When the princess Diana lived many knew who her brother Charles Earl Spencer where. But after her tragic death in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997, suddenly everyone knew who he was.
At Diana’s funeral, which was watched by two billion people worldwide, the brother walked with Diana’s sons Prince Harry and prince William behind the coffin. The worst half hour of his life, Charles later told me.
Charles Spencer, Prince William, Prince Harry and King (then Prince, ed. note) Charles at Princess Diana’s funeral. Image source: Dominic Lipinski/Pool Photo via AP/TT Image
In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Charles Spencer said it was “bizarre and mean” to have Harry and William walk behind their mother’s coffin. Charles tried to persuade the royal family to let the boys off the hook, but the British royal family said that “the boys themselves wanted it”: Which, of course, they didn’t want at all, Charles said.
Charles Spencer 1997. Image source: AP Photo/Sasa Kralj/TT Image
“It was the most horrible half hour of my life. It was just horrible. It was much worse than having to give the speech late. Walking behind my sister’s body with two boys obviously grieving for their mother. And it was such bizarre circumstances, we were told to look straight ahead. But the feeling, like a shock wave of grief coming over you, it was terrible. I still have nightmares about it,” he said at the time.
Charles Earl Spencer about what happened at Maidwell Hall
During her lifetime, Princess Diana struggled with eating disorders and depression. And her little brother Charles has also been sick with an eating disorder, something that he himself told about. One of the things that triggered his bad mood started already in childhood. Raised in the British aristocracy, he was baptized in Westminster Abbey and Queen Elizabeth was one of his godmothers. When Charles Spencer was eight years old, he was sent to Maidwell Hall boarding school. There, hell really began for young Charles.
Charles Spencer. Image source: Stella Pictures.
– What gave me the most chills, coming to a school like that when you are seven or eight years old, was that you realized that there was no one there who could help you, says Charles Spencer in a clip.
At school, he was sexually abused by his mistress and brutally beaten by the boarding school’s sadistic headmaster. In his autobiography A very private school, which was released earlier this year, he tells in detail about the terrible time in what British The Guardian calls for an “upper class prison staffed by bullying pedophiles”.
The shock after the words in the book: “Paff and cursed”
Look Schultz and Ebba Kleberg von Sydow together have the Sveriges Radio podcast Monarkerna, and in the latest episode the duo has invited James Savage who is editor-in-chief of The Local newspaper.
Titti Schultz and Ebba Kleberg von Sydow have the Monarkerna podcast. Image source: Claudio Bresciani/TT Bild
Savage is particularly familiar with the British royal house, and of Spencer’s book he says:
– You get puffed up and pissed off that this could happen. And he is one of the few who has come forward and told how it was, he says and continues:
– This book has become very large and received a lot of reading. It’s a bestseller. A lot of writing in the newspapers. Both because he is who he is but also because he takes up a story that many may not have taken up before. A lot of shame involved. It got a lot of attention. Partly because of who he is, a very famous person, but also because it is an unusual story, that someone, especially a man, steps forward with a story about being abused as a child. That an upper class man steps forward and admits that he was exploited as a child in such an environment, an environment that should be a safe environment, says Savage in Monarkerna.