Princess Diana’s brother is revealing new and deeply personal details about what he says was one of the darkest periods of her life — just months before her death in Paris.
In his new memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Charles Spencer claims Diana’s long battle with an eating disorder had returned in a serious way by early 1997.
Spencer writes that during a March 1997 visit to see him in Cape Town, South Africa, he became convinced his sister was struggling far more than she admitted.
“There had been many signs that her eating disorder was present — not only unconquered but rampant,” Spencer writes.
According to him, Diana became defensive when he raised the subject and insisted her problems with food were behind her.
Spencer says he did not believe that was true.
The revelation is especially striking because Diana had publicly spoken about her battle with bulimia years earlier and said in a 1995 television interview that she was free of it.
Spencer’s new account suggests that, at least in his view, the problem had returned by the spring of 1997.
The visit also came during an emotionally difficult period in Diana’s personal life.
Her divorce from then-Prince Charles had been finalized the previous year, and Spencer says she was deeply preoccupied with her relationship with heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan.
Diana and Khan had begun a private romance in the mid-1990s, but the intense attention surrounding her life reportedly made the relationship increasingly difficult.
Spencer writes that Diana spent much of her stay in South Africa carrying her cellphone and waiting for Khan to call.
According to him, those calls rarely came.
“Diana had spent her waking hours at my home with her mobile in her hand, constantly waiting for the man in her life to call,” Spencer writes.
He says the lack of contact was visibly upsetting to her.
Spencer also claims Diana had traveled to South Africa partly because she was considering whether the country could offer her and Khan a quieter life away from the relentless press attention she faced in Britain.
That dream never materialized.
The relationship ended months later in the summer of 1997.
By then, Spencer says, his sister’s emotional state had left him deeply worried.
He recalls their goodbye at Cape Town airport as particularly painful.
“I thought, as we kissed one another goodbye, how deeply unhappy she was, and how I really had not been able to help her much with that,” he writes.
“It was a profoundly sad realization then, and is heartbreaking for me now.”
Diana died less than six months later, on Aug. 31, 1997, after a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris.
She was 36.
Spencer’s memoir, released this week, is being presented as his personal account of Diana’s life and their relationship. He has said he wanted to put down his own memories ahead of the 30th anniversary of her death.
The book has already generated controversy over several of Spencer’s recollections, and some of his claims have been disputed publicly. Buckingham Palace has challenged at least one account involving King Charles, while Spencer has also apologized separately for an inaccurate claim involving Piers Morgan.
His description of Diana’s eating disorder, however, is framed as his own memory of her condition during that final South Africa visit.
For Spencer, the most haunting part appears to be the belief that he saw warning signs but could not do enough to help.
Nearly three decades later, he says that memory still troubles him.
A shame she married prince ASSHOLE!