Even if Diana’s staff were on her side – which most were – she suspected that ultimately their loyalties, in terms of their pay packets and prospects, lay elsewhere. It was only following her divorce in 1996 that she became her own boss and could be sure of her employees. Until then she ran a shadow secretariat she had built up, a motley group of men to advise, guide and protect. It was haphazard and uncoordinated as well as irritating and deeply frustrating for those already in place. As far as Diana was concerned, though, she had a team (even that word may be too defining) who owed their loyalty and allegiance to her alone. ‘I trust my own instincts,’ she declared. It was a valiant but fatally flawed assertion.
So while she listened courteously to her private secretary, Patrick Jephson, she felt that, like most of the courtiers, he would have been happiest had she remained within the orbit of the Queen and Buckingham Palace, where she could be more easily managed. So she continually pre-empted him, roping in others to do what he felt were his duties. Thus, for instance, she might invite all and sundry – her masseur Stephen Twigg, her voice coach Peter Settelen, the Daily Mail’s royal correspondent Richard Kay (who became friendly with her on the return flight from Nepal) and, later, the TV reporter Martin Bashir, among others – to help write her speeches; or she would discuss her future strategy (in everything from her possible involvement with the Red Cross to the style of her Christmas cards) with the likes of the banker Jacob Rothschild, the television presenter Clive James, the film producer David Puttnam, and her old friend Dr James Colthurst.
For example, a couple of days before Colthurst and the Princess had lunch at Kensington Palace in September 1993, I wrote a five-page discussion paper, headed ‘Short to Medium Term Strategic Planning’, outlining the issues and difficulties Diana faced at the time. The paper mainly dealt with her media image, speeches, public engagements and her search for a country home; one suggestion, as a long-term strategy, was for her to head a Princess of Wales Trust, which would act as an umbrella organization for all her charity interests. Unknown to me, Stephen Twigg, David Puttnam, and doubtless others, had made similar suggestions. Each time the Princess answered in the negative, saying that she did not want to compete with her husband’s charitable trust. The intervention of well-meaning outsiders like myself and others must have been deeply frustrating for her private secretary.
In his memoir Patrick Jephson unintentionally exposed the fault line in their working relationship when commenting about the way Diana embraced fresh thinking: ‘I saw it as a kind of laboratory of ideas in which the Princess could enjoy the freedom to take opinions from anyone she chose. I did not have to intervene . . . but I still retained a degree of control.’ He was missing the point – the Princess was seeking to control the situation.
Again, she consistently undermined her press secretary, the former Australian diplomat Geoff Crawford, whom she felt was an emissary from Buckingham Palace and therefore ultimately owed his loyalty the Queen. She regularly circumvented him by filtering stories to Richard Kay at the Daily Mail, and to several others, including myself. Eventually, Crawford did indeed become the Queen’s press secretary, leaving Diana’s employment after her interview on Panorama in November 1995.
Given the sometimes malign atmosphere at Kensington Palace, it is easy to understand why the Princess was so thrilled when, just a few days after her return from her visit to Nepal in April 1993, she received a letter from her brother, now Earl Spencer, offering her the use of a four-bedroomed house on the Althorp estate as a private country retreat. It would be a safe haven away from prying eyes, unhappy memories and court gossip – for her a godsend. While she could have afforded to buy her own country home, she was concerned that the extra security costs, indeed any suggestion of lavish expenditure, would have invited criticism both inside and outside the Palace. Until there was a financial settlement, any report about Princess’s spending struck a raw nerve. At a rental of £12,000 a year, with a cleaner and gardener thrown in, using the Garden House at Althorp would neatly circumvent those concerns. More importantly, it would have given Diana, still only thirty, the chance to make her own ‘cosy nest’, the first home of her own. She was so excited that she asked Dudley Poplak to join her and the boys on a visit to her prospective country retreat, where they had a picnic lunch and spent a day full of happy anticipation, choosing rooms for the boys, and furnishings and a colour scheme (she had had in mind pale blues and yellows, colours suggesting peace and contentment).
Within days, however, her dreams were dashed. Her brother contacted her again, this time saying that, on reflection, given the inevitable press and police interference, it would be better if his senior land agent took over the property. ‘If you are interested in renting a farmhouse [outside the park] then that would be wonderful,’ he wrote in a letter first quoted in Paul Burrell’s memoir. Diana, though, was heartbroken, more hurt than Earl Spencer could ever have known. She immediately wrote him a letter venting her fury, which he, perhaps sensibly, returned unopened. There then followed, as he described it, a ‘brief and bitter silence’, not helped when in September he asked her to return the Spencer family tiara which she had worn on her wedding day in July 1981.
Emotionally, Diana had invested very heavily, probably too much so, in the country house. It represented so much more than a weekend retreat – independence, safety and security as well as an opportunity just to be herself. Her anger with her brother masked the anger she felt towards herself. As with other significant events in her life – her mother’s departure, her own failed marriage – she blamed herself, distorting a perfectly natural impulse, to have a home to call her own, into a complex psychological drama of guilt and self-loathing. ‘She was desperately upset,’ recalled Stephen Twigg. ‘Once again she felt that she was thrown back on her own resources. In the end she had to sort out her problems on her own.’
‘Why would anyone want all the fuss that goes with me?’ Diana commented sorrowfully, an instinct that informed and affected so many of her dealings with the outside world, particularly her relations with men. She was to repeat this lament more than once.
It was the first of a series of incidents that tested her resolve to the limit. Every time she seemed to be making progress in living her life on her own terms, the Princess was pushed back; it was a cycle of aspiration and frustration that marked the rest of her life.
While she was licking her wounds following the altercation with her brother, she began to see the therapist Susie Orbach at her basement rooms in Belsize Park, North London. But as the Princess strove to resolve her inner conflicts, especially her feelings of guilt and low self-worth, she discovered that the world was not willing to give her the opportunity to do so in peace. More than that, they – or rather their self-appointed representatives, the mass media – wanted her to feel guilty for even trying. It was not long before paparazzi were lurking outside the clinic, harassing Orbach’s neighbours and distressing her other clients. When the Princess emerged from her hour-long sessions they would shout at her to lift her head up so they could get their shots. If she did not, they muttered, ‘Bitch,’ and photographed her anyway. One, who photographed Diana crying as she left Orbach’s home, commented blithely, ‘She is used to a number of photographers shadowing her, so seeing just the four of us was no big deal.’ When she was inside the royal family, the hunting season was reasonably limited. Now that she had left their smothering embrace, she was the daily prey of the paparazzi, a hunt that lasted until her death. ‘She began to see the dark side of human nature,’ said Debbie Frank. ‘She realized that some people were so primitive that she could never have any connection with them.’ The continual pestering Diana faced culminated in her taking out an injunction for harassment against one particular paparazzo, Martin Stenning, who stalked her persistently.
The dirty work undertaken by the photographers was followed up by a steady stream of judgemental features and stories that placed both Diana and her therapist in the media cross hairs, reinf
orcing the media’s presumption of quasi ownership of the Princess by virtue of her position as a public figure. A disdainful headline in the tabloid Daily Mail was typical: ‘She’s left-wing and hates the traditional family. She hasn’t even bothered to visit her own sick uncle. Is Susie Orbach really the best person to advise the Princess?’ The subtext seemed clear – conform to our agenda or face the consequences.
Indeed, the observations made by the feminist author Bea Campbell regarding the photographers who hounded Diana could also serve as a comment on the mass media’s relationship with the Princess: ‘They loved looking at her, they loved chasing her, frightening her and simply staring at her. Their work also revealed a determination to dominate her, by never taking no for answer.’ As far as the media were concerned, any compromise on her part was a variation on the age-old excuse of ‘She asked for it’. That Diana continued to attend her meetings with Susie Orbach, one moment unburdening her innermost secrets, the next braving the shouting paparazzi, was a testament to her strength of purpose and fierce desire to explore the nature of herself and her psyche.
Diana’s new life was proving much more difficult than she had expected – pursuing a ‘normal’ life had a high price tag. While she actually did manage a secret weekend away in Paris with two friends, harassment-free morning workouts at the gym proved too much to expect. After two years using the facilities at Kensington Palace, her trainer, Carolan Brown, suggested in 1992 that they visit her gym, LA Fitness, in Isleworth, West London, for a change of scene. She knew that Diana was sufficiently comfortable with her body shape that she would not be overly concerned about being seen by fellow gym-users. ‘I knew how much she wanted to be a normal person and do normal things,’ said Carolan. ‘It meant so much to her as her life was so controlled and organized.’
The simple suggestion had deplorable consequences. After Diana had made the occasional visit, unknown to both women, the gym owner, a New Zealand businessman called Bryce Taylor, had, with the help of a photographer friend, secretly rigged up a camera in the ceiling of the gym. When the Princess visited he waited until she was using the leg press, which was directly below the camera, and surreptitiously took sneak photographs as she worked out in her leotard.
In May 1993, already distressed by the badgering of the photographers outside Susie Orbach’s home, Diana was alarmed to discover the possibility of this latest intrusion into her life. The story the Princess told Ken Wharfe was sketchy and inconclusive. She had been contacted by an elderly lady-in-waiting, Lady Elizabeth Johnston, whose hairdresser, Shane Glavey, happened to be a friend of Bryce Taylor’s girlfriend, Lesley Scott. He had seen the pictures briefly and was so concerned that he had spoken to Lady Elizabeth who, in turn, contacted Diana. When, in mid-May, Wharfe looked into the matter he was met with a comprehensive denial from the gym manager. It took a further six months for the photographs to surface, published in November in the Sunday Mirror. Amidst the inevitable furore, the most telling result was Diana’s reaction. She was shocked and horrified but also very angry, for a time retreating to her bedroom, which was her sanctuary in times of distress. Even the Queen saw the intrusive photographs of her daughter-in-law. ‘Oh, my God, no,’ was her first reaction as she reviewed the Sunday newspapers over breakfast at Windsor Castle (where the News of the World is always at the top of the pile).
In the days that followed the publication of the photographs, Stephen Twigg said, he found the Princess so tense that her whole body, particularly her neck, was rigid and tight. ‘I feel like I’ve been raped,’ she repeatedly told Carolan Brown, who had already resigned from the gym in protest. This time the tears of self-pity were shortly replaced by a cold fury and a desire to resolve the matter in a mature manner. Diana instructed her lawyer, Lord Mishcon, to take out an injunction against Bryce Taylor and Mirror Group Newspapers and sue them for damages. In the end, however, the Princess settled out of court, receiving an apology, and, by way of damages, a sum paid to a charity of her choice – as well as the negatives and prints of the photographs. The most satisfying outcome was not lost on those who understood her – for one of the first times in her life she had not blamed herself for the unacceptable behaviour of others. Instead, her feelings of violation and outrage, so long denied or denigrated, were given legal legitimacy and weight.
This was a watershed moment for Diana, a sign of how far she had travelled on the road to recovery. As Stephen Twigg observed, ‘If this had happened to her five years before, it could have driven her to suicide or at the very least plunged her into an immensely deep depression. At that time her self-esteem was so low that she would have blamed herself for the pictures being taken just as she blamed herself for problems in her marriage. By now she had the strength and [sense of] self-worth to say that this behaviour was no longer acceptable.’
It was, though, a pyrrhic victory. A year that had started with resolution ended with a necessary retreat, Diana having decided that she needed more time and space to explore and examine her life. The harassment, as she saw it, from the media, coming on top of the ongoing war with her husband, had worn her down. Each time she tried to come to terms with her past and plan her future, there were many people, friends as well as foes, eager to stifle her. There was a constant whispering campaign against her issuing from St James’s Palace, while the counsel of friends often left the Princess more confused and unsettled than ever. On one occasion, for example, the Duchess of York rang to tell her that her psychics had forecast that Diana would be in tears for at least two weeks. It was time to leave the stage, at least for a while; a decision that caused consternation among her charities, her staff and her public.
She refused to be swayed, deciding to make her dramatic withdrawal in a speech at a charity lunch on 3 December 1993 in aid of Headway National Head Injuries Association (now known as Headway – the Brain Injury Association), of which she was patron. The first drafts of what came to be called her ‘Time and Space’ speech, written by her voice coach, Peter Settelen, reflected her sense of resentment and anger towards those who had made her life a misery, notably the media and her husband. She planned to say, ‘It would not be unreasonable to assume that the recent plague of photographs has propelled me more rapidly into my decision . . . but the continuing invasion by some members of the media into every aspect of my life has become unbearable.’
‘This,’ Patrick Jephson was later to write of the speech, ‘rather than a statesmanlike offer of reconciliation, irresistibly appealed to the martyr, the emotionally deprived child and the showgirl within her.’ His patrician cynicism served to underscore what she instinctively felt – that the true sympathies of her supposed allies often lay elsewhere.
Even so, when she showed a draft to Stephen Twigg, following a massage at Kensington Palace, he was concerned, as indeed was Jephson, that it would not give her any room for manoeuvre. He sat on the edge of her double bed and pencilled in changes, some of which were incorporated into the final, more conciliatory, version, which none the less laid the blame for her departure at the door of the media. While she publicly thanked the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh for their kindness and support, her husband’s name was conspicuously omitted.
CHAPTER FOUR
Unfinished Business
THE HANDWRITTEN NOTE slipped under the door of a suite at the Ritz Hotel in Paris was friendly, warm and totally unexpected. As Countess Spencer looked at the distinctive, rounded hand, she could barely contain her astonishment. The letter was from her stepdaughter, the Princess of Wales, whom she had not seen or heard from since the funeral of Diana’s father, her beloved husband Johnnie, Earl Spencer, in March 1992. Now, in May 1993, more than a year later, came an invitation to renew their relationship. ‘Sorry we couldn’t meet up in Paris. Perhaps we could have lunch when you return to London,’ wrote Diana, still exultant after managing to achieve one of her long-cherished ambitions – to spend a weekend in Paris as a ‘normal’ person. It had been a huge success – shopping, eating and sightseei
ng along the boulevards of France’s capital city with her friends Lucia Flecha de Lima and Hayat Palumbo, wife of the billionaire property tycoon Lord Palumbo. A chance meeting in a restaurant with the film star Gérard Depardieu was the icing on the cake. For a few fleeting hours all seemed right with the world at a time when Diana was determined to put her own world to rights.
As Raine Spencer read the letter, she had no clue what lay behind Diana’s decision to resume contact with her. While it was clear that Diana wanted a rapprochement, her stepmother was not at all certain she wanted to reawaken painful memories. ‘I was frankly uneasy to go back to the past,’ she admitted. ‘I can’t say why she suddenly wrote. I don’t know.’
One of life’s great survivors, Countess Spencer, now seventy-four, is from a generation and class where personal traumas and tragedies are not for public consumption, preferring always to look forward rather than harking back. She is fond of quoting the words of the nineteenth-century American writer Ella Wheeler Wilcox: ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.’
Not long after she received Diana’s note, Raine Spencer was to get engaged to the French aristocrat who would become her third husband, Jean-François, Comte de Chambrun. ‘After John died I got on with my life,’ she said. ‘I don’t think about the past; it’s horrid enough being a widow. I live totally in the present and the future. I don’t need people from a past life – what’s finished is finished.’
So while it was unthinkable to decline an invitation from the Princess, she was, to say the least, apprehensive. For the bad blood that existed between the Spencer family and the woman they called ‘Acid Raine’ had continued even after Earl Spencer’s death. Diana’s brother Charles, who took over the title and the running of the family estate of Althorp in Northamptonshire, publicly accused his stepmother of the indiscriminate sale of family heirlooms as well as tasteless redecoration of the main house. Indeed, such was the rancour that existed between Raine Spencer and her stepchildren that, following their father’s death, Diana and her brother had unceremoniously bundled up her belongings in bin liners and thrown them out of the back door at Althorp. A weaker woman would have been mortally offended. But Raine was made of sterner stuff, resolutely closing that chapter in her life and moving on. While she maintained a dignified silence, her brother, the publisher Ian McCorquodale, sprang to her defence. ‘She is unfairly typecast as the wicked stepmother,’ he had said to the Evening Standard in July 1992. ‘The stepmother always gets the stick.’
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