Diana_Her True Story_In Her Own Words_25th Anniversary Edition

by Andrew Morton

  I felt terribly in charge of the whole thing. I said to my husband: ‘We’re going home, to take the body home to Sarah; we owe it to Sarah to take the body home. And we’re not going skiing tomorrow.’ Charlie said: ‘It’s not a case of falling off a horse and getting back on the next day to get rid of the nerves; it doesn’t work like that. We must take Hugh back.’ Anyway, there were tremendous arguments about that. So, eventually, we had to use the words ‘selfish’ and ‘Sarah a widow’ and it worked. I got my policeman to get Hugh’s body out of the hospital and [we] took him home.

  Anyway, so we came back from Klosters and everyone said: ‘Poor Charles, poor this, poor that.’ We arrived back at Northolt and we had Hugh’s coffin in the bottom of the aeroplane and Sarah was waiting at Northolt, six months pregnant and it was a ghastly sight, just chilling. We had to watch the coffin come out and I said to Sarah: ‘You’ll never guess what we packed in Hugh’s suitcase – his black curly wig.’ And she laughed at that. And I thought: ‘My God, you don’t know what you’re going to go through in the next few days.’ Then Sarah came to stay with me at Highgrove when I was on my own and she cried from dawn to dusk and my sister came and every time we mentioned the name of Hugh, there were tears, tears, but I thought it was good to mention his name because she had to cleanse herself of it, and her grief went long and hard, because he was killed in a foreign country, she wasn’t out there with him, they’d only been married eight months, she was expecting a baby. The whole thing was ghastly and what a nice person he was. Out of all the people who went it should never have been him.

  I took charge there. I was practically bossy. I woke up to the fact that I can cope with a drama.

  Fergie and I were closer to Hugh than Charles ever was. Hugh just felt sorry for Charles. He was very good with all the members of my husband’s family, he always was a star trouper.

  I took charge there. I was practically bossy. I woke up to the fact that I can cope with a drama. My husband made me feel so inadequate in every possible way that each time I came up for air he pushed me down again and when my bulimia finished two years [ago] I felt so much stronger mentally and physically so was able to soldier on in the world. Even if I ate a lot of dinner Charles would say: ‘Is that going to reappear later? What a waste.’ He talked to my sister about it and said: ‘I’m worried about Di, she’s not sleeping, she’s being sick, can’t you talk to her?’ I suppose he’s worked it out.

  LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY

  I think the bulimia actually woke me up. I suddenly realized what I was going to lose if I let go and was it worth it? Carolyn Bartholomew rang me up one night and said: ‘Do you realize that if you sick up potassium and magnesium you get these hideous depressions?’ I said: ‘No.’ ‘Well, presumably that’s what you suffer from, have you told anyone?’ I said: ‘No.’ ‘You must tell a doctor.’ I said: ‘I can’t.’ She said: ‘You must; I’ll give you one hour to ring up your doctor and if you don’t I’m going to tell the world.’ She was so angry with me, so that’s how I got involved with the shrink called Maurice Lipsedge. He came along, a sweetheart, very nice. He walked in and said: ‘How many times have you tried to do yourself in?’ I thought: ‘I don’t believe this question’, so I heard myself say: ‘Four or five times.’ He asked all these questions and I was able to be completely honest with him and I spent a couple of hours with him and he said: ‘I’m going to come and see you once a week for an hour and we’re just going to talk it through.’ He said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with you; it’s your husband.’ And when he said that, I thought: ‘Maybe it’s not me.’ He helped me get back my self-esteem and he gave me books to read. I kept thinking: ‘This is me, this is me, I’m not the only person.’

  He walked in and said: ‘How many times have you tried to do yourself in?’ I thought: ‘I don’t believe this question’, so I heard myself say: ‘Four or five times.’

  Dr Lipsedge said: ‘In six months’ time you won’t recognize yourself. If you can keep your food down you will change completely.’ I must say it’s like being born again since then, just odd bursts, lots of odd bursts, especially at Balmoral (very bad at Balmoral) and Sandringham and Windsor. Sick the whole time. Last year I was all right, it was once every three weeks whereas it used to be four times a day; and it was a big ‘hooray’ on my part. My skin never suffered from it nor my teeth. When you think of all the acid! I was amazed at my hair.

  From my point of view, I thought because the public saw a smiling picture on the front of the Daily Mail they’d think I was all right. But I guess they did wonder, but nobody voiced it. The dressmakers noticed, but it’s like doctors who say: ‘Oh you’ve lost a bit’, or ‘you’ve put on a bit’ or ‘What’s happened here? You must look after yourself.’ But that was the extent anyone ever went into it.

  I hated myself so much I didn’t think I was good enough, I thought I wasn’t good enough for Charles, I wasn’t a good enough mother – I mean doubts as long as one’s leg.

  I’ve got what my mother’s got. However bloody you’re feeling you can put on the most amazing show of happiness. My mother is an expert at that. I’ve picked it up, kept the wolves from the door, but what I couldn’t cope with in those dark ages was people saying: ‘It’s her fault.’ I got that from everywhere, everywhere, the system, and the media started to say it was my fault – ‘I was the Marilyn Monroe of the 1980s and that I was adoring it.’ I’ve never ever sat down and said: ‘Hooray, how wonderful’, never, because the day I do that we’re in trouble in this set-up. I am performing a duty as the Princess of Wales as my time is allocated. And if I go somewhere else, I go somewhere else. If life changes, it changes, but at least when I finish, as I see it, my 12 to 15 years as Princess of Wales … I don’t see it any longer, funnily enough.

  From day one, I always knew I would never be the next Queen.

  From day one, I always knew I would never be the next Queen. No one said that to me – I just knew it. I got an astrologist in six years ago. Fergie introduced me to Penny Thornton. I said: ‘I’ve got to get out, I can’t bear it any longer’, and she said to me: ‘One day you will be allowed out but you will be allowed out as opposed to divorcing or something like that.’ It always sat in my mind; she told me that in 1984, so I’ve known it for some time.

  I’d be dressed up to go for dinner and he [Charles] would say: ‘Oh, not that dress again’, or something like that, but one of the bravest moments of my entire ten years was when we went to this ghastly party for Camilla’s sister’s 40th birthday. Nobody expected me to turn up but again a voice inside me said: ‘Go for the hell of it.’ So I psyched myself up something awful. I decided I’m not going to kiss Camilla hello any more, I was going to shake hands with her instead. This was my big step. And I was feeling frightfully brave and bold and basically Diana’s going to come away having done her bit. He needled me the whole way down to Ham Common where the party was. ‘Oh, why are you coming tonight?’ – needle, needle, needle, the whole way down. I didn’t bite but I was very, very on edge.

  Anyway, I walk into the house and stick my hand out to Camilla for the first time and think: ‘Phew, I’ve got over that.’ There were about forty of us there and we all sat down and, bearing in mind they were all my husband’s age, I was a total fish out of water but I decided I am going to try my hardest. I was going to make an impact.

  And then after dinner we were all upstairs and I was chatting away and suddenly noticed there was no Camilla and no Charles upstairs. So this disturbed me, so I make my way to go downstairs. I know what I’m going to confront myself with. They tried to stop me from going downstairs. ‘Oh, Diana, don’t go down there.’ ‘I’m just going to find my husband, I would like to see him.’ I had been upstairs about an hour and a half so I was entitled to go down and find him. I go downstairs and there is a very happy little threesome going on downstairs – Camilla, Charles and another man chatting away. So I thought: ‘Right, this is your moment’, and joined in the conversation as if we were all be
st friends and the other man said: ‘I think we ought to go upstairs now.’ So we stood up and I said: ‘Camilla, I’d love to have a word with you if it’s possible’, and she looked really uncomfortable and put her head down, and I said to the men: ‘Okay boys, I’m just going to have a quick word with Camilla’, and ‘I’ll be up in a minute’, and they shot upstairs like chickens with no heads, and I could feel upstairs all hell breaking loose. ‘What’s she going to do?’

  I said: ‘Camilla, I would just like you to know that I know exactly what is going on.’

  I said to Camilla: ‘Would you like to sit down?’ So we sat down and I was utterly terrified of her and I said: ‘Camilla, I would just like you to know that I know exactly what is going on.’ She said: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ And I said: ‘I know what’s going on between you and Charles, and I just want you to know that.’ And she said: ‘Oh, it’s not a cloak-and-dagger situation.’ I said: ‘I think it is.’ I wasn’t as strong as I’d have liked, but at least I got the conversation going. She told me: ‘You never let him see the children when he’s up in Scotland.’ I told her: ‘Camilla, the children are either at Highgrove or in London.’ That’s Charles’s biggest fault: he never sees the children. But I never take them away. The other day, for instance, William said: ‘Papa, will you play with us.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know if I have time.’ Famous quote – always happens. So, he can’t gripe about that.

  Anyway; going back to Camilla. She said to me: ‘You’ve got everything you ever wanted. You’ve got all the men in the world falling in love with you, and you’ve got two beautiful children. What more could you want?’ I didn’t believe her, so I said: ‘I want my husband.’

  Someone came down to relieve us, obviously. ‘For God’s sake, go down there, they’re having a fight.’ It wasn’t a fight – calm, deathly calm, and I said to Camilla: ‘I’m sorry I’m in the way, I obviously am in the way and it must be hell for both of you, but I do know what is going on. Don’t treat me like an idiot.’ So I went upstairs and people began to disperse. In the car on the way back my husband was over me like a bad rash and I cried like I have never cried before – it was anger, it was seven years’ pent-up anger coming out. I cried and cried and cried and I didn’t sleep that night. And the next morning when I woke up I felt a tremendous shift. I’d done something, said what I felt, still the old jealousy and anger swilling around, but it wasn’t so deathly as before, and I said to him at the weekend three days later: ‘Darling, I’m sure you’ll want to know what I said to Camilla. There’s no secret. You may ask her. I just said I loved you – there’s nothing wrong in that.’ He said: ‘I don’t believe it.’ I said: ‘That’s what I said to her. I’ve got nothing to hide, I’m your wife and the mother of your children.’ That always makes him slightly twitch, when I say ‘mother of your children’. He hates being made aware of it.

  That always makes him slightly twitch, when I say ‘mother of your children’. He hates being made aware of it.

  That was it, really. It was a big step for me.

  I was desperate to know what she said to him – no idea of course! He told a lot of people the reason why the marriage was so wobbly was because I was being sick the whole time. They never questioned what it was doing to me.

  [Diana’s sister] Jane’s wonderfully solid. If you ring up with a drama, she says: ‘Golly, gosh, Duch, how awful, how sad’ and gets angry. But she doesn’t do anything about it. Whereas my sister Sarah swears about it behind my back and says: ‘Poor Duch, such a shitty thing to happen.’ But she won’t say it to my face. My father says: ‘Just remember we always love you’, and does nothing. And my mother just writes letters when she feels like it.

  But that summer [1988] when I made so many cock-ups I sat myself down in the autumn, when I was in Scotland, and I remember saying to myself: ‘Right, Diana, it’s no good, you’ve got to change it right round, this publicity; you’ve got to grow up and be responsible. You’ve got to understand that you can’t do what other 26- and 27-year-olds are doing. You’ve been chosen to do a position so you must adapt to the position and stop fighting it.’ I remember my conversation so well, sitting by water. I always sit by water when contemplating.

  Stephen Twigg [a therapist] used to teach me affirmations about myself. But I could never believe them. It’s one thing to say them, it’s another to believe. He said if I wanted to get better I could. He said once: ‘Whatever anybody else thinks of you is none of your business.’ That sat with me. Then once someone said to me, when I said I’ve got to go up to Balmoral: ‘Well, you’ve got to put up with them but they’ve also got to put up with you.’ This myth about me hating Balmoral – I love Scotland but just the atmosphere drains me to nothing. I go up ‘strong Diana’. I come away depleted of everything because they just suck me dry, because I tune in to all their moods and, boy, are there some undercurrents there! Instead of having a holiday, it’s the most stressful time of the year. It’s very close quarters. I love being out all day. I love the stalking.

  I panic a lot when I go up to Balmoral. It’s my worst time, and I think: ‘How the hell am I going to get out of this?’ The first couple of days I’m frightfully chirpy when I get up there and everything’s wonderful. By the third day they’re sapping me again. There are so many negative atmospheres. That house sucks one dry. But I come back down to London to see someone, and I’ll go back the same day. And it will be like an injection, a replenishment coming into my set-up. I say to myself: ‘I am normal, it’s okay to be me, it’s all right, you’re going back to work soon, going to be back in your own home; you go back up there again and try and perform.’ It’s exhausting.

  I’m much happier now. I’m not blissful but much more content than I’ve ever been. I’ve really gone down deep, scraped the bottom a couple of times and come up again, and it’s very nice meeting people now and talking about tai chi and people say: ‘Tai chi – what do you know about tai chi?’ and I say: ‘An energy flow’, and all this and they look at me and they say: ‘She’s the girl who’s supposed to like shopping and clothes the whole time. She’s not supposed to know about spiritual things.’

  At the Aids hospice last week [July 1991] with Mrs Bush was another stepping stone for me. I had always wanted to hug people in hospital beds. This particular man who was so ill started crying when I sat on his bed and he held my hand and I thought: ‘Diana, do it, just do it’, and I gave him an enormous hug and it was just so touching because he clung to me and he cried. It was wonderful! It made him laugh, and I thought: ‘That’s all right.’

  This particular man who was so ill started crying when I sat on his bed and he held my hand and I thought: ‘Diana, do it, just do it’, and I gave him an enormous hug and it was just so touching because he clung to me and he cried.

  On the other side of the room, a very young man, who I can only describe as beautiful, lying in his bed, told me he was going to die about Christmas, and his lover, a man sitting in a chair, much older than him, was crying his eyes out so I put my hand out to him and said: ‘It’s not supposed to be easy, all this. You’ve got a lot of anger in you, haven’t you?’ He said: ‘Yes. Why him not me?’ I said: ‘Isn’t it extraordinary, wherever I go it’s always those like you, sitting in a chair, who have to go through such hell, whereas those who accept they are going to die are calm?’ He said: ‘I didn’t know that happened’, and I said: ‘Well, it does, you’re not the only one. It’s wonderful that you’re actually by his bed. You’ll learn so much from watching your friend.’ He was crying his eyes out and clung on to my hand and I felt so comfortable in there. I just hated being taken away.

  All sorts of people have come into my life – elderly people, spiritual people, acupuncturists, all these people came in after I finished my bulimia.

  When I go into the Palace for a garden party or summit meeting dinner I am a very different person. I conform to what’s expected of me. They can’t find fault with me when I’m in their presence. I do as I’m expect
ed. What they say behind my back is none of my business, but I come back here and I know when I turn my light off at night I did my best.

  NEW AGE VALUES

  She [the late Countess Spencer, Diana’s paternal grandmother] looks after me in the spirit world. I know that for a fact. Used to stay at Park House with us. She was sweet and wonderful and special. Divine really.

  I’ve got a lot to learn. I’ve got 101 books sitting by my bedside, which I’m going to read in the next two weeks. And I’m going to be amused by people’s reaction to their titles. I’m absolutely gripped.

  I’d never discuss it with anyone, they would all think I’m, you know? I used the word ‘psychic’ to my policemen a couple of times and they have freaked out.

  I’ve got a lot of that [déjà vu]. Places I think I’ve been before, people I’ve met.