Charles Spencer's memoir "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister" offers a brotherly tribute to Princess Diana nearly 30 years after her death. The book revisits the surreal task Spencer faced delivering her eulogy to an estimated 2.5 billion viewers at Westminster Abbey, where he chastised the press and royal family. "A girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age," he declared, sparking global applause.

Spencer, now 62, writes with fatalistic urgency after losing both parents before 70. The title references childhood games with black swans and the birds now circling Diana's burial island at Althorp. The memoir shines in nursery recollections at Park House, where the siblings bonded after their parents' 1960s divorce. Spencer reveals Diana as fierce and athletic — diving off slides, killing a conger eel with a penknife, and pushing stepmother Raine down stairs — contrary to "The Crown" portrayal.

He defends their father, John, the eighth Earl of Spencer, as gentle despite "well-appointed neglect" and abusive nannies. Their mother Frances left for Peter Shand Kydd, leaving Diana permanently bereft. Spencer also lacerates former in-laws, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, exiled from royal duties.