Staff reporter
British broadcaster Piers Morgan says he will pursue legal action against Earl Spencer and the publisher of Spencer’s new memoir, despite Princess Diana’s brother apologising for a factual error about Morgan in Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.
In a social media statement, Morgan acknowledged that Spencer had apologised to him, but said he wanted the “lies” removed.
“Earl Spencer has apologised to me for his defamatory lies published in his new book, Swan Song, published today,” he said on X. “But I am pursuing legal action against him and his publisher Penguin to have the lies removed, and damages paid to the King’s Trust.”
Penguin has published the memoir in various English-speaking countries and translated it into 12 languages. Billed as chronicling Diana’s life from his perspective, Spencer’s 384-page book comes almost three decades after she was killed in a 1997 car crash in Paris.
As the book hit store shelves, Spencer issued an apology for incorrectly stating Morgan was the editor of Britain’s Daily Mirror when the Mirror Group published photographs of Princess Diana at the gym in November 1993. Morgan became editor of the Mirror in 1995.
However, Morgan has used the error to cast doubt on the veracity of other information in the memoir.
“If Earl Spencer can be so incredibly, defamatorily wrong about such basic facts involving me, well, why should we believe anything else he puts in this book?” he said on his talk show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, during a broadcast addressing the memoir’s release.
Before the release of the memoir, extracts serialised in British tabloid the Daily Mail last week triggered sensational headlines related to allegations involving Diana’s ex-husband, King Charles.
The book was at No.2 on Amazon UK’s non-fiction bestseller list on Wednesday.
But many experts on the British royal family have questioned some of its claims.
Andrew Morton, author of the 1992 book Diana: Her True Story, in a comment in The Times, wrote that Spencer’s claims about the phone call with Charles were “incendiary and disputed”.
Speaking to the BBC, royal commentator Jennie Bond argued that the memoir was vindictive.
