Princess Diana's brother shares heartbreaking grief, says her death felt like 'an amputation'

Fox News

16-05-2025

Earl Charles Spencer lost a part of himself when his sister, Princess Diana, was killed nearly three decades ago.
On May 15, he appeared on "Loose Men" in honor of Mental Health Awareness Week, where he discussed sibling grief.
"It's such an amputation," said the 60-year-old. "You grow up with these people, they are your flesh and blood, they're with you forever, and then they're gone."
"It's a really extraordinary thing," the historian reflected.
Diana died in 1997 from injuries she sustained in a car crash in Paris. She was 36. At the time, the mother of two was being chased by paparazzi.
Spencer noted that grief never goes away.
"For years after Diana died, I would think, 'I must ring her and tell her something,' because we shared the same sense of humor," he recalled. "And you just realize, of course, that's not going to happen."
The author described how his big sister played a key role in his childhood.
"As your family naturally folds in on itself — you lose your parents — I have two older sisters who I adore," Spencer explained. "They're quite a lot older than me, so I don't share my childhood with anyone anymore. And that's a great loss you can never really put right."
The world, along with Spencer, watched Diana grow from a shy teenage nursery schoolteacher into a glamorous celebrity who comforted AIDS patients. She instantly became a household name when she married the future King Charles III in 1981, when she was 20 years old. They welcomed two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, before the couple announced their separation in 1992. Their divorce was finalized in 1996.
Spencer said that even as a teenager, he felt an urgency to protect his sister from "the photographers who were plaguing her."
"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," said Spencer. "She was something to make money out of or whatever."
"I wrote her an outraged letter and had a bit of to and fro with her," he said. "I think, particularly as a brother of a sister, you always want to get stuck in, really."
It was during Diana's funeral that Spencer denounced the ruthless U.K. press that hounded his beloved sibling in her lifetime.
Spencer was 42 years old when he first revealed to a therapist he had been sexually abused as a child. At the time, he had "hit rock bottom." Seventeen years later, he detailed the trauma he endured in a memoir, "A Very Private School."
He never told Diana about his experience at Maidwell Hall, an elite English boarding school. But as he struggled with loneliness away from his family, he often thought of his sister.
"She was the closest person to me growing up," he told Fox News Digital in 2024. "We had two much older sisters and a baby brother who had died. Then there was Diana and me. We were very close. And, actually, that was one of the devastations of being sent away. She was sent a year ahead of me, but for the first few years of my life, we went everywhere together."
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"We did everything together," he shared. "We went to a very gentle primary school together, a day school, [before boarding school]. She was an absolutely lovely older sister to a little boy whose parents were divorced and had quite a traditional English upbringing. We were allies."
At the time, a spokesperson for Maidwell Hall didn't immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. It previously told "Today" that it has notified authorities who investigate crimes against children. School officials are also encouraging any past students with similar experiences to come forward.
Today, Spencer hopes the school will now deal with its past "in an honest way."
"I would tell [my younger self] it wasn't his fault," Spencer said. "As a child, you're always thinking it's your fault. I used to think I must have failed as a son to be sent away to such a place and not be part of the family. … But I would tell him, 'You're fine. You've come out on the other side.'"