Earl Spencer has paid a moving tribute to his late mother on what would have been her 88th birthday.
Spencer, 59, who lives on the family estate, Althorp in Northamptonshire, took to Instagram yesterday to share a selection of newspaper clippings about her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, who died in 2004.
Also seen in the photo-filled keepsake box is an article announcing the birth of the late Princess Diana, Charles’ younger sister.
One of the photographs, titled ‘Lord and Lady Althorp’s third daughter baptised’, showed the mother of the Prince of Wales, 42, and the Duke of Sussex, 39, as a newborn.
Diana is wrapped in a white blanket as her parents look on proudly.
Earl Spencer (pictured) shared a selection of photographs yesterday to mark his late mother’s 88th birthday.
Princess Diana is photographed on her christening day with her mother and father in the keepsake box (pictured, top left)
Earl Spencer, who still resides at the family home, Althorp in Northamptonshire, shared the photo of his late sister, who died aged 36 in a car accident in Paris in 1997.
Charles captioned the post: “Remembering my mother, with love and gratitude, on what would have been her 88th birthday.”
Hundreds of people flocked to the comments section to support Charles and wish his mother a happy “heavenly birthday.”
Frances Shand Kydd married the 8th Earl of Spencer in 1954 at age 18 before divorcing in 1969.
In 1968, Frances lost a custody battle for Diana, Charles and her sisters Jane and Sarah and tried again in 1971 to regain custody of Johnnie Spencer, but lost again.
Diana’s mother went to live with her new husband in Scotland after losing the first battle for custody of her children, in which she was nicknamed ‘the bolter’.
Diana and her mother had a difficult relationship and were not on speaking terms before she died in 1997.
On his Instagram stories, Earl Spencer also posted a photo of himself with his older sister, Lady Elizabeth Sarah Lavinia McCorquodale.
It comes after the announcement that Princess Diana’s brother will speak about the “trauma” of being sent to boarding school when he was eight in his highly anticipated memoir, which several outlets have called one to watch in 2024.
Earl Spencer will chronicle the “culture of cruelty” he experienced at Maidwell Hall, a prep school in Northampton, and provide “important insights into an antiquated boarding school system” in A Very Private School, due for release in March.
The Guardian has included it on a list of “nonfiction to watch out for” this year, along with titles such as Salman Rushdie’s Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, to add to the “now numerous literary denunciations of the boarding school.”
It is also listed as one of this year’s “best” picks by The independentand suggested as an advance memory by the bbc.
He Financial times They have recommended it in their article on what to read in 2024.
According to Gallery Books, an imprint of the publisher Simon & Schuster, Charles “presents a candid examination of his past and a recovery of his childhood.”
A publication in your instagram in October he added: “A Very Private School offers a clear, first-hand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Charles Spencer attended in his youth and provides important information about an antiquated boarding school system.”
Charles, who went to boarding school aged eight, endured six months of sleepless nights before heading to Maidwell Hall, where pupils deemed stupid or lazy were beaten “really unpleasantly” with a cane on their bare buttocks.
Princess Diana’s brother will talk about the ‘trauma’ of being sent to boarding school at the age of eight in his highly anticipated memoir, which several media outlets have described as one to watch in 2024.
“I said I wanted to go to a public school because it must be preferable to being 13 weeks away in a pretty cold and unpleasant place,” he told TES magazine.
“To be completely honest, I think, given my background, the teachers had absolutely no expectations of me,” he said.
‘They just thought I would be fine in life anyway. I was lucky to be able to pass.
But the school’s former headmaster, John Paul, previously suggested that Earl Spencer may have exaggerated the bad things that happened there.
“He has been in constant contact with the school since then, so I don’t think he could have been that unhappy,” Paul said in 1992.
And it would seem that Charles’s experiences at Maidwell Hall would stay with him decades later.
“Fifty years ago tonight, I spent my first night away from my family,” he wrote in a post on x in 2022.
‘I was 8 years old and they had sent me to boarding school. It was part of a family tradition. September 12, 1972 she has been with me ever since.
‘I have 7 children. None of them have been forced to go to boarding school.
Instead of going to public school, Charles headed to Eton College, during which time his sister Diana married Prince Charles when she was 20 years old.
He then gained a place at Magdalen College, Oxford, to study modern history, but admitted he devoted very little time to his degree.