Robert Fellowes, Baron Fellowes

Uh, Uganda got a, a little bit confused, pulled out their team from the Invictus Games.

And then it took the King's private secretary, Clive Alderton, to, uh, kind of clarify what the letter meant, and actually the King does support the Invictus Games and perhaps Uganda should take part in it.

So I think any other similar letter from the Foreign Office or, or the Palace or whatever is not only just going to probably annoy Harry, it's obviously just going to add more confusion and create more noise than it's actually worth.

Uh, but there is this issue again, which I think keeps being forget, forget, forgotten sometimes.

He might just be emotionally engaged in, in an event or an engagement and, and just want kind of wanna say something a little bit more.

Well, he's a constitutional monarch.

He acts on the, on the advice of government and, and his private secretary is Clive Alderton as well.

He is not going to say ...

And I, as I've said, I spoke to three people who were in Balmoral that weekend, and two of them are still alive.

The third was Robert Fellowes, the Queen's private secretary, and they're all unanimous even now in recollection that, uh, Charles was deep in grief and deeply shocked.

And the point about Charles is, yes, I have been extraordinarily critical of him in my book, The Rebel Prince, Rebel King, uh, because he's a very flawed individual, but one of his endearing qualities is that he's very, very, um, uh, careful and very, um, um, supportive of those who've lost relatives.

He writes long letters of compassion and condolence, and the idea at that moment that he should have been other than mortified by her death is just completely out of character, and it shows very poorly on Charles Spencer that he seeks to invent that, uh, that sentiment.

I mean, I think one thing that's, that's interesting is you say, why now? Um, all the key players who could disprove Charles Spencer are now dead.

So Robert Fellowes, perhaps the Queen and, and Prince Philip, uh, um, his own mother, people who might have been some sort of, um, restraint on him are no longer there.

He feels free to talk about this.

Um, so that's, you know, one argument for, for, for waiting.

Mm

... and his grief, it does just beg that question, what else? What else is he wrong about? Now, there are certain people that Spencer writes about, including Robert Fellowes-

Mm

...

I mean, the money may well go to charity, who knows? Uh, I, I do think he needs to explain why he's waited so long.

I mean, it's very interesting that people who might have challenged his narrative, like Robert Fellowes, are now dead.

Uh, and I think that's the question that I would put to him.

Why, why now rather than ten years ago? People are criticizing him saying, "Well, this is not what you said on Larry King in nineteen ninety-seven."

But I think the mood was very different then.

And I think there were probably things he, he didn't feel he could say at that point that maybe he feels he can say now.

Just to clarify, Robert Fellowes was the late Queen's former private secretary, but also married to one of Diana's sisters.

So those sorts of people, as you say, are no longer in the picture to kind of confirm or deny some of the claims that have been made.

"Looking back now, I suspect the prince's first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not." Another passage describes an unexpected approach on the day of Diana's funeral.

Spencer says Robert Fellowes, the Queen's private secretary, beckoned him into a quiet corner of a carriage hours after his eulogy at Westminster Abbey.

"I have just received a call from Her Majesty and she would like to offer Diana her HRH title back," Spencer recalls Fellowes saying.

Diana had lost the style of Her Royal Highness when her divorce from Charles was finalized.

Well, even if it's not serious, I can probably find out what's happening on the news." And then I, through the night, I watched, um, the TV news unfurling, and then I kept getting more and more distressing calls from home from my sister.

And then it escalated after a few hours to, uh, I heard my brother-in-law in the background, who, Robert Fellowes, used to work for the Queen as her private secretary, and I heard him go, "Oh, no." And then my sister Jane said, "I'm afraid she's died." So that's how.

So it started in my life, in that night, as a, as a little prang, and then it became a broken leg, uh, perhaps a head injury, and then death.

And in your book, you recount how your little girl, Eliza, said, "She's not dead in real life, is she?"