Meghan's treatment by sections of the press had “echoes” of what happened to Diana. He described the media coverage as a “cancerous influence in their life” and said people should learn from Diana's experience.

Morgan responded on social media, writing that Spencer was criticizing the media for its treatment of Harry and Meghan while simultaneously publishing a book that treated King Charles in what Morgan described as a similarly “malign” way.

"I’ve seen some brass necks in my time but Earl Spencer slamming the ‘malign cancerous’ way the media supposedly treat Harry/Meghan, whilst simultaneously flogging his book which treats King Charles in a malign cancerous way (as he actually battles cancer) is beyond parody," he wrote on X.

The dispute over Morgan comes as Spencer's memoir has already triggered a separate confrontation with Buckingham Palace.

Prince Harry refused to comment on Spencer's memoir as he attended an award ceremony in London on Monday.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Samantha Beech and Sam Wilson.