Princess Diana’s Brother Charles Scores Legal Victory Over Lie About How He Treated Her

Princess Diana’s brother Charles has scored a big legal victory over a lie about how he allegedly treated her before her death. People reports that Charles Spencer recently announced his win over The Times newspaper, which had claimed that he refused to allow Diana to live with him after her marriage to Prince Charles began to fall apart. The big legal win comes ahead of the 24th anniversary of Diana’s tragic and untimely death.

The false report was published under the headline, “It’s too simple to blame everything on Bashir,” referring to the BBC journalist who was found to have used “deceitful methods” in order to get an interview with Diana in 1995. In its retraction, the Times wrote, “We are happy to report that having considered his sister’s safety, and in line with police advice, the Earl offered the Princess of Wales a number of properties.” This included “Wormleighton Manor, the Spencer family’s original ancestral home.”

The Times continued, “It was wrong to suggest he had refused to help his sister or had failed to protect her from Martin Bashir and concealed evidence of the latter’s deception. We did not intend to suggest that the Earl was to blame for his sister’s death. We apologise to the Earl and have agreed to pay his costs as well as make a payment to him which he will donate to charity.”

Diana died on Aug. 31, 1997, when a car she was traveling in crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. Two other passengers — Diana’s partner Dodi Fayed and the driver Henri Paul — were also killed. Notably, Diana’s bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones survived the crash.

In the years after her death, Charles Spencer became an outspoken advocate for the preservation of her memory in world history. “One of the reasons I wanted to talk now is because I think after 20 years, someone shifts from being a contemporary person to a person of history actually. And Diana deserves a place in history,” he explained in a past interview. “I think that it’s important for people who are under 35, who probably won’t remember her at all, to remember that this is a special person. Not just a beautiful one.”