The Floridant - Was Princess Diana Dyslexic? American Dyslexia Association Separates the Record From the Headline

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After Charles Spencer told PEOPLE he believes his sister had dyslexia, the nonprofit looks at what the historical record shows, what it does not, and what parents can take from the story.

SARASOTA, Fla. - Floridant -- One day before his memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister went on sale, Charles Spencer told PEOPLE: "I think Diana suffered from dyslexia. She found spelling and word orders and letter orders quite tricky." Within hours the question was in newsrooms on four continents. The American Dyslexia Association has published a review of what the record actually shows.

No record shows that Princess Diana was ever assessed for dyslexia, and no source published before 2026 uses the word about her. What has been on the record for decades is a pattern in her own voice. On tapes recorded in 1992 and 1993 she said her family called her "the thick one," and she sat all her O-level examinations twice at West Heath School without passing them, while standing out in swimming, dance and helpfulness. Strong in some areas, stuck in others, written off as slow: that shape is familiar to every dyslexia trainer.

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Other details point the other way and rarely make the coverage. As a teenager Diana read Barbara Cartland's romance novels heavily, and after her 1981 wedding she answered many of the 47,000 letters of congratulation by hand. Neither fact rules dyslexia out, but a real assessment weighs both.

"Dyslexia shows itself in how a person reads and writes, and the only way to see that is to sit down with them and watch them do it," the association writes. "A family account is testimony, and testimony is not an assessment."

The story still matters. Dyslexia has a genetic component and runs in families, and a sibling saying "this is what I have, and I think she had it too" is one of the most common ways families discover it. Spencer himself reached his sixties before his own attention difficulties were identified. Adults recognize themselves late every week, often when a child's assessment report lands on the kitchen table.

For parents who see their own child in the headline, the association recommends a proper educational assessment and targeted training rather than a label. The AFS-Method works in a fixed order: attention first, then the sensory perceptions involved in reading and writing, then the symptoms themselves.

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The full article, with sources, is on the association's blog at dyslexia.me (https://www.dyslexia.me/was-princess-diana-dyslexic/).

The American Dyslexia Association Inc. is a nonprofit based in Osprey, Florida. It supports children, families, educators and adults affected by dyslexia and dyscalculia with free information, worksheets and the AFS-Method. More at american-dyslexia-association.org (https://www.american-dyslexia-association.org/).