Paul Burrell, the former butler of Princess Diana, has claimed the now-King Charles said he could ‘return to Camilla’ after Prince Harry’s birth (Image: R Wells, J Fraser, P Brooks/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)A friend of Princess Diana has claimed the now-King Charles allegedly said he was returning to Camilla just hours after the birth of Prince Harry.
In a bombshell new book, Princess Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell, claims he was told of the scene when the then-Prince of Wales attended the Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London.
In the tell-all, The Royal Insider, Mr Burrell alleged King Charles spoke five shocking words to Diana following the birth of his second son.
He wrote: “[Diana told me] Charles came into the hospital, looked in the cot and said ‘Oh, red hair.’
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“Diana replied: ‘But, Charles, you know that’s the Spencer gene. We’ve all got red hair’.”
Mr Burrell added: “Then [according to Diana] came the damning blow. He said, ‘Well at least I’ve got my heir and spare now and…. I can return to Camilla,'” the Mirror reported.
He then recounted how he remembered Princess Diana’s shock at the time, claiming that while she wasn’t surprised about her husband’s affections for the then-married Camilla Parker-Bowles, she was apparently stunned that her husband would say such a thing as she lay in the bed having just given birth.
However, there are only two people who really know what who said what inside that room in the private Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, that night – King Charles and the late Princess Diana.
Yet, however King Charles’ recalls events, Mr Burrell said he saw firsthand how scarred Diana was by her memories of that day.
It was years after Harry’s birth in 1984 that the Princess confided in Mr Burrell about it during one of their many conversations about her marriage. Yet, he says it was still visibly raw and emotional for her to recall.
“Diana told me: ‘I cried myself to sleep that night knowing my marriage was over’,” says the butler-turned-author.
“She said: ‘Four years, Paul, I gave him four good years and he was gone. For the rest of the time I had to pretend and put on a facade to the world’.”
Diana was just 23 when she gave birth to Harry. She had married four years earlier and had Prince William, two years after that.
King Charles, meanwhile, was 36 when Harry was born – and, according to Mr Burrell, made it clear the marriage was all but over once he had fulfilled his procreational responsibilities.
Mr Burrell, 67, today reveals he reluctantly shared Diana’s story with with Princes William and Harry, after they allegedly asked for a secret meeting in Kensington Palace in 2017.
The former butler claimed the boys wanted to hear his stories about their mother on what was the 20th anniversary of her fatal car crash in Paris.
But then, he says, they asked him why he thought things had gone wrong between their parents. From what Diana had allegedly told him, it was that moment in the hospital which had changed everything.
“Harry stared straight at me poker faced,” Mr Burrell wrote in his book. “He couldn’t believe what I was telling him. I said to him ‘Harry it’s the truth. I wouldn’t tell you that unless it was exactly what your mother told me’.
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“This happened just before Harry became engaged to Meghan. I think that powered him, and put fuel in his tanks to go forward with everything he felt.
“[And it’s] probably why he called his book Spare.”
Charles and Diana lived largely separate lives from 1986 as the now King continued his romance with his now queen, Camilla – and Diana had her own acquaintances.
He and Diana officially separated in 1992 – which later became known as the late Queen’s Annus Horribilis, following marriage problems for three of her four children and the fire at Windsor Castle.
The Mirror has contacted the Buckingham Palace for comment.