‘I ran out of oxygen’: Diana’s brother’s heart-wrenching eulogy

Westminster Abbey was packed with mourners when Charles Spencer rose to speak about his sister Diana.

A further 32 million people were watching on their TVs at home as he remembered “the sparkle in those unforgettable eyes” and delivered a stinging attack on the British media for making her “most hunted person of the modern age”.

It went down as one of the most memorable speeches of the time, but 20 years on, Earl Spencer says it was a difficult one to get out.

“I was looking directly at William and Harry across her coffin,” he tells People in a new interview, “She’d left me as guardian.”

“In the final paragraph I had run out of energy, almost out of oxygen. I had to punch each syllable out of the base of my stomach.”

The Earl spoke about his sister’s boys in his heart-wrenching eulogy and said that “we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.”

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He went on to add, “We fully respect the heritage into which they have both been born and will always respect and encourage them in their royal role but we, like you, recognise the need for them to experience as many different aspects of life as possible to arm them spiritually and emotionally for the years ahead.

“I know you would have expected nothing less from us.”

He was careful not to show his speech to anyone before delivering it, so no one could influence it.

A friend later told him that the Queen thought he had “every right to say whatever he felt”.

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