Charles Spencer: His Family’s Most Shocking Moments as He Announces Third Divorce

Earl Charles Spencer has been in the news recently for his searingly candid memoir and subsequent divorce announcement.

Princess Diana’s brother, the 9th Earl Spencer, confirmed the sad news of his divorce from his third wife, Karen Gordon, earlier this month.

The 60-year-old first shared the news publicly with the Mail On Sunday, adding: “I just want to focus on all my children and my grandchildren, and I wish Karen all the best in the future .” He also called the news “immensely sad.”

Charles and Karen’s marriage is believed to have broken down in recent years due to the strain of the earl’s memoir, A Very Private School, in which he detailed physical and sexual abuse while at boarding school.

Besides his divorce news, take a look at Charles’ most shocking family moments below…

His “unhappy childhood”

Charles Spencer has previously spoken about his upbringing and how the divorce of his parents, John Spencer and Frances Shand Kydd, had a profound impact on him.

“Diana and I had two older sisters who were at school, so she and I were very involved together and I spoke to her about it,” he told the Sunday Times in 2020. “Our father was a quiet man and constant source of love, but our mother was not made for motherhood, it’s not her fault, she couldn’t do it,” he added.

“As she was packing her things to leave, she promised Diana (then five years old) that she would come back to see her. Diana was waiting at the door, but she never came,” recalls -he.

The father of seven added that he had done “very deep work” on his “unhappy childhood”, which was “distressing and horrible”.

His allegations of abuse at school

Earlier this year, Charles revealed he was sexually assaulted at the age of 11 by a female employee while he was at boarding school. In an extract from his book A Very Private School, Charles claims to have been abused by a school nurse’s assistant when he was a child in the 1970s.

Death of Princess Diana

Diana, Charles’s older sister, was tragically killed in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997. Her death had a profound impact on the royal family and sent shockwaves around the world.

For Charles, the incident was, unsurprisingly, heartbreaking. During a 1999 television interview with American chat show host Larry King, the author spoke about the moment he learned of Diana’s fate.

“I was in Cape Town, South Africa, with my four children, just the five of us at home, and the phone rang very early in the morning,” he recalls. “And someone from back home in England said to me, ‘Look, I’ve got some bad news. It looks like your sister and Dodi Fayed had a car accident in Paris.'”

He continued: “So I went downstairs, I turned on the TV and I was, actually, following CNN and watching the show, and they were pretty adamant at the time that it had been seen s walking away from the car and she was visibly injured, but fine.

Charles added: “And then I called my other sister, my younger sister, who was actually married to someone who worked for the Queen, and I said, ‘Look, what’s going on ?’ And she said, “Well, he’s on the other line right now.” And then she stopped talking, and I’ll always remember hearing my brother-in-law Robert say, “Oh, no.” then my sister Jane said, “I’m afraid that’s it, I’m afraid she’s dead.”

At her funeral, Charles delivered a heartbreaking eulogy in which he paid tribute to his late sister, describing her as “the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty.”

The death of John Spencer

In 1960, Charles’ parents lost their baby, just ten hours after his birth. The deputy. John Spencer was the couple’s third child, after older sisters Lady Sarah McCorquidale and Jane Fellowes.

In 2022, Charles paid a touching tribute to his late brother. Alongside a photo of John’s headstone, he wrote: “I look the way I should now… I never knew my older brother, John, and I live 100 miles away from his grave – but, seeing him last summer, I realized that serious action was needed. Thank you, BB, for making it as it should be.”