Piers Morgan questions Princess Diana’s brother’s explosive claims about King Charles after error about him
Piers Morgan says Charles Spencer's public apology isn't enough.
The British broadcaster told Fox News Digital he is still pursuing legal action over what he calls defamatory passages in Spencer's memoir, "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister," even after Spencer acknowledged a factual error and apologized.
"He's published an egregious defamatory lie about me, and that lie remains in copies of the book being sold all over the world, including the United States," Morgan told Fox News Digital. "Although he's rushed out an apology and admitted that it was completely untrue what he said about me, he hasn't removed it from the book."
"My legal team has been in touch with him and his publishers demanding that they remove the book from sale and reissue the book without the offending pages," Morgan said. "It's not just a one-off reference. We're talking about several pages here."
Spencer denied that Morgan had sued him, prompting Morgan to release correspondence from his lawyers showing they had contacted Spencer and his publisher, The Sun reported.
Morgan wants any damages paid to The King's Trust, a youth charity King Charles III founded in 1976 as the Prince of Wales.
WATCH: PIERS MORGAN CHALLENGES CHARLES SPENCER'S CLAIMS ABOUT KING CHARLES
Fox News Digital reached out to Penguin Press, the U.S. publisher of "Swan Song," and Althorp for comment.
The book incorrectly identifies Morgan as the editor of the Daily Mirror when Mirror Group newspapers published photographs of Diana exercising in a gym in November 1993, People magazine reported. According to the outlet, Morgan was working at The Sun at the time and didn't become editor of the Daily Mirror until 1995.
Spencer acknowledged the error but stood by his recollection that Morgan was "surly and annoyed" when Spencer called Morgan to tell him he was not welcome at Diana's 1997 funeral.
"Earl Spencer's account of his conversation with Piers Morgan is accurate," read a statement published by People magazine. "Mr. Morgan was surly and annoyed when Earl Spencer called personally to tell him that he was not welcome at his sister's funeral."
"The book then records Earl Spencer's assumption that Mr. Morgan's response was because he was editor of the Daily Mirror when the Mirror Group had published highly intrusive photographs of Princess Diana at the gym," the statement continued.
"As a historian, accuracy is important to Earl Spencer. He therefore wishes to clarify that his assumption was incorrect. Earl Spencer apologizes to Mr. Morgan for this error."
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People reported that the passage will be corrected in the second edition of "Swan Song." Spencer has not withdrawn his account of the conversation itself, only his mistaken assumption that Morgan was editor of the Daily Mirror at the time.
Morgan said the error casts doubt on the accuracy of other claims in the memoir, including Spencer's account of what King Charles allegedly said after Diana's death.
"He's claiming to be a historian," Morgan said. "He says he's written this as a work of historical record to set the record straight about his sister, Princess Diana, one of the most talked-about people, obviously, of modern times. But he makes incredibly incendiary allegations against our now-king, Prince Charles, in which he claims that within hours of Diana dying, he spoke to Prince Charles on the phone and Prince Charles sounded as giddy as a lottery winner with excitement that Diana had died."
"It's hard to imagine a more disgusting thing to say," Morgan said. "I don't believe for a moment that Charles was like that. In fact, I had Paul Burrell, Diana's former butler, on my show last week saying that he saw the prince in Paris within hours of Diana dying and the man was a broken man. [He] was utterly grief-stricken. So why this matters about what happened to me is that people have been questioning the accuracy of his memory of these phone calls with King Charles."
In the book, Spencer recalled a conversation with then-Prince Charles about whether Diana's sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, then 15 and 12, would walk behind her coffin during the funeral procession. Spencer said a royal aide informed him about the plan and that he opposed it. Charles then called Spencer, leading to what Spencer described as a heated exchange.
"Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting," Spencer wrote. "Then he stopped. I assumed the pause signaled an effort to bring himself under control, but then he unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death. 'Rest assured,' he hissed, 'we'll forget her soon enough!'"
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Spencer wrote that he was "so stunned" that he took a few seconds before replying, "I can't believe you just said that," and hanging up.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said in a statement, "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 color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss."
A palace spokesperson told Fox News Digital they had no further comment.
Spencer has stood by the account, telling the BBC, "I'm telling the truth."
Morgan rejected Spencer's account.
"I can't imagine for a moment [the king] would say that about the mother of his children," Morgan said. "This goes to the heart of the credibility of the book. If he can get something so grotesquely wrong about me over several pages, which is so easy to check and prove he got it wrong, then why should we believe him about anything he says about King Charles? That's why it matters."
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Morgan also disputes Spencer's recollection of their phone call.
"His account of how he did that and how I was with him is completely untrue," Morgan said. "He says that I was snarling, I was rude, I was all these things. I would simply ask people, how realistic is that? This guy's just lost his sister. Is it likely that I, as a newspaper editor who was very friendly with Diana, friendly with her mother and Earl Spencer's mother, that I would treat a family member in a snarling or rude manner? I don’t think it is."
"At the end of the call, I said to him that I would like him to pass on my deepest condolences to his mother, who I knew very well. And he said he would do that and thanked me. That's not a snarly, rude conversation."
Morgan said he wrote about the phone call in his 2005 book, "The Insider."
"I put it to people that if he's so wrong about the tone of my conversation with him that week, then why should we believe him when he says that Charles was giddy with excitement?"
Spencer told People magazine during an interview at Althorp that his duty as a historian is "to lay down facts."
"And that's what I'm doing," he told the outlet. "There's no viciousness. I'm not resentful or bitter or any of those things."
Spencer said his priority was to honor his sister.
"The central person, the only one that really matters, is Diana," he said.