Exclusive: Charles Spencer Reflects on "Shedding the Real World" and "Communing With Diana" With a Unique Feature of Her Island Gravesite

Princess Diana is buried at her family’s ancestral home, Althorp, and when it came to selecting a gravesite, privacy and protection came first. Her brother, Charles Spencer, decided to bury Diana on an island in the middle of the property’s Oval Lake that’s inaccessible to the public, and he tells Marie Claire about the “incredibly peaceful” spot.

Earl Spencer, whose book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, was released on September 22, says that he visits Diana “quite a lot.”

“I’ve got this cheap and cheerful little plastic boat that I'm quite a master of paddling over with one oar to the island,” he shares. “And I find it is very sad being over there, but it's also incredibly peaceful and beautiful.”

From the shore, the island where Princess Diana is buried appears to be completely overgrown with trees, but Spencer reveals there’s a secret feature of her gravesite.

“On the island, there's a small maze, you know, a grown up maze, and going through that is almost like shedding the real world and getting to this, I hope, really beautiful graveside spot, and communing with Diana,” he shares.

While a small bridge was set up to transport family members to the island for her 1997 burial, Spencer chose to leave Diana’s grave accessible only by boat for privacy reasons. In Swan Song, the earl writes about one time when he broke the bridge rule for Nelson Mandela, who was visiting Althorp and didn't feel physically able to climb into a boat.

As for when he rows across to Diana’s grave, Spencer says “it goes in phases.”

“You know, sometimes I find I need to go across, and obviously, I go across on her birthday and the anniversary and lay flowers, but sometimes I just go across anyway,” he says.

Speaking about Swan Song, Earl Spencer says that his eulogy at Diana’s funeral provided a through line to tell the story of his relationship with his sister. “What I wanted to do in a way, this book is a 350 page version of my eulogy at the funeral,” he says. “To tackle—first memoir, and it's half history— to pull that together, it needed a strand, and I found the eulogy did that because it covers both sides of my personal take and setting things down for history.”

At the end of the day, Spencer says he hopes his book serves as tribute to Diana's memory. “I've said this before, but it's—without wishing to sound emotional—when you lose a sibling, part of your childhood's gone forever,” he says.

Reflecting on his two older sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, he notes that because of the “British upper class lunacy of sending people off to boarding schools,” he didn’t grow up alongside them. “By the time I was a toddler, those two sisters were gone, you know?” he notes.

“Obviously, I'm in my sixties now, so it's no surprise that my parents and stepparents are gone,” he added. “But to lose the one person who shared your childhood as well, at quite an early age, does leave you slightly on your own.”