Earl Spencer Removes Murdoch From Diana Eulogy

On the Oct. 24 episode of Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast, the 9th Earl Spencer said the eulogy he delivered for his sister Princess Diana was “very different” from the tribute he initially planned. Spencer recalled flying overnight from Cape Town, searching for someone else to give the eulogy, and being told by his mother and sisters after a Heathrow call that it would have to be him; he first drafted a traditional childhood-focused speech but abandoned it as unrepresentative and resolved to “speak for” Diana. He said Diana had named him guardian of her sons in a symbolic (not legal) sense and that he wrote the final eulogy in about an hour and a half, removing a name-check of Rupert Murdoch as “rather unnecessary.” He delivered the tribute at Westminster Abbey on Sept. 6, 1997, following Diana’s death in a Paris car crash on Aug. 31, 1997.