What is Prince Harry's relationship like with his uncle Earl Spencer as he defends him on Twitter?

Although the late Princess Diana’s funeral took place on the 6 September 1997, it is impossible to forget Earl Spencer’s impassioned eulogy that received rapturous applause outside Westminster Abbey, although it was seen as a thinly veiled attack on the royal family. 

Despite it being many years ago, Earl Spencer’s speech had a profound effect on me at the time and still moves me to this day. 

In his eulogy, Earl Spencer said about his late sister, Princess Diana that “It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest gift was this-a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting, was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.” He went on to say that “She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate and I do this here Diana on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.”

Aside from his eulogy, it is also impossible to forget Earl Spencer walking behind Princess Diana’s funeral cortege with Prince William, then 15, Prince Harry, 12, and King Charles (the then Prince of Wales) and the Duke of Edinburgh. In 2017, The Independent reported that “As the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death nears, Earl Spencer told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was a ‘very bizarre and cruel’ thing for Diana’s two sons to be asked to walk behind her body.”

Fast forward to 2023, and as his nephew Prince Harry has just spent two days in the witness stand in his High Court case against the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), Earl Spencer has taken to Twitter to publicly defend him. In response to Amanda Platell's article in the Daily Mail about ‘Is Harry still obsessed with former love Chelsy Davy,’ Earl Spencer said the following: “Pathetic @amandajplatell- you have no shame, and even less credibility. Last time I heard from you, you were guilty of libelling me, as your employer at @DailyMailUK agreed. Now you’re put up (by them?) to misrepresent significant legal evidence as if it was something trivial.”

As it has been reported that Prince Harry did not see his brother Prince William nor his father King Charles (although he had been away in Transylvania for some of that time) whilst he was in the UK, it is interesting as well as significant that he has been publicly defended by his uncle, Earl Spencer.

Prince William and Prince Harry are believed to have stayed close to their late mother, Princess Diana’s sisters Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Jane Fellowes, Baroness Fellowes but the Princes have not been photographed publicly many times with Earl Spencer. However he did attend the weddings of Prince William to Kate Middleton in 2011 and Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle in 2018.

Earl Spencer also joined Prince William and Prince Harry at the opening of a fountain in Princess Diana’s memory in 2006 and was also with his nephews once again in 2021 at the unveiling of a statue of the Princess (on what would have been her 60th birthday) in the sunken gardens of Buckingham Palace.