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See also part 1 of The
Spencers – Diana's Dynasty which focuses on the troubled life
of Princess Diana.
Charles Spencer's speech at his sister Princess Diana's funeral on 6 September 1997 was a historic moment. The passionate eight-minute eulogy, heard by a world audience of nearly three billion people, made him as famous as Diana for a short period. The second part of Channel 4's The Spencers – Diana's Dynasty records how the head of the Spencer clan made certain the world knew that Diana's sons, heirs to the British throne, were as much a part of his ancient family as the House of Windsor. Determined young man Even from an early age, Charles had shown a single-mindedness well beyond his years in protecting his and the family's interests. Charles quickly took against his flamboyant stepmother Raine after she married Johnnie and began to stamp her distinctive style on Althorp, the family's Northamptonshire seat. After Oxford University, Charles worked as a royal correspondent at the American TV network NBC, but this career was short-lived as he found his privacy becoming increasingly important. When Johnnie died, son-and-heir Charles inherited the £85 million estate, including nearly 200 cottages and farmhouses, even though he had three older sisters. Raine never returned to the house and within days, her possessions were removed. Charles was now well established as the lord of the manor. Troubled marriage In 1989, after a brief romance, Charles married Victoria Lockwood, an international fashion model and Tatler Girl of the Year. Within six months the marriage was in trouble. Ironically for a man who came to despise the media, the cause was Charles's affair with a journalist called Sally-Ann Lasson. She had known Spencer before his marriage and thought he would leave Victoria for her. When he didn't, Lasson told her story to the press. The repentant earl patched up his marriage and over the next five years he and Victoria had four children – three daughters and finally, in 1994, a son-and-heir, Louis. Family rifts At around the same time, his sister Diana's marriage was over in all but name. Diana had always been close to her brother but they fell out after she asked him if she could use a cottage at Althorp. The house she wanted was just inside the estate walls. Concerned over security, Charles turned her down, causing a rift with his sister that resulted in them not speaking to each other for six months. Spencer's own marriage was also in trouble. Victoria was ill from an eating disorder and when she entered a clinic her problems became front-page news. Charles wanted to escape the British media and in 1996 he moved his family to Cape Town, South Africa. He bought an £800,000 house on a private estate while Victoria and the children moved to a bungalow nearby. Charles soon became involved with another woman, Chantal Collopy, a married socialite with two children, but their relationship was short-lived. Then came Diana's death and that speech (written in just an hour and a half) from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey. In a sideswipe at the assembled royal family, Charles proclaimed that Diana's blood family would continue to do all they could to steer the two young princes, William and Harry, in the way she had planned. Later that day, he ensured his sister was buried as a Spencer, not a Windsor: according to Diana's former butler Paul Burrell, the earl removed the royal standard from her coffin and draped it with his own family's flag. Unwanted attention In the eyes of many, he was the hero of the day. Soon, though, Fleet Street was pursuing him again, this time en masse to Cape Town for his divorce case. His wife had a powerful ally in her fight for a fair settlement – Chantal Collopy, her husband's former mistress. Charles agreed to give Victoria £1.8 million shortly before the two women were due to give evidence. A somewhat bruised Charles Spencer returned to live at Althorp, Diana's resting place. He borrowed £3 million to convert a stable block into a permanent museum to his sister. All profits were to go to charity and within five years, £800,000 was raised for the Diana Memorial Fund. Charles's sister Sarah was a trustee of the fund. Paul Burrell was the
fund-raising manager, but he found himself out of a job, reportedly because
the Spencers didn't want him. Two decades on from the celebrated marriage of a Spencer into the House of Windsor, what had seemed at first to be an illustrious new chapter in the history of one of England's great families ended in bitterness and recrimination. |
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