What new details did Charles Spencer share about his tribute to Princess Diana?

Charles Spencer has peeled back the curtain on the version of the eulogy he prepared for his late sister, Princess Diana. Speaking on the October 24 episode of Gyles Brandreth's Rosebud podcast, the 61‑year‑old revealed that the speech he initially drafted for her funeral was "very different" from the one he ultimately delivered.

Spencer told how his trek, from his African home back to the U.K., felt like an emotional roller‑coaster and how the warm, caring presence of a flight attendant steadied him during a particularly hard moment.

Charles Spencer recalls the weight and responsibility of delivering Diana's eulogy

Charles Spencer, Princess Diana's brother, has lately opened up about the burden of delivering his sister's eulogy. In the same podcast, he admits that at first he scoured his address book for a voice to read the tribute. The pages yielded no candidate. By the time his aircraft touched down at Heathrow, a quick call to his mother made it clear the honor.

The pressure would land squarely on his shoulders, a decision that his mother and sisters had already made. At the outset of drafting the tribute, his first instinct was to fall on a chronicle of Diana's early years; soon, however, he realized his task was not merely to speak about her but to speak for her. In just thirty minutes, Spencer fashioned a eulogy that wove together his reflections, with the sense of duty he bore as a guardian to Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry.

In his words:

"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... [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. And she said, 'Well, it is going to be you. Your sisters and I have decided it'... [It was a] very traditional eulogy, almost … 'She was very good at this as a child' and all that. And then I thought, 'Well, this is ridiculous, that's not who she was.'"

He continued:

"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... Obviously, the other parent being alive, that meant nothing, but it meant something to me. That sort of duty, I think. And then I wrote it in an hour and a half and, yeah, that was it, really."

Earl Spencer shares removed Murdoch reference and reflects on Diana's eulogy

In the podcast, the ninth Earl Spencer revealed he had excised a reference to Rupert Murdoch from his eulogy for Princess Diana, deeming it "unnecessary."

The disclosure arrives months after Murdoch's News Group Newspapers apologised to Prince Harry, 41, recognising a decades‑long pattern of scrutiny into his and his mother's private lives, thereby settling Harry's long‑running legal battle with The Sun. As PEOPLE reported, he also revisited his 1997 eulogy for Diana, denouncing the abuse she suffered and emphasizing the importance of guiding her sons to grow with integrity and strength.

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