---
title: "Swan Song: Earl Spencer Tells His Sister's Story"
description: A preview of Charles Spencer's forthcoming memoir Swan Song, Diana, My Sister, published this September ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of her death.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-08-26T10:00:00.000Z
updated: 2026-08-26T11:43:49.256Z
canonical: https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/swan-song-earl-spencer-tells-his-sister-s-story
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-a-peaceful-view-of-the-sunken-garden-with-a-sculpture-at-ken-38160650.jpg
categories: Memoir & Biography
content_type: News
region: United Kingdom
publication: Rich Books
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

Charles Spencer has spent close to three decades answering questions about his sister that other people kept getting wrong. On 22 September, he stops answering them one at a time and publishes the full account instead. Swan Song, Diana, My Sister, out from Michael Joseph, arrives roughly a year ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of Diana, Princess of Wales's death in August 1997, and is billed by its publisher as the most intimate portrait yet written of her, by the person who knew her longest.

## A Brother Who Writes History for a Living

Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer, is not approaching this as a first-time author reaching for the nearest ghostwriter. He has published nine nonfiction books, four of them Sunday Times bestsellers, built a career as a historian and broadcaster, and in 2024 wrote A Very Private School, a memoir recounting the abuse he suffered at boarding school, a book that required him to revisit some of the most painful material of his own childhood in print. Swan Song draws on that same willingness to put private history on the record, this time turned toward the sister he grew up beside at the family's Althorp estate.

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