Piers Morgan vows to continue with lawsuit despite Earl Spencer’s formal apology

Piers Morgan has vowed to continue his plans for litigation against Earl Charles Spencer and publishers Penguin, despite a formal apology over inaccurate claims in the book Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.

Princess Diana’s brother issued a formal apology on Tuesday (Wednesday morning AEST) after Morgan first threatened to sue for wrongly being named as the editor of UK newspaper Daily Mirror when photos of Princess Diana in her gym gear, taken with “hidden cameras”, were famously published in 1993.

The photos were actually published two years before Morgan took to the helm of the publication. He’d been working at rival The Sun at the time of their publication.

In the book, Earl Spencer made the inaccurate dig at Morgan while detailing a call they had following Diana’s 1997 death, when Earl Spencer asked Morgan and other newspaper editors not to attend the funeral.

“Earl Spencer’s account of his conversation with Piers Morgan is accurate,” Earl Spencer’s spokesperson told BBC in a statement.

“Mr Morgan was surly and annoyed when Earl Spencer called personally to tell him that he was not welcome at his sister’s funeral.”

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Noting the error around Morgan’s employment at the time of the “highly intrusive photographs” the spokesperson said accuracy was important to the 62-year-old.

“As an historian, accuracy is important to Earl Spencer,” the statement said.

“He therefore wishes to clarify that his assumption was incorrect. Earl Spencer apologises to Mr Morgan for this error.”

Earl Spencer’s mistake

Earl Spencer claimed in the book that Morgan “snarled with annoyance” at being asked not to attend Diana’s funeral.

“They realised they were unable to be rude to the brother of the much-mourned princess,” he began in the book excerpt recalling those phone calls.

“The only one who sounded surly, as opposed to merely confused or embarrassed, was Piers Morgan of the Mirror, who snarled with annoyance before he hung up.

“I assumed Morgan must be feeling particular guilt because, four years earlier, he and his Sunday Mirror counterpart had published photographs taken with hidden cameras by a gym owner. They were of Diana working out in a leotard.

"This was such an intolerable invasion of her privacy that Diana instructed lawyers to sue the Mirror Group and to block further use of the images."

Earl Spencer’s mea culpa on Tuesday confirms the photographs were published by the Sunday Mirror on November 7, 1993, with Morgan not joining the Daily Mirror until October 1995.

Morgan to continue legal action

Morgan isn’t stopping his plans for court action in light of the apology for the “fabricated inaccuracies”, he said.

“Earl Spencer has apologised to me for his defamatory lies published in his new book,Swan Song, published today,” the TV host said in a social media statement.

“But I am pursuing legal action against him and his publisher Penguin to have the lies removed, and damages paid to the King’s Trust.”

Morgan urged publishers Penguin to remove that edition of the book from sale and pulp it, in an interview after the formal apology was issued.

“The longer this book is on sale ... then the higher the damages will be and the more money that will go to the King’s Trust,” he told Sky News.

“They have published something which they have admitted is completely untrue, and which he has issued a public apology for. So now they should withdraw the book.”

He confirmed Shillings − the law firm that famously represented Prince Harry and Meghan in their recent court cases against various UK tabloids − are sending a legal letter to executives at Penguin as well as Earl Spencer in the coming hours.

Morgan said he too has written about that conversation with Earl Spencer previously, in his own book, and claims the Earl’s recollection of the chat varies so greatly with his, it casts doubts over his claims about the phone call with then-Prince Charles.

“I made a contemporaneous note about the way that call was conducted, I could not have been more respectful,” Morgan said on Sky.

“Now, the reason that’s significant is that there’s a lot of conjecture about whether his recollection of his phone conversation with then Prince Charles ... I can say that from a conversation I had with him the same week that Earl Spencer is grotesquely mischaracterising the tone of that conversation with me.

“So if he’s doing that with me, and I know that for a fact, how can we believe what he says about now King Charles?”

Extra twist of the knife from Piers Morgan

Morgan, who is friendly with Queen Camilla – and owns one of very few art pieces Her Majesty has sold – has often shown his dedication to the crown over the years.

Most famously, he slammed Prince Harry and Meghan’s claims against members of the royal family in their Oprah Winfrey interview.

He also questioned the Duchess of Sussex’s claims of suicidal thoughts in the Oprah exclusive, which ultimately led to him being fired from his then-role as co-host of Good Morning Britain.

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So, Morgan wanting to give any damages he wins in court to the King’s Trust is not a complete surprise.

It’s also likely intended to be extra twist of the knife to Princess Diana’s brother, with Earl Spencer making bombshell allegations about King Charles in the book.

“If Earl Spencer can be so incredibly defamatorily wrong about such basic facts involving me, well why should we believe anything else that he puts in this book?” Morgan said on his show Piers Morgan Uncensored.

Earl Spencer waters down other claims

In a serialisation of excerpts from Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Earl Spencer claims his former brother-in-law “sounded giddily elated” in a phone call after Diana’s 1997 death.

In a recent BBC interview, Earl Spencer somewhat back-tracked on the claim, saying he “couldn’t be sure” of then-Prince Charles’ feelings to the news, it’s simply what he “assumed from the tone”.

Another excerpt from the book alleges Prince Charles in the same call said Diana would be forgotten “soon enough”, which ultimately led Earl Spencer to hanging up on the heir.

The allegations led to a rare and blistering rebuke from Buckingham Palace, who have refused to wade into any subsequent allegations from the earl.

“While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss,” a palace spokesperson said on behalf of King Charles.

Earl Spencer reacted to that statement during the BBC interview, claiming the monarch hasn’t denied saying those words.

“They’ve sort of smudged that one, haven’t they? They’ve said that recollections may vary,” he said.

Earl Spencer also compared the statement to being “gas lit”.

“It is not every day you wake up to find you’ve been gas lit by the King,” he told People magazine.

“It was astonishingly provocative and below the belt because it was essentially trying to say I’d lied without the King being able to deny what I’d said.”