THREE TIMES A COUNTESS
by Tina Gaudoin
Debutante of the year. Able politician. Femme fatale. Coiffed countess. Raine Spencer, the second wife of Princess Diana’s father Earl John Spencer, was given many labels during her scandalous life. In this biography, those who knew her best set the record straight.
There was no question but that Raine, as Diana’s stepmother, would need to be invited to the wedding and reception. But there was also no reason, as far as Diana was concerned, that Raine should be seated anywhere prominent and certainly nowhere near Johnnie.
Certainly, it was right that Diana’s mother, Frances, should have had top billing, but to seat Raine four rows back in the congregation – not close enough to matter, but not far enough away for the snub to have gone unnoticed – seems to have been unnecessarily unkind.
Diana was not on her own when it came to foot stamping. At one point, Johnnie offered an explicit example of where his daughter might have learned her behaviour. At a meeting at Buckingham Palace to discuss the wedding protocols, he discovered that he would be expected to take his place in a carriage with his
