Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer reveals he paid a sex worker £15 to lose his virginity while on a family trip to Italy at the age of 12

Princess Diana's brother Earl Charles Spencer has revealed that he paid a sex worker £15 to lose his virginity while on a family trip to Italy aged 12.

The 59-year-old makes the admission in a tell-all memoir about his childhood called 'A Very Private School', which will be released on March 14 in the UK.

He will also open up about being sexually abused as an 11-year-old boy by a young female assistant matron at Maidwell Hall boys prep school, Northampton, during the 1970s.

In a US version of the book, which The Sun has obtained, Earl Spencer writes: 'This woman's control over mesmerised boys was total, for we were starved of feminine warmth and desperate for her affection.'

Describing her as a 'master of emotional manipulation', he adds: 'The effect of what she did to me was profound and immediate, awaking in me basic desires that had no place in one so young.'

Princess Diana 's brother Earl Spencer (pictured) has revealed that he paid a sex worker £15 to lose his virginity while on a family trip to Italy aged 12

Princess Diana with her brother Earl Spencer in Windsor when the siblings were younger

The 59-year-old makes the admission in an memoir about his childhood called 'A Very Private School', which will be released on March 14 in the UK

Charles grew up with his older sister Diana, who said she had always looked after him when they were young

Earl Spencer also claims the abuse would often include French kissing and touching, while he said other boys were also victims.

But it was on a holiday to Italy with his mother and step-father that he used his pocket money to pay a sex worker £15 to help him lose his virginity.

Earl Spencer, who found the sex worker standing on a street corner, says he felt 'hollow and cold' afterwards and was left unable to sleep with another woman until he turned 17.

Diana's brother described his time at school as a period of 'casual cruelty, sexual assault and other perversions'. 

And he revealed that his nanny would bang his and Diana's heads together if they were naughty as she thought it 'introduced fear and hurt into our pampered lives'.

Earl Spencer is the younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, and therefore the uncle of Prince William and Prince Harry. 

It has been 27 years since Princess Diana died at the age of 36, when the car she was travelling in crashed in a Paris tunnel on August 31, 1997. 

As the heir to the Earl Spencer title, Princess Diana's younger brother spent his childhood on the sprawling family estate he would one day inherit.

Charles is pictured with his father, the 8th Earl Spencer, in the wine cellars of the estate

Charles attended Eton College, during which time his sister Diana married Prince Charles when she was 20 years old (Charles pictured at Eton)

He then studied modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford but admitted he had committed very little time to his degree (pictured on the first day of his Oxford finals)

Charles is pictured meeting the late Queen and the Queen mother during the Eton Boys' Tea Party in 1978

But life at Althorp was not as blissful as it sounds. Diana said she would always see her mother crying while her brother described the house as a 'nightmarish place'.

Charles inherited his father's title when he was just 27 years old, but rather than aristocratic comfort, his adult life brought similar tumult including two failed marriages, a broken-off engagement, and the tragic death of his older sister.

Leaving for boarding school aged eight, Charles had six months of sleepless nights before heading to Maidwell Hall.

Along with the latest allegations about his time at Maidwell Hall, he previously tod TES magazine: 'I said I wanted to go to a state school because it must be preferable to 13-week blocks away in a rather cold and unpleasant place.'

Rather than going to state school, he headed to Eton College, during which time Diana married Prince Charles when she was 20 years old.

After school, he gained a place at Magdalen College, Oxford, to study modern history but admitted he committed very little time to his degree.

'I actually feel quite a lot of guilt about Oxford,' he told The Times.

'I really was the conventional Old Etonian: quite efficient at exams, got in, and then did very little work at all. And then right at the end I had to do a lot to make sure I did OK.'

While studying at the university he was invited to join the infamous Bullingdon Club alongside former prime ministers David Cameron and Boris Johnson, a friend from school with whom the earl is still close, but declined the offer.

His old roommate Andrew MacDonald told Maclean's that, thanks to a sense of 'social validity' and 'deep self-confidence', Charles 'didn't want to associate with those people'.

He went on to work as a journalist and broadcaster, spending ten years with American TV Network NBC News as an on-air correspondent and writing scripts for his pieces on the Today show.

Charles was pictured with Diana, Prince Charles and his sisters Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes for his 21st birthday

Earl Spencer and his older sister Diana have spoken out about their unhappy childhood

Earl Spencer was pictured addressing journalists outside his home in Cape Town after Diana's death

He walked behind the carriage carrying Diana's casket alongside Prince Philip, Prince William, Prince Harry and Prince Charles

Charles Spencer married his third wife, Karen Gordon, in 2011 (pictured together in 2017)

He has reviewed books for the Mail on Sunday and the Financial Times and has written his own history books, including Althorp: The Story of an English House.

Despite not joining the club himself, he befriended Bullingdon member and fellow Eton alumnus Darius Guppy, who was arrested in 1993 for orchestrating a faked jewellery heist while he was working as a gem dealer, leading to Lloyd's of London paying out £1.8million.

The fraudster had been best man at Earl Spencer's wedding to Victoria Lockwood in 1989 but their friendship derailed when Darius accused Charles of seducing his wife Patricia while he was in prison.

The disagreement culminated in a bust-up on the manicured lawns of Darius' mansion, leaving Charles with two black eyes, a broken cheekbone and concussion.

'I miss all the friends I no longer see, but there are things that friends just don't do,' Darius told The Telegraph.

'He crossed the line. But whatever has passed between us, the secrets that were shared by all of my friends will go with me to the grave.'