When you think back to Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997, there are a few searing memories that come to mind. For one, the image of a far-too-young Prince William and Prince Harry walking solemnly behind their mother’s coffin. There’s also the note penned by Harry with the simple word: “Mummy.” But most vivid of all is the emotional eulogy, delivered by Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, in which he pledged, as Diana’s “blood family,” to protect William and Harry and see through the “imaginative way” in which she was raising them as opposed to them being bound “by duty and tradition” at all times.
Princess Diana’s Brother Says He Almost Read a Completely Different Eulogy at His Sister’s Funeral
Here’s why things took an emotional turn
Published Oct 26, 2025
•6:46pm
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On the latest episode of Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast, the 9th Earl Spencer opened up about this exact moment and how he landed on his choice of words. “I wrote something very different,” he shared, revealing that final version of the speech wasn’t what he’d originally planned to say. “I was living in South Africa, I flew back from Cape Town overnight. [A] very, very sweet stewardess helping me because I was in bits.”
While on the plane, it was actually his intention to find someone else to give the speech, he shared. “In those days, 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. [I] got off the plane in Heathrow, 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.’” His mother’s response? “‘Well, it is going to be you. Your sisters and I have decided it.’”
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So, Spencer got to work writing. “On the Tuesday night [Diana’s funeral was on a Saturday], I jotted a few things down,” he told Brandreth. “[It was a] very traditional eulogy, almost. You know, ‘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.’”
This was the moment that things took a turn. “Overnight, I must have been chuntering away and I realized that my job actually wasn’t to do that, but it was almost to speak for her,” Spencer reveals. “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. Obviously, the other parent being alive, that meant nothing, but it meant something to me. That sort of duty, I think. And then I wrote [the eulogy I ended up reading] in an hour and a half and, yeah, that was it, really.”
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The rest is royal history, as these things go. Spencer’s poignant (and honest) speech is forever in our collective memories, a moving and final portrait of Diana and all she was navigating throughout her royal days and beyond.
The 9th Earl Spencer did share that he made one last edit: “I did take one bit out, actually, because I did give a rather unnecessary name check to Rupert Murdoch and I thought, ‘Why bother? Why give him the publicity?’” (Earlier this year, Murdoch’s UK-based tabloids gave an unprecedented apology not only to Prince Harry, but admitted to intruding on Princess Diana’s life, which resulted in long-lasting damage.)
As a whole, Spencer’s conversation with Brandreth covers quite a few topics, but this particular revelation about the difficulty of eulogizing his sister only adds to the weight of his words.
