Diana

by Andrew Morton

  Then, still with Joseph’s blood on his medical boots, Khan left the room, leaving one heart beating much faster. Diana was smitten. ‘He’s drop-dead gorgeous,’ were her first words. ‘I would say it was love at first sight,’ Oonagh said. ‘She was so overwhelmed it can only have been a soul encounter.’

  It seemed that Diana, seeing herself as an outsider and a healer, devoting her life to helping and comforting others, had found in Khan a reflection of her own ideals and beliefs. Here was a man, from an ethnic minority – he was born in Pakistan – who dedicated his skills to saving lives. ‘It was the first time in her life that she actually admired the man she was involved with for the work that he did,’ Debbie Frank pointed out. ‘He cared so much for other people – and that resonated very deeply with her.’

  It was a relationship that began in disguise – the Princess visiting Joseph Toffolo more often than necessary in order to see Khan – and continued in great secrecy. Diana would combine her visits to patients at the hospital in the autumn of 1995 with assignations with the new man in her life. She visited the hospital casually dressed in jeans and a baseball cap, and sat with critically ill patients, some of whom were just coming round from surgery. Eventually the Princess’s cover was blown, when she was photographed one night in November 1995 by paparazzi who were acting on a tip-off. To pre-empt the inevitable press stories, Diana took matters into her own hands, borrowing a mobile phone from one of the photographers. ‘There are hundreds of patients who are there without their own loved ones and they need a human presence. I really love helping, I seem to draw strength from them,’ she told an astonished Clive Goodman, at that time the News of the World’s royal correspondent, after the photographers who snatched her picture had identified themselves as working for that particular Sunday newspaper.

  With this clever move, which made a virtue of her visits to the hospital while disguising her ulterior motive, Diana managed to put the media off the scent – at least for a while – and for the most part her two-year affair with Hasnat Khan was conducted in conditions of complete concealment, to the extent that Diana took to wearing some form of disguise whenever they ventured out together.

  She would use a staff car and take circuitous routes to meet her new lover, often disguised in a wig designed by her hairdresser, Sam McKnight; sometimes she would wear sunglasses or glasses with plain lenses. The woman who had been entertained in the White House and the Palace of Versailles now dined with her boyfriend in an anonymous fish-and-chip shop near his flat in Chelsea or, more frequently, at Kensington Palace. In the autumn of 1995, with the fallout from her relationship with England rugby captain Will Carling still reverberating, secrecy was essential not only to protect their privacy but also so that their friendship would not affect her delicate marital status. On one occasion, Diana climbed out of a ground-floor window when she was visiting Khan at Harefield Hospital, to the west of London, to avoid being seen. When he secretly visited her at Kensington Palace, Diana’s butler was entrusted with the task of smuggling him into her apartment.

  As with her other relationships, Diana threw herself into his life and interests. Certainly, as with her other romances, she made a particular point of being friendly with his family. Within the first few months of their romance she and Hasnat Khan had had dinner with his uncle Omar and his British wife Jane at their home in Stratford-upon-Avon. When she visited Pakistan, she made a point of going to see his parents.

  Just as she had followed the activities and interests of James Hewitt, Oliver Hoare and Will Carling, the Princess now turned her attention to human anatomy, in particular the heart, so that she would more clearly understand Khan’s work. For a woman who religiously watched the hospital soap Casualty every Saturday night and spent her life visiting hospital patients, her study of Gray’s Anatomy was no real hardship – she passed an impromptu ‘exam’ conducted by a friend after just a few days’ study. The workings of her own heart were rather more complex and contradictory.

  At Kensington Palace the sound of choral music was replaced by the husky voices of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong as Diana got to grips with Khan’s love of jazz, even accompanying him, in disguise, to Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in Soho, where she had the vicarious thrill of standing in line without being recognized. While she had already taken an interest in Eastern culture and religion, works on the Koran joined the small mountain of books in what she called her ‘knowledge corner’ in her sitting room, while her wardrobe was augmented by more than half a dozen bright silk shalwar kameez, the tunic and trouser ensembles worn by Muslim women. While he was serious about his own caring mission, Hasnat Khan was in many respects an incongruous suitor, being overweight, a heavy smoker and a beer drinker, with only a surgeon’s salary to sustain him. For a woman who had passed muster as the bride of the future king because she was white, aristocratic and Protestant, the fact that she was seriously dating a Muslim whose family lived in Pakistan was a further sign of how far this young woman, who saw herself as a rebel, had travelled on her personal journey. ‘It was a sign of her devotion,’ noted Debbie Frank. ‘The lenience of a woman in love.’

  Diana’s love affairs in the past had been about testing her own boundaries, enjoying the thrill and pain of romance without making the ultimate commitment; now she talked about crossing religious and racial borders by making a life with her Pakistani lover. The marriage of her friend Jemima Goldsmith, the beautiful daughter of Sir James and Lady Annabel Goldsmith, to the former Pakistani cricket captain and aspiring politician, Imran Khan, gave Diana a romantic signpost and the hope that one day she could follow a similar path. What particularly impressed Imran Khan about Diana was that she appeared quite unaffected by religion, nationality or colour: ‘She seemed to be above all that. It was this combination of ingredients that made her such a great figure.’

  Thus, by the autumn of 1995 her life, if not perfect, had its share of excitements and a sense of opportunity and chance of fulfilment that had eluded her for much of her adult life. For so long confused, isolated and directionless, Diana’s life was beginning to make sense. Such was her popularity that she was edging towards her ambition of being made a roving ambassador, whatever the Palace or politicians may have wanted. Over and over again she had proved that her credentials were impeccable, however many obstacles were placed in her way. More than that, she was earning a grudging respect even among her enemies – a recognition that she had the courage, chutzpah and charisma to take on a significant and substantial role in national affairs. While she strode on towards the sunlit uplands, her husband was lost in the mists, seen as self-indulgent, introspective and lacking in judgement. Not only was she exploring and testing her personal limits, whether spiritual or political, but, by the autumn of 1995, she believed that she had found the true love of her life.

  Within a few short months her reputation would be savaged and her position as royal Princess become perilous. The Queen’s patience with her errant daughter-in-law would be exhausted, prompting her to write formally to Diana advocating divorce. At the same time, any remaining sympathy felt by courtiers was to evaporate, while government ministers would shake their heads in dismay at what was seen as a wilful act of self-destruction. What provoked this hostile response was her hour-long interview on the BBC’s current-affairs programme, Panorama, in November 1995. The show, watched by half the British population, was both her soap box and her snare, the Princess left swinging in the wind by an unforgiving royal family, infuriated by her airing of yet more dirty linen in public, and an indignant Establishment who felt she had betrayed their faith in her.

  Both her supporters and her critics scratched their heads in bewilderment. For the last year the Princess had conquered all before her, her standing with the public and the powers-that-be never higher. She was focused and in charge. Her timing could not have been worse. So why did she put the noose round her neck?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘They Want To Kill Me’

  DIANA’S
APARTMENT at Kensington Palace, with cream church candles burning in the windows and the smell of incense wafting through the sitting room, seduced her guests with its monastic calm. It was a quiet disturbed only by the sound of choral music or the soaring film scores of Vangelis, the composer of the Chariots of Fire theme music, played at high volume – sometimes to the annoyance of her neighbours. ‘The music police are after you,’ her immediate neighbour Dave Griffin would call out to Diana if he spotted her at her first-floor window. ‘You’ve been murdering a tune for the last half-hour.’

  On the surface, it seemed that at last life inside the combined apartments 8 and 9 was in harmony, enjoying a rhythm and routine that was much more peaceful than the discord of the Princess’s married life. But behind that smoothly orchestrated royal existence lay a world of conspiracy and treachery. For much of her adult life, Diana lived in an environment of unease and apprehension, distrust and suspicion virtually incomprehensible to outsiders. At her door, no fantasy, no plot, no conspiracy, however absurd, was ever turned away and rarely a day went by without some alarm or plot to trouble her.

  Diana was continually being buffeted by events, either real or imagined. A typical day might start with an urgent phone call from the Duchess of York passing on a doom-laden warning from one of her ‘spooks’ – the battery of mystics and soothsayers she consulted; or perhaps a rumour about an impending hostile story in the newspapers would make its way to the Princess’s ears. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the Princess would begin her day on edge, anxious and apprehensive about what the hours to follow might have in store for her.

  Then, if Prince Charles’s private secretary Richard Aylard were to call unexpectedly to arrange a meeting she would be thrown into a state of agitation, wondering and worrying about a possible ambush ‘the enemy’ might be preparing for her, fearing it would be some proposal regarding the vexed subject of divorce. In the end it would, more often than not, concern some mundane administrative matter. This state of constant agitation was reinforced by her personality. Vulnerable, impressionable and unworldly, the Princess, who, as her astrologer Penny Thornton observed, loved intrigue and the excitement of cloak-and-dagger, was naturally predisposed to credulity. For Diana, her life was a melodrama in which she was a problem; first to her parents for being born a girl; then to her husband for getting in the way of his surrogate marriage; and later as an outsider challenging the Establishment. While her personality encouraged her sense of victimhood and her feeling that she was a martyr to dark forces ranged against her, this tendency in her was exploited by those who called themselves friends. For it was not only the ‘men in grey suits’ inside the Palace, or Prince Charles’s circle of friends, who were working against her. They at least were easy to identify. But, the Princess eventually realized, even her closest friends, staff and advisers wanted her to remain weak and dependent so that they could be strong for her. In her uncertainty and insecurity lay their power.

  She knew too that behind the ever-obliging veneer of life at Kensington Palace, every fragment of her existence was picked over, discussed or salvaged. In the early 1990s she bought herself a shredder because she suspected that the cleaning staff were picking through her discarded mail; she also had strong suspicions that members of staff were showing their friends and acquaintances around her apartment – for a fee. (These misgivings were well-founded – it later emerged in a Sunday newspaper that at least one member of staff was conducting private tours. ‘For £200 you could get a guided trip around Diana’s bedroom,’ another member of staff told the News of the World in December 2002.) She also had concerns about Prince Charles’s court, fearing that those close to the Prince were using him for their own ends.

  Indeed, when the Duchess of York first joined the royal family the Princess suspected that her friend had been rummaging through her mail and then reporting her findings back to the Prince of Wales in order to curry favour. Diana passed on these concerns to her astrologer, Penny Thornton, who commented, ‘Diana told me that Sarah had been doing things behind her back.’ What is not in doubt is that the Princess trusted no one inside the royal world, for years keeping the famous letters from Prince Philip in a safe at the Brazilian Embassy. ‘All sorts of people could come and go in her apartment,’ as Lucia Flecha de Lima explained.

  It is easy to understand Diana’s caution. When she entered Buckingham Palace as a teenager she discovered that nothing in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the royal family was as it seemed. From the early 1980s until Prince Charles publicly confessed his adultery in 1994, she had been at the centre of a web of deceit, organized and coordinated to cover up the Prince’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. As outlined in earlier chapters, everyone – bodyguards, butlers, courtiers, members of the royal family and friends, Diana’s own grandmother, Lady Fermoy – was either actively or passively involved. Any questions she asked about her husband’s relationship were dismissed as the ravings of a woman suffering from jealousy, depression or worse. ‘Diana’s unstable and Diana’s mentally unbalanced,’ she said of people’s attitudes towards her within the Establishment. ‘And unfortunately that seems to have stuck on and off over the years.’

  What truly rankled with and upset Diana was that, while Prince Charles was protected by a discreet network of friends and safe houses to conduct his liaison in the time-honoured royal fashion, her own attempts to find happiness were doomed to exposure, embarrassment and heartbreak. During the 1980s not only was there a concerted plot to shield Prince Charles – but, or so it appeared to Diana, there existed a conspiracy to shackle her and condemn those who came too close to her.

  She saw this the first time she enjoyed some kind of a relationship once it seemed to her that her marriage had broken down, shortly after the birth of Prince Harry in September 1984. Her instincts told her that Charles had, in her words, ‘gone back to his lady’, and not long after that she became close to Sergeant Barry Mannakee, who had joined her protection team in the late spring of 1985. He was a charming man with a roguish manner and jaunty sense of humour, and Diana immediately warmed to him, at first enjoying his joshing compliments about her appearance and later confiding in him. The father of two became a shoulder to cry on and a dispenser of worldly advice. She even consulted her astrologer Penny Thornton and asked her about his star sign – he was a Gemini – and whether it was compatible with her Cancerian sign. ‘He really made her zing,’ Penny recalled. Diana herself told James Colthurst: ‘He meant an awful lot to me. He was my father figure, everything. He just looked after me.’ Years later she went further, apparently confiding to the writer Anthony Holden that he was ‘the love of my life’. There was a degree of romantic hyperbole about her statement; throughout her adult life she was rarely without a man who was ‘the one’ for her. At the time though their closeness did not go unnoticed by senior officers, and after barely a year, in July 1986, Mannakee was transferred to other duties, much to Diana’s dismay. ‘I was wearing my heart on my sleeve and everyone was talking about us and giving him a very hard time,’ Diana said to Colthurst.

  In a way the transfer came as something of a relief for Sergeant Mannakee who found her intense neediness difficult to handle. As a friend of his told me, ‘He was a frightened man, not for his life but his job. He was only a temporary inspector and he was concerned that the “affair” would have implications for his job.’

  Tragically, Mannakee died in a motorbike accident in May 1987, less than a year after being transferred. When Diana heard the news – while she and Prince Charles were travelling to the Cannes Film Festival – she was distraught. The Princess had been so fond of him that on the anniversary of his death she made a point of visiting the crematorium in Redbridge, where his ashes are scattered, hiding her face in a headscarf to avoid being recognized. Later, she used a clairvoyant to try to contact Mannakee in the spirit world. For a long time she believed that he had been assassinated by the secret services because of his proximity to her. Indeed, when I started work on Di
ana’s biography in 1991, an early request from her was to find out more about the true cause of his death. As luck would have it, an acquaintance of mine, then a newspaper crime correspondent, had been on his way home to Loughton, Essex, and arrived at the scene of the accident moments after it had occurred. He was able to confirm that it was nothing more sinister than a tragic accident involving a novice car driver and a motorcycle, on which Mannakee had been the passenger.

  Diana, though, was never truly convinced, for she breathed the air of a world suffused with plots, rumour and hearsay, a bewildering reality where, as nothing was as it seemed, then anything could be believed.

  Following the occasion in late 1991 when my office was broken into, Diana, James Colthurst and I bought scrambler telephones – which, to be honest, rarely worked effectively – while the Princess brought in a surveillance company, recommended by Colthurst, to check her sitting room for bugging devices. This was the first of many occasions where she had the apartment at Kensington Palace ‘swept’ for listening devices, while she herself several times pulled back the carpet in her search for evidence. While nothing was ever found, the possible presence of surveillance equipment became a standing joke, the Princess peppering her conversation with light-hearted references to MI5 and MI6. On the telephone, whenever she heard any clicking on the line she would say, ‘Hello, boys . . . time to change the tape.’

  The Princess had been proved right about her husband’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, and the conspiracy to hide it from her, so perhaps she was correct in thinking that her telephones were or had been tapped. When, in June 1992, Prince Philip confronted her at Windsor Castle and told her, in the presence of the Queen and the Prince, that they had a tape recording of her telephone conversation with an unnamed man discussing the serialization of Diana: Her True Story, the logical conclusion was that her telephones were indeed routinely monitored and the contents of her conversations held on file.