Charles Spencer says Diana made the remark while discussing her divorce from then-Prince Charles. He admits he never asked whether she meant it literally, and the Palace strongly denied similar rumors years ago.
Charles Spencer has spent the past several weeks reopening some of the most uncomfortable chapters in Princess Diana’s life. His latest headline may be the most explosive sentence yet: Spencer says Diana once told him, over lunch, that “my husband’s in love with his valet.”
The remark appears in Spencer’s new memoir, and he discussed it again in an interview with Katie Couric. According to Spencer, Diana made the comment while telling him that her marriage to then-Prince Charles was ending. Spencer says the divorce news was so overwhelming that he did not stop to ask the obvious follow-up question: did she mean “in love” literally, or was she using the phrase as a cutting description of Charles’ closeness to a male staffer?
That unanswered question is the entire story now. Spencer says he never pressed her for clarification, no valet was identified by name in the conversation, and there is no independent evidence proving what Diana meant. In other words, one of the most combustible royal quotes imaginable has arrived with precisely the amount of context needed to keep everyone arguing indefinitely.
The line also revives old rumors that circulated about Charles and a male staff member in the early 2000s. Buckingham Palace strongly denied those claims at the time. Sir Michael Peat, then Charles’ private secretary, called the allegations untrue and said they had caused significant distress.
That historical denial matters because Spencer’s recollection should not be treated as confirmation of the old rumors. What is confirmed is that Spencer says Diana used the phrase and that he did not ask what she meant. Everything beyond that requires interpretation, and royal history already has enough interpretation to keep an entire publishing industry employed.
Spencer told Couric that the moment stayed with him because Diana’s emotional state had changed so dramatically from the sister he remembered before her marriage. He described her as increasingly unhappy and trapped by the pressures surrounding royal life. That theme runs through much of his memoir, which paints Diana’s marriage as a relationship that gradually overwhelmed her.
The valet remark lands differently because it is both intimate and ambiguous. It could have been literal. It could have been sarcasm. It could have been Diana expressing frustration about where Charles’ attention went. Spencer openly says he does not know.
That honesty makes the quote both more credible as a remembered line and less useful as proof of anything beyond the conversation itself. He is not claiming he witnessed an affair. He is not naming a man. He is not presenting documentary evidence. He is recounting something Diana told him while she was preparing to end her marriage.
The royal family is already unhappy with portions of Spencer’s memoir, particularly his accounts of private conversations involving Charles and the aftermath of Diana’s death. Buckingham Palace has challenged some of Spencer’s recollections, suggesting grief and the passage of time may have affected how he remembers events. Spencer has stood by his version and accused the Palace of trying to dismiss his memories.
That back-and-forth has turned the book into something more than a family memoir. It is effectively another round in the decades-long fight over who gets to define Diana’s story: her brother, her sons, the monarchy, former staffers or the endless army of biographers who have made careers out of reconstructing palace conversations.
The timing guarantees even more attention. The 30th anniversary of Diana’s death is approaching in 2027, which means documentaries, books and retrospectives are already beginning to gather momentum. Every unresolved private comment now has a fresh commercial shelf life.
There is also a strange irony in the whole thing. Diana was one of the most photographed people on Earth, yet some of the most consequential details of her life still depend on private conversations remembered decades later. The cameras were everywhere, but somehow the historical arguments keep turning on what was said over lunch.
So the cleanest way to read Spencer’s claim is also the least sensational: Diana told him Charles was “in love with his valet,” Spencer never asked what she meant, and no one can now go back and clarify it with her. The quote is real according to Spencer. The meaning remains unresolved.
The question is whether memoir readers should treat ambiguous private remarks like this as historical evidence — or as emotionally charged snapshots that reveal more about a moment than they do about literal fact.
