Buckingham Palace has denied that King Charles spoke harshly about Princess Diana’s memory during arrangements for her funeral, saying “we’ll forget her soon enough”, a claim made by her brother, Earl Spencer, in his memoir.

In a statement on Thursday, the Palace implied that grief could have tainted the Earl’s recollection of the events that followed the August 1997 auto-crash that killed Princess Diana.

Earl Spencer wrote in his memoir that the British monarch said “we’ll forget her soon enough” shortly after her death in September 1997. The Daily Mail published excerpts from the yet-to-be-released memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.

“He (Charles) 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’,” the excerpt said.

But the palace has strongly denied the claim, asserting the pain of grief might have scarred the earl’s memory.

“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 Buckingham Palace statement said Thursday.

The Earl also said Diana, who shielded her children from the public, would not have wanted her sons, who were 15 and 12 at the time, to join the procession walking behind her coffin. They walked from Central London to Westminster Abbey, where her funeral service was held.