by Kitty Kelley
At every outing she was trailed by the press. She performed flawlessly in public, but each performance sapped her energy, leaving her emotionally exhausted. At home she flew off the handle. “It was tears and tantrums behind closed doors,” recalled a Palace aide. Charles did not know how to cope with his wife’s erratic emotions. He called his mistress for advice, and he played more polo. “I’ve got to get out,” he’d tell his bodyguard. “Too many hormones.”
The more elusive Charles was, the more upset Diana became. She accused him of sneaking away to visit Camilla, and he became so exasperated by her jealousy that he stalked out, which only infuriated her more. Angry over his absences, curious about his whereabouts, and frustrated by the prying lenses of photographers, Diana complained bitterly to the Queen, who was unnerved by her daughter-in-law’s hysterics. Blaming the press, the Queen summoned Fleet Street editors to tell them to leave the Princess alone. The royal press secretary, Michael Shea, met with them first.
“We expected that, following the honeymoon, press attention would wane somewhat,” he told them. “But it has in no way abated. The Princess of Wales feels totally beleaguered. The people who love her and care for her are getting anxious at the reaction it is having.”
The Queen entered the room to underscore the message. She said it was unfair of photographers to hide in the bushes with telephoto lenses to track the Princess without her knowledge. The Queen cited the picture published the day before of Diana with her arms around her husband’s neck, smiling affectionately at him as they stood outside Highgrove, their house in Gloucestershire. Royally chided, the editors agreed to back off. In an editorial headlined “The Captive Princess,” the Times declared, “It would be nice to think we are grown up enough not to imprison a princess in a palace.” The truce lasted six weeks. Then Diana threatened to kill herself.
Shortly after the Christmas holidays at Sandringham, she warned Charles that if he left her alone again to go riding, she would commit suicide. As he stormed out, she threw herself down a short flight of stairs. The eighty-one-year-old Queen Mother heard the commotion and found the Princess in a heap, sobbing. Diana was led to her room by a footman, and her doctor was summoned. After his examination, he said she was fine, except for slight bruising around her abdomen; the fetus was unhurt. Hours later the footman sold the information about the Princess’s fall to the Sun, proving that nothing weighs as heavy as a royal secret worth money. The tabloid ran the story on the next day’s front page but did not say it was an apparent suicide attempt.
“The Princess just hated going to Sandringham for Christmas,” said her hairdresser Richard Dalton. “She told me it was freezing cold and dinner had to be over by three o’clock: ‘It’s three and time to watch me on TV,’ she’d say, imitating you-know-who. The royal family had to watch the Queen’s Christmas message on television. Diana said it was a command performance.”
The Queen Mother talked to her nephew John Bowes-Lyon about Diana’s behavior, which seemed to be exacerbated by a physical malady. “She had fits which would last just a few minutes, during which she would go crazy and become uncontrollable,” said Bowes-Lyon.* “And then it was all over as quickly as it began.”
“At first, doctors thought her outbursts might have been epilepsy, but that was discounted because she didn’t swallow her tongue or have other epileptic symptoms. Apparently what she suffers from can be hereditary, and there have been other instances in the Fermoy family, so the royal family have been told.”
Over the next three years Diana would try several more times to take her life. Each was a desperate attempt at self-mutilation. “I tried four or five times,” she told Dr. Maurice Lipsedge, a specialist in eating disorders at Guy’s Hospital in London. She told him of the various attempts: she slashed her arms with a lemon slicer; she cut her wrist; she ran a knife down the veins of one leg; and she threw herself into a glass cabinet.
“When no one listens to you, or you feel no one’s listening to you, all sorts of things start to happen,” she said. “These attempts were my cries for help.”
When the Queen saw the first signs of dissension between the couple, she proposed Charles and Diana take a trip. “In that type of situation, Her Majesty always recommends escape,” said one of her friends. “Her solution is to get away together, sort things out, and everything will be fine. It’s always worked for her. Why shouldn’t it work for them?”
A few days later the Prince and Princess left for the island of Windemere in the Bahamas. “What Diana needs is a holiday in the sunshine,” said Charles, “to prepare for the birth.” Again the couple were followed by the long lenses of freelance photographers, who captured the Princess, five months pregnant, skipping through the surf in an orange bikini. Once again Diana was on the front pages of the tabloids, and the Queen was incensed. “This is one of the blackest days in British journalism,” she said through her press secretary. The Sun later printed an apology and published the photographs a second time, just in case its five million readers wondered why the publication was saying it was sorry.
Her Majesty had been burned again by the Sun and the man who had come to dominate Britain’s media through buying the Sun, the Sunday Times, the Times of London, and Sky TV. Rupert Murdoch was now teaching the Queen that her stingy wages were no match for his checkbook journalism. Every tidbit of royal gossip from inside the Palace was for sale, and he spent freely for sensational revelations. An Australian, unrestrained by deference to the Crown, Murdoch was no monarchist. So his irreverent publications zoomed in on the royal family and printed unprettified stories and candid photos. Without the protective blanket of reverence, the royals flapped and squawked like geese in a gunsight. The Queen lectured editors, demanded (and obtained) injunctions, and, finally, went to court to stop her servants from selling secrets. She called for press sanctions and sued for damages.
“Her Majesty became annoyed after a photo appeared of her six-year-old grandson, Peter, twirling a dead pheasant by the neck during a bird shoot,” recalled a member of the royal household. “She ordered reporters and photographers off the estate at Sandringham and barred them from Windsor. She tried to keep them away from all family events, including the royal christenings.”
Charles and Diana’s first child, the heir to the British throne, was born on June 21, 1982, and the Hussars of the Royal Horse Artillery fired the traditional forty-one gun salute in honor of the new Prince. The blond, blue-eyed boy was called “Baby Wales” for seven days until his parents stopped fighting over his name. “We’re having a little argument about what to call him,” Charles admitted to reporters. The couple eventually settled on William Arthur Philip Louis in honor of William the Conqueror, the legendary King Arthur, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Louis, Lord Mountbatten. Prince William (“Wills” to his parents) was to be christened on the Queen Mother’s eighty-second birthday.
“It had been quite a difficult pregnancy—I hadn’t been very well throughout it,” Diana recalled in a television interview. “But I felt the whole country was in labor with me… so by the time William arrived, it was a great relief.”
Britons rejoiced, except for William’s crotchety aunt, Princess Anne, who was on a goodwill tour in the United States when Diana gave birth and resented the press queries.
“Your Royal Highness, any word about Princess Diana?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “You tell me.”
“Your reaction to her having a son?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t know she had one.”
“This morning.”
“Oh, good,” she said sarcastically. “Isn’t that nice?”
“How are you enjoying your visit to New Mexico?”
“Keep your questions to yourself.”
“Ma’am, how does it feel to be an aunt?”
“That’s my business, thank you.”
The sourpuss Princess skidded to the bottom of the royal popularity polls. “Naff off, Anne,” screamed the Daily Mail, which claim
ed she was envious of the fuss over Diana. Other newspapers dismissed the Queen’s daughter as rude, surly, and miserable. Within ten years the pundits would change their minds. After her charity work for Save the Children, Anne would emerge as one of the most respected women in Great Britain. Some polls would show that the public thought her more worthy than Charles to ascend to the throne. But in 1982, she was one of the most reviled people in the United Kingdom.
Within the royal family the relationship between the Princess Anne and the Princess of Wales was visceral: they loathed each other. Anne thought Diana was vain, dim-witted, and neurotic. “Too gooey about children,” she said.
Diana dismissed her sister-in-law as a male impersonator. “I think she shaves.”
“You forget,” said a friend. “Anne was the only female competitor at Montreal Olympics [1976] not to be given a sex test.”
“Results would’ve been too embarrassing,” joked Diana. “She’s Philip—in drag.”
The Princess of Wales did not understand a woman like Anne, who appeared to be so determinedly unfeminine. She refused to wear makeup, pulled back her hair in a bun, and wore clothes that looked like thrift shop rejects. Diana had heard about Anne’s adultery with a Palace guard but did not understand his sexual attraction. “What do men see in her?” she asked.
Blunt as a bullet, Anne did nothing to ingratiate herself with others, especially the press, which she detested. “You are a pest by the very nature of that camera in your hand,” she snapped at a photographer who was trying to take her picture.
Charles agreed that Anne could be difficult but said she was his only sister and had honored him by making him godfather to her firstborn son. So he suggested that he and Diana return the honor by making Anne one of Prince William’s godmothers. Diana refused.
“Darling, please,” Charles said plaintively. “Please.”
Diana was unmovable, and Charles, after a halfhearted struggle to change her mind, gave up. Days later they announced their choice of godparents: Princess Alexandra; the Duchess of Westminster; Lady Susan Hussey; King Constantine II of the Hellenes; Lord Romsey; Sir Laurens Van der Post.
At the christening, the Archbishop of Canterbury poured water over the baby’s head and handed a lighted candle to his father to signify the young Prince’s admission into the church.
“The windows were open, the sun streaming in,” Sir Laurens told Horoscope magazine. “Then the sky went grey as a great storm gathered. Just as the Archbishop handed over the lighted candle, a violent gust of wind blew through the windows. The candle flickered, but did not go out.”
The sage saw that as a portent for the Prince and Princess of Wales, who both believed in mysticism. Van der Post said it was a good sign and explained that the flickering candle represented a crisis in Prince William’s future, but one that he would survive.
Two years later, after the birth of their second son, Charles again suggested choosing his sister as a godmother, but again Diana refused. Instead she chose Celia, Lady Vestey; Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, the daughter of Princess Margaret; and Carolyn Pride Bartholomew, her former roommate from Coleherne Court. As godfathers, Charles chose his brother, Andrew, the Duke of York; artist Bryan Organ, who painted flattering royal portraits; and Gerald Ward, a rich polo player.
The announcement of the baby’s godparents sparked a furious row within the royal family. Prince Philip was so angry at Charles for bypassing Anne a second time that he didn’t speak to him or visit his new grandson for six weeks. At the end of the year he fired off a memo, telling Charles he was not carrying his weight as heir apparent. Philip praised Anne, his favorite child, as the hardest-working member of the royal family. “She’s represented the Crown at 201 events whereas records indicate you made 93 appearances and your wife 51. Taken together, these figures [for 1984] don’t add up to your sister’s efforts.”
Three years later the Queen rewarded her daughter’s dedicated service by naming her Princess Royal, the highest honor a sovereign can bestow on a female in the royal family.
But Anne was so humiliated at being passed over again as godmother that she declined to attend the christening of Prince Henry Charles Albert David (“Harry” to his parents). She said the date conflicted with a shooting party that she and her husband had planned. The Queen and Prince Charles moved the christening from Buckingham Palace to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor so it would be closer to Anne’s estate, hoping then she might change her mind. She didn’t. The Queen’s press secretary telephoned and begged her to reschedule her shooting party, saying that her absence would be interpreted by the press as a slight to the Princess of Wales.
“So what?” said Anne, who sent her children in her place. “Peter and Zara will be there, and that’ll be quite enough.”
Michael Shea pleaded, but to no avail. As he predicted, the Murdoch press buried the Queen’s daughter as petulant and vengeful. They canonized the Princess of Wales, and next to the Queen Mother, she was proclaimed the most beloved figure in the kingdom.
FOURTEEN
I’m fed up to the teeth with your bloody security,” exploded the Duke of Edinburgh. “Let’s get going.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the U.S. Secret Service agent, “but there’s nothing I can do until the President’s car moves.”
The Queen and the Duke, touring California as guests of the Reagans in 1983, sat in the back of their limousine, waiting for the motorcade to move through the rainy streets of San Francisco. Philip strained with impatience.
“I said to get this car moving,” he snapped.
“Sir, we’re waiting for President Reagan’s car.”
The Queen stared straight ahead. Seconds passed. Bristling with anger, Philip grabbed a magazine from the seat pocket, rolled it up, and smacked the driver across the back of his head.
“Move this fucking car,” he screamed, “and move it now!”
The Queen sat impassively and did not say a word as her husband whacked the agent like a horse. An hour later, after they had arrived at their hotel, she sent her embassy representative to the agent’s room with an invitation to join the royal couple for a nightcap.
“No, thank you,” said the agent. He made no attempt to disguise his anger over the treatment he had received from the Queen’s husband as she said nothing.
“Please, sir. You must accept Her Majesty’s invitation.”
“I said, ‘No, thank you.’ I will not be in their company any more than I absolutely have to.”
The Queen’s messenger appealed to the White House aide in the room. “Please, sir, I’m begging you. I cannot go back to Her Majesty and say her invitation was refused. I would lose my position. My tour of duty is up in six months and I can’t afford to retire without my pension. I acknowledge the Duke of Edinburgh was beastly—rude beyond redemption—but I’m asking you as a personal favor to please accept this invitation.”
The White House aide looked at the Secret Service agent, who stared at the anxious messenger—and reconsidered. “I want to make it clear,” said the agent, “that I’m doing this for you, not for them.”
The U.S. Secret Service had struggled throughout the visit to provide the highest standard of protection for the royal couple, but the Duke of Edinburgh balked at every security measure proposed. The night before, he had turned on the light inside his limousine.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the agent. “I must ask you to turn off that light. It makes you too easy a target.”
“I’m damned if I will,” snapped Philip. “Why do you think these people are out here? They want to see me, and I want to wave to them.”
The U.S. Chief of Protocol, Selwa Roosevelt, interceded. “Sir, these men are only doing their job,” she said. “If anything happens to you, it would be due to their negligence. Please do not take it out on them. They have their orders.” As he got out of the car, Philip slammed the door in her face. Hours later, at a dinner, he apologized.
From San Diego to San Francisco to the
Reagan ranch in Santa Barbara, the Duke fumed about the security. “They’re bloody baboons,” he groused to the Queen, who also chafed at extreme protection. Privately she agreed with her husband. Publicly she said nothing. She was on a goodwill trip—her fifth to the United States—and she was visiting at the express request of her government to solidify what the two countries now called their special relationship. The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, a political soulmate of Ronald Reagan, needed U.S. aid, so she fed the American appetite for British royalty by sending the Queen on tour.
Reagan had backed Thatcher when British troops landed in the Falkland Islands in 1982 to reclaim them from Argentina. The cost: 237 British servicemen and $3.7 billion. Most people had assumed Britain was too poor and too passive to mount such an attack, so the invasion boosted the country’s prestige. Argentina’s surrender in June 1982 allowed the forceful Prime Minister to emerge with a newfound respect as the Iron Lady. Prince Andrew, the Queen’s favorite child, flew a navy helicopter in the war and returned home a hero.
The “special relationship” between London and Washington became strained after the United States invaded Grenada, a former British colony in the Caribbean, which had remained part of the Commonwealth. As Queen of England, Elizabeth II was also Queen of Grenada and not receptive to invaders, especially allies. “She is immensely displeased with President Reagan over this matter,” said a Labor Party spokesman. The Queen summoned Margaret Thatcher to the Palace to explain why Her Majesty had had to hear the news of the invasion from the BBC and not from the Prime Minister herself. Mrs. Thatcher said she hadn’t known about it until she called the President minutes before. “It’s a benign invasion,” Reagan had told her, asserting that one thousand Americans had to be evacuated from the island after a communist takeover. Mrs. Thatcher told the Queen that she, too, was upset, but Britain would not condemn the invasion. “We stand by the United States and will continue to do so in the larger alliances,” said the Prime Minister. “The United States is the final guarantor of freedom in Europe.”