Charles Spencer is sharing new details on how he crafted his sister Princess Diana’s eulogy at her funeral.

In an interview with Gyles Brandreth on the Friday, October 24, episode of the “Rosebud” podcast, the 9th Earl Spencer, 61, said that the eulogy he had originally planned for Diana’s memorial service in September 1997 was “very different” from what he eventually read.

He explained that he was “in bits” flying back to the U.K. from Cape Town, South Africa, when he started thinking about who could eulogize his sister.

“I had a big, thick address book, and I thought, ‘I want to find someone who’s going to make the speech for her.’ And I got to ‘Z’ and I hadn’t found anyone,” Spencer recalled of the “profoundly emotional moment.”

“[I] got off the plane in Heathrow [Airport], called my mother, I said, ‘I can’t think who’s going to give the eulogy. And I’ve got an awful feeling it’s going to have to be me,’” he continued. “And she said, ‘Well, it is going to be you. Your sisters and I have decided it.’”

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Spencer said that he initially decided to write a “very traditional eulogy” about their childhood and such, but then thought, “Well, this is ridiculous, that’s not who she was.”

He said he soon “realized” that the moment called for him not to speak about the late Princess of Wales but to “speak for her.”

“And I knew I’d been left at that stage — it had no legal standing — but I knew she’d left me as guardian of her sons,” Spencer added of his nephews Prince William and Prince Harry, who were 15 and 12 when their mother died at age 36 after a car crash in Paris in August 1997.

“Obviously, the other parent being alive, that meant nothing, but it meant something to me. That sort of duty, I think,” Spencer said, noting that the now King Charles III would obviously be caring for his sons. “And then I wrote [the eulogy] in an hour and a half and, yeah, that was it, really.”

He admitted that he took a “name-check” to Rupert Murdoch out, deeming it “rather unnecessary,” but kept the rest of what he had planned to say in his touching speech.

The eulogy is “one of the most unforgettable moments in recent British history,” according to “Rosebud,” and detailed her selflessness, strength, beauty and love of family. It also spoke to Diana’s mistreatment by the British media.

“She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys, William and Harry, from a similar fate and I do this here Diana on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair,” Spencer said at the time.

“And beyond that,” he continued, “on behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.”

Spencer has been a champion for both William, 43, and Harry, 41, over the years, notably supporting Harry in January after he settled his legal battle with The Sun. The News Group Newspaper, owned by Murdoch, 94, apologized to Harry “for the serious intrusion” of his private life, along with his late mother’s, for decades.

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Spencer praised Harry following the victory, writing in an Instagram post at the time, “It takes an enormous amount of guts to take on major media organizations like this, and incredible tenacity to win against them. It’s wonderful that Harry also secured an apology for his mother — she would be immensely touched by this, I’m sure, and also rightly proud. Well done indeed.”

Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, stepped down from their royal duties in 2020 and have since been in disagreement with his father, William and his wife, Kate Middleton.

Harry and Meghan, 44, now live in California with their children, Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4.

“I enjoy living [in the U.S.] and bringing my kids up here,” the Duke of Sussex said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York City in December 2024. “It’s a part of my life that I never thought I was going to live and it feels as though it’s the life that my mom wanted for me.”

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