Dickie Arbiter calls Spencer's "giddily elated" account "hogwash"
Dickie ArbiterRoyal commentator; Buckingham Palace press secretary 1988-2000, including at the time of Diana's death and funeral
Dickie Arbiter, Buckingham Palace press secretary at the time of Diana's death and funeral, told BBC Newsnight that Charles was "devastated at the time" and that "it's not in his character," rejecting Spencer's account of the call.
Responding to
During the phone call confirming Diana's death in 1997, then-Prince Charles "sounded giddily elated - like a lottery winner."
“There's no way he could have ever said anything like that. Charles Spencer is just talking hogwash.”
Original post
Reporting
Other statements by Dickie Arbiter in this case
- Dickie Arbiter says Spencer “really has got an axe to grind” and “he'll make a lot of money”Later: Challenged the characterization
Where this statement fits
Earl Spencer's memoir claims about King Charles's reaction to Diana's death
In his memoir "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister," serialised from September 2026, Charles Spencer makes a series of claims about how the then Prince Charles behaved towards him after Diana's death in 1997. He writes that Charles told him by phone, "Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough," and, in later excerpts, that Charles sounded "giddily elated – like a lottery winner" during the call and that he now suspects Charles was weighing how the death might free him to marry Camilla. Buckingham Palace, in a rare on-record statement, did not directly confirm or deny the quotation, saying instead that "the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory," and declined to respond again to the later claims. The dispute is whether Spencer's account of Charles's words and demeanour is accurate.
Source and context
Original post
About this source
The programme's own clip of the interview, posted by the official BBC Newsnight account at 22:07 UTC on September 17, 2026. It fixes the date of Arbiter's remarks to the Newsnight broadcast of that evening, the night before BBC News published its written report. The post text joins two parts of Arbiter's answer with an ellipsis; the fuller, unelided quotations are carried in the BBC News article.
Reporting
About this source
BBC News report on the second tranche of memoir excerpts. It is the first source to carry substantive third-party responses to Spencer's account rather than only Spencer and the Palace. The BBC is reporting interviews conducted on its own programmes -- Arbiter on Newsnight, Bond on BBC Breakfast -- so the quotations are first-party to the broadcaster. The article also records that representatives of Prince Harry "have said they do not want to comment on the book" and that Buckingham Palace pointed back to its September 16 statement rather than issuing a new one.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Before the quotation
Said on BBC Newsnight on the evening of September 17, 2026, hours after the Daily Mail published the second tranche of excerpts from "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister," in which Spencer wrote that Charles sounded "giddily elated - like a lottery winner" on the call confirming Diana's death.
After the quotation
Arbiter was press secretary at Buckingham Palace at the time of Diana's death, but was not a party to the private telephone call Spencer describes; his rejection rests on his assessment of Charles's character and of his demeanour during that period, not on direct knowledge of the call. He is the first named figure outside the Palace and the Spencer family to dispute the account on the record.
How this statement is classified
The label describes this statement's response within the context above.
Why this label?
On whether Spencer's account of Charles's words and demeanour is accurate, Arbiter disputes the attribution outright, saying there is "no way" Charles could have said anything like that and offering a competing description of his state at the time ("devastated"). That is a challenge to the accuracy of Spencer's characterization rather than a defence of any conduct: the case does not put Charles's behaviour up for moral evaluation, it puts Spencer's rendering of it in question. This is the same label carried by Buckingham Palace's statement, though Arbiter goes further: the Palace questioned the reliability of Spencer's memory without denying the remark, while Arbiter denies it. “Condemned” loses because Arbiter's criticism of Spencer is a means of rejecting the account, not an evaluation of the case's underlying conduct.
- Recorded on
- Published here
- People and groups discussed
- Charles Spencer
More from this case
Read the full caseSpencer denies trying to discredit Charles
“At no point am I looking to discredit anyone.”Read statement
Spencer tells CBS he is “absolutely not bitter” and that his book “would be more bitter” if he were
“No, I'm absolutely not bitter. I can tell you, if I was bitter, this book would be more bitter.”Read statement
Spencer tells CBS he is “reporting that’s the fact,” not “justifying or criticizing”
“He sounded excited in a sort of upbeat way. … Yes, and obviously I'm not justifying or criticizing. I'm reporting that's the fact. … I said in the book that that might have been it, yeah, but that's obviously … I can't say what he was thinking”Read statement
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- Dickie Arbiter calls Spencer's "giddily elated" account "hogwash"
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The Dispute Index. "Dickie Arbiter calls Spencer's "giddily elated" account "hogwash"". First published: 2026-09-18. Last updated: 2026-09-26. https://disputeindex.com/events/1048-dickie-arbiter-buckingham-palace-press-secretary-at-the