Diana’s brother Earl Spencer says childhood nanny ‘cracked our heads together’

Earl Spencer, the brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, has revealed their childhood nanny would “crack our heads together” if they misbehaved.

Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme about his upbringing after the release of his memoir, the 59-year-old said the punishment would be a “cracking crunch” that “really hurt”.

Earl Spencer said it emphasised the “disconnect of parents”, but he did not criticise his mother and father, saying it was “normal” to “leave it to the nanny to deal with”.

Speaking about the nanny, he said: “She used to crack our heads together, if we were both found to have done something naughty, obviously without my father’s knowledge, but it really hurt.

“It wasn’t a tap on the wrist, it was a cracking crunch, you know, and I remember it still.

Diana, Princess of Wales with her brother Earl Spencer, pictured in 1968 (PA). PA Media

“I think it emphasises again the disconnect of parents and I’m really, I’m not a critic of my parents, they did their best like 98% of parents do, and I think again, it was just normal, you leave it to the nanny to deal with this.”

Another nanny, he claims, punished his two older sisters by “ladling laxatives down them”.

In an extract from his memoir, Earl Spencer detailed the sexual assaults and beatings he suffered at boarding school Maidwell Hall, leaving him with lifelong “demons”.

He says he was abused by an assistant matron at the school when he was 11, leaving him with such trauma that he self-harmed over the notion she may leave the school.

In a statement, Maidwell Hall said it was “sorry” about the experiences Earl Spencer and some others had at the school.

Earl Spencer’s book, A Very Private School, was published on March 14.