Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer shares previously unseen photo of late royal

Daily Mail​

30-06-2025

Princess Diana 's younger brother has shared a previously-unseen photograph of the late royal.
Earl Charles Spencer shared the sweet family picture, which featured his father, Earl John Spencer, his stepmother Raine Spencer, along with Princess Diana, her sisters Jane and Sarah, and Charles himself.
The family appear pictured together while stood at the bottom of the stairs of Althrop House, their estate in Northampton.
Both Diana and Charles were raised at the Northamptonshire-based house, which has been in the Spencer family for more than 500 years.
The Earl, who is three years younger than the late Princess, estimated that the photo would have been taken in 1989 around the time of their father's birthday, when Diana would have been 27.
Captioning the social media post, Charles, 60, wrote: 'Trying to remember what this rather formal family photograph was for - it shows my sisters and brothers in law, flanking my father and stepmother, at the base of the main staircase (in the central hallway, known as the Saloon) at Althrop House in the late '80s. Perhaps it was something to do with my father's 65th birthday, in January 1989?
'Definitely an '80s air to it all…. I'm always intrigued by interior shots from Althorp's past. Those huge candelabra are no longer on the staircase, and the Saloon's walls are now white,' he wrote.
The touching tribute comes just over a month after relatives of the late Princess mourned her passing during Mental Health Awareness week.
The post amassed more than 12,000 likes from fans of Princess Diana, the former wife of King Charles, who died on 31 August 1997.
Charles appeared appeared on ITV 's Loose Men in May - a variant of the channel's daily show Loose Women - which is back on screens to mark Mental Health Awareness week, to discuss his sister's death.
There, he described losing his sister as 'such an amputation' as he reflected on his 'sibling grief'.
Charles said: 'It's such an amputation. You grow up with these people, they are your flesh and blood, they're with you forever – and then they're gone.'
Describing losing a sibling as 'a really extraordinary thing', Charles recalled how, even years after his sister's untimely death at the age of 36, he would still think to pick up the phone and call her.
He said: 'For years after Diana died, I would think, "I must ring her and tell her something," because we shared the same sense of humour.'
'You just realise, of course, that's not going to happen,' he added.
While Charles also grew up with two other sisters - Lady Sarah McCorquodale, 70, and Lady Jane Fellowes, 68 - he was much closer in age with Diana, who would have been 63 in May.
He said: 'I don't share my childhood with anyone anymore. That's a great loss that you can never really put right.'
Charles, who last year published a harrowing account of the abuse he was subjected to at Maidwell Hall prep school, also told fellow panelist Craig Doyle about the responsibility he felt to protect Diana.
Despite being only 16 when Diana burst into 'the public light in 1981', Charles was eager to 'get stuck in' and 'deal with the photographers who were plaguing her.'
On another occasion, he really did get involved, contacting a journalist who had written 'a really horrendous article' about her himself.
He explained: 'I remember just before she died, a female journalist wrote a really horrendous article – because by that stage I don't think that journalist was thinking of Diana as a person.'
Charles regretted that Diana had become 'something to make money out of' and wrote an 'outraged letter' to the journalist, which developed into 'a bit of a to and fro'.
He concluded: 'I think, particularly as a brother of a sister, you always feel like you want to get stuck in really.'
Earl Spencer's parents had five children between 1955 and 1964. Lady Sarah McCorquodale was born in 1955 and Lady Jane Fellowes followed two years later.
The couple's third child, John Spencer, died hours after being born in January, 1960.
The late Princess Diana was born in 1961 and the youngest, Earl Charles Spencer, was born in 1964.
The siblings' father John worked as a royal equerry for both King George VI and the young Queen Elizabeth II, and the family initially rented a home at the royal estate in Sandringham.
When Frances and John divorced, the two youngest Spencer siblings lived with their father, who Charles described as 'quiet and a constant source of love' in a 2020 interview with The Sunday Times.