Piers Morgan challenges Earl Spencer’s account of Diana phone call as memoir dispute escalates

The broadcaster has rejected claims in Earl Spencer’s new book and says he intends to take legal action despite an apology over one factual error.

Piers Morgan has hit back at Earl Spencer after the late Princess Diana’s brother made claims about him in his new memoir, Swan Song: My Sister Diana.

In an interview with ITV Royal Editor Chris Ship on Tuesday, September 22, Morgan strongly disputed Spencer’s account of his involvement with photographs of Diana published by the Sunday Mirror in 1993.

Spencer has since acknowledged that he made an incorrect assumption about Morgan’s role and apologised. However, Morgan says the apology does not resolve the wider dispute and has confirmed that he intends to pursue legal action.

Morgan disputes Spencer’s account

At the centre of the row is a passage in Spencer’s memoir concerning photographs of Princess Diana exercising at a gym.

Spencer’s account linked Morgan to the publication of the intrusive images and suggested that Morgan was the editor of the Daily Mirror at the time.

Morgan rejected that claim, pointing to the dates as what he described as a straightforward factual error.

The photographs were published by the Sunday Mirror on November 7, 1993. Morgan did not join the Daily Mirror until October 1995, meaning he was not working there when the images appeared. At the time, he was working at The Sun.

Morgan told ITV that the timing was particularly easy to verify because his move to the Daily Mirror came roughly two years after the controversy surrounding the Diana photographs.

He also noted that the episode had resulted in the Mirror paying Diana £1 million.

“It had nothing to do with me,”

Morgan said, arguing that the mistake raised questions about the accuracy of other claims contained in Spencer’s book.

WATCH: Piers Morgan calls for Charles Spencer’s book to be withdrawn from sale.
Says he’ll press ahead with legal action.
Says Spencer’s claim Morgan was surly on the phone that week was a wrong characterisation – and questions therefore if Earl Spencer got it wrong about the Prince Charles phone call that same week in 1997 👇

— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) September 22, 2026

Spencer apologises for the mistake

The dispute prompted a statement on Spencer’s behalf acknowledging that his assumption about Morgan’s role had been wrong.

The statement confirmed that the photographs had been published by the Sunday Mirror on November 7, 1993, while Morgan did not join the Daily Mirror until October 1995.

Spencer said that, as a historian, accuracy was important to him, and apologised to Morgan for the error.

Future editions of the memoir are expected to be corrected.

The apology, however, did not settle the disagreement between the two men.

Morgan challenges Spencer’s recollection of their phone call

A second part of the dispute concerns a telephone conversation between Morgan and Spencer following Princess Diana’s death in 1997.

In Swan Song: My Sister Diana, Spencer describes contacting tabloid editors to tell them they were no longer welcome at Diana’s funeral after initially being invited.

His account portrays Morgan as being angry and surly during their conversation.

Spencer has maintained that this part of his recollection is accurate, even while apologising for the separate mistake about Morgan’s connection to the 1993 photographs.

Morgan strongly disputes that description.

Speaking to ITV, he said he had been respectful towards Spencer during the call and pointed to his own diaries, published in The Insider, as evidence of how he remembered the conversation.

He argued that the disagreement was significant because Spencer’s recollection of the phone call came from the same period in which he makes other claims about conversations involving the Royal Family.

Morgan therefore questioned whether Spencer’s recollection of those conversations could be relied upon if he had, in Morgan’s view, inaccurately described their own exchange.

Legal action remains on the table

Despite receiving an apology over the factual error, Morgan said he would continue with legal action against Spencer and his publisher, Penguin.

He told ITV that his lawyers were sending a legal letter seeking the removal of the disputed claims from the book. Morgan also said he wanted any damages to be paid to the King’s Trust.

Morgan has argued that the disputed passage is defamatory and that correcting the mistake in future editions would not address the fact that the book had already been published.

The disagreement has consequently developed beyond a dispute over a single date. Morgan is challenging both the accuracy of Spencer’s account of his role at the Mirror and Spencer’s description of their 1997 telephone conversation.

A wider controversy surrounding Swan Song

The dispute with Morgan comes as Spencer’s memoir has attracted attention for a series of claims about Princess Diana, her family and the Royal Family.

Among the book’s most controversial allegations are Spencer’s descriptions of conversations involving the then Prince Charles following Diana’s death, including his claim that Charles sounded “giddily elated” and that he said the family would “forget her soon enough.” Buckingham Palace has issued a rare response to some of the claims.

Spencer has presented the memoir as a personal account of his sister and her life, while also describing events surrounding her death and funeral.

The disagreement with Morgan has added another layer of scrutiny to the book, particularly because Spencer has acknowledged an error concerning the former Daily Mirror editor while continuing to stand by his recollection of their telephone conversation.

For Morgan, however, the issue goes beyond the correction. He has argued that the acknowledged mistake raises broader questions about the reliability of Spencer’s recollections elsewhere in the memoir, while Spencer maintains that his account of the phone call itself remains accurate.