Piers Morgan has received an apology from Charles Spencer, brother of the late Princess Diana, over an inaccurate claim in the Earl’s bombshell memoir.
Spencer’s book, Swan Song, has dominated the headlines in the UK for days following his explosive allegation that King Charles III said Diana would soon be forgotten in the aftermath of her death.
Morgan drew attention to another section of Spencer’s book, in which the Earl claimed that Morgan published “intrusive” images of Diana in a gym while he was editor of The Daily Mirror. “I come across in the despicable manner imaginable,” Morgan said of Spencer’s book. “There’s just one problem — it’s all bulls***. And very easy bulls*** for me to prove it.”
Speaking on his YouTube show Piers Morgan Uncensored, the former CNN anchor continued: “The photographs, which he says that I published, were printed by The Sunday Mirror on November 7, 1993. I joined The Daily Mirror in October 1995. In fact, at the time of the gym pictures, I was doing a showbiz column on The Mirror’s arch rival, The Sun.”
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Morgan added that Spencer had printed “fabricated inaccuracies” that strike “at the heart of his credibility.” He said: “If Earl Spencer can be so incredibly defamatorily wrong about such basic facts involving me, well why should we believe anything else that he puts in this book?”
In a statement, Spencer acknowledged the error. “As an historian, accuracy is important to Earl Spencer. He therefore wishes to clarify that his assumption was incorrect. Earl Spencer apologises to Mr Morgan for this error,” a representative of the Earl said.
Spencer added, however, that he was correct in his recollection of a phone call he had with Morgan, in which he informed the journalist that he could not attend Diana’s funeral.
“Earl Spencer’s account of his conversation with Piers Morgan is accurate. Mr Morgan was surly and annoyed when Earl Spencer called personally to tell him that he was not welcome at his sister’s funeral,” the statement continued.
On his show, Morgan addressed Spencer directly. “You will be hearing, and your publishers, from my lawyers because I would like the complete lie you have published about me and those photographs to be removed from your book. And I would like a donation to be made to the King’s Trust for the damage that you have caused with your lie.”
It is not yet clear if Morgan will accept the apology.
In his book, Spencer recalled a conversation he had with King Charles in 1997 over whether Princes William and Harry should walk behind the coffin of Diana ahead of her funeral. Spencer said his reservations were met with a “stream of anger” from Charles.
He writes that the then Prince “unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death. ‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough.’”
In response, Buckingham Palace said last week: “While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.”
