Charles Spencer, Princess Diana’s younger brother, took to social media Saturday to share a rare and intimate photo of the siblings, alongside their mother, taken nearly 60 years ago.
“My mother, Diana and I [circa] 1967,” the 9th Earl Spencer wrote in the caption of the image posted on his Instagram account.
“I would have been 3, and Diana 5 or 6. I love how happy each of us looks,” the 59-year-old author said.
The black-and-white snapshot shows Spencer seated on a swing next to the future Princess of Wales — with the same smile and apparent shy demeanor that would soon captivate the world — while their mother, Frances Shand Kydd, is seen behind them.
“At this stage of my life, my mother nicknamed me ‘Buzz’ — because she saw me as having the endless energy of a rather happy and busy bee,” he added.
Spencer, the maternal uncle of Prince William and Prince Harry, was born in London in 1964 three years after Diana.
After their parents divorced in 1969 — two years after the photo was taken — his father John Spencer was awarded sole custody of all four Spencer children.
“Diana and I had two older sisters who were away at school, so she and I were very much in it together and I did talk to her about it,” Spencer said in a 2020 interview with The Sunday Times about their parents’ split.
“Our father was a quiet and constant source of love, but our mother wasn’t cut out for maternity. Not her fault, she couldn’t do it. She was in love with someone else — infatuated, really,” added the bestselling author, who has been a vocal protector of his sister’s legacy since her tragic death in 1997.
His upcoming memoir, “A Very Private School,” offers “a first-hand account of a culture of cruelty” he faced when attending boarding school as a young boy. It’s due out March 12.
