Princess Diana book not about ‘settling scores’: Charles Spencer

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[upbeat music] This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current podcast.

It's not an exaggeration to say that when she died in 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, was one of the world's most famous people. She married into the British royal family and then experienced the scandal of a royal divorce. She'd become a mother, giving birth to two sons, including a royal heir. She'd made her name as a philanthropist and a worldwide style icon. Almost 30 years after Diana's death, her brother, Charles Spencer, believes there is more the world needs to know about who Diana was and what happened when she died. His new book is called Swan Song: Diana, My Sister. Last month, Matt Galloway sat down with Charles Spencer in a hotel room in New York as heavy rain fell over the city. Here's their conversation.

You write in, in this book, "There will be many reading this who are too young to remember Diana as she was." If you were going to describe her to somebody who, who didn't know her, what would you say?

Hmm. Well, I like that you picked up on that because, uh, I am writing it for two audiences. Um, essentially, anyone under their late 30s will not remember Diana alive. Uh, and, uh, obviously, I'm, I'm a much older generation, so I'm trying to bring alive the Diana I knew as a brother, and I think there's two qualities I really wanted to bring out in the book, which are perhaps not obvious. One was that she's, she was so funny, naturally humorous, and saw the absurd in life, which was very helpful given the strange life she had to live. And the other one was her courage. You know, I, I want to really stress that this was a very brave life, lived fully and with a, a enormous valor.

What do you think the public got wrong about her?

I don't know, actually. I don't think they got much wrong, the public. The public connected, um, I know particularly in Canada, but, uh, people saw somebody with this unique status and glamour and all of that, the obvious stuff, by marrying into the royal family and happening to be a very beautiful lady. But also they got the essential human quality of her, I think. I mean, particularly when she was doing that tour of Canada and then reconnected with William and Harry, uh, and the huge hug she rushed up and smothered them with at the end of that tour.

This was on the royal yacht, I think.

Yeah. That was amazing. I think people saw a real person and a real person that they really loved.

I just... The real person thing is really interesting because, again, she was a real person, but to a lot of people she was this avatar. She was something larger than a real person. And so when I ask what, what the public got wrong about her, I just wonder, it seemed like we knew everything about her, but maybe we didn't know everything about her.

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