Earl Spencer's Diana book opens old wounds royals would rather forget

The legacy of the shocking death of Diana, Princess of Wales, is still the rawest of wounds for the royals, as demonstrated by the no-holds-barred memoir from her brother Earl Spencer.

It might be almost 30 years ago, but Buckingham Palace's unusually angry rebuttal to the book's allegations of a callous response to his ex-wife's death from the then Prince Charles shows how much this still matters.

That late summer in 1997 was a moment when the Royal Family looked out of touch, lacking in empathy for Diana's loss, and at peril of losing public support, as people laid siege to the palaces with flowers.

While the royals dealt with their own private grief, they were also facing a reputational disaster, at risk of becoming the focus of public dismay at the sudden death of the "People's Princess" in a car crash in Paris.

"It was a very febrile mood. Everyone was taken by surprise by the strength of feeling, and the strength to which the Royal Family was unpopular. The palaces were deemed to have treated Diana badly," recalls royal author Valentine Low.

Low was inside Westminster Abbey for Diana's funeral and vividly remembers the public response to the electrifying speech made by Earl Spencer.

"I heard this noise. I couldn't quite make out what it was, and then I worked out it was the crowd outside the abbey, who'd been listening on the speakers," he says.

"That noise appeared to come through the stone walls of the abbey and it was the most extraordinary thing - as people then started to applaud inside the abbey. It was so astounding, in front of Charles and all of the Royal Family."

'I'm telling the truth': Earl Spencer defends Diana book claims about Charles in BBC interview

A volatile public mood followed Diana's death, with the late Queen Elizabeth eventually having to respond with a live televised address paying tribute to the princess and acknowledging how difficult it can be to articulate grief.

"We have all been trying in our different ways to cope. It is not easy to express a sense of loss, since the initial shock is often succeeded by a mixture of other feelings: disbelief, incomprehension, anger - and concern for those who remain," said the late Queen.

A fresh-faced new prime minister, Tony Blair, was said to have been a modernising influence on sending such a direct message - an intervention later depicted in the movie, The Queen, starring Helen Mirren.

So many of the current tensions in the royal world can be traced back to the trauma of those events. The death of a mother at such a young age was inevitably a huge shaping influence on her sons - and it can feel as though those unresolved tensions are still playing out.

In the Duke of Sussex's memoir Spare , Diana's absence is a huge presence, his sense of loss unabated. There is still a graphic sense of his distress at walking behind her coffin, with Prince Harry mentioning Earl Spencer's opposition.