by Kitty Kelley
His equerry realized how much the Prince of Wales longed to be appreciated as a humanitarian. “I wish I were Bob Geldof,” Charles said after the Irish rocker was honored for raising millions for famine relief in Ethiopia.
Eager to please his master, the equerry phoned a reporter and mentioned that the Prince carried a donor card authorizing doctors to use his organs in a lifesaving operation. The reporter wrote the story, but it was barely noticed because Diana had appeared at a benefit the night before wearing a one-shouldered silver-spangled sheath, and her photographs dominated the news coverage.
Days later the dogged equerry called a BBC radio show to say the Prince had been studying the causes of unrest in inner cities. He said Charles had spent a night walking the dark streets of London, visiting shelters and talking to the homeless.
The polo-playing Prince saw himself as a man of the people, but his sister said he was far “too grand” for the role. She pointed out that his staff at Highgrove had to wear specially designed uniforms, including the feathers of the Prince of Wales, and bow every day when they first addressed him. When leaving the room, they usually backed out. His valet of twelve years concurred. “I was successful in knowing him well,” said Stephen Barry, “but I could never forget that he was the master and I the servant.”
Charles did not recognize the irony in preaching fuel conservation while driving a gas-guzzling ten-miles-to-the-gallon Bentley. He described himself as a gentleman farmer who was committed to urban renewal when not presiding over his country estate. Although one of the richest men in the world, he was passionate about the poor. He demonstrated his concern during a two-day visit to the United States: he spent the first day touring the slums of Pittsburgh and the second day playing polo in Palm Beach. He recuperated from both stops by flying to Switzerland to ski.
In England Charles craved a role in the public policy debate. He seized his opportunity in May 1984, when he addressed the Royal Institute of British Architects on their 150th anniversary. The architects expected to be praised, but the Prince of Wales lambasted them as elitists. He said their inhospitable designs ignored the feelings and wishes of ordinary people. He cited as an example the modern glass-and-steel annex proposed for the National Gallery of Art in London. Charles said the design was a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.”
His speech made the front pages of Britain’s newspapers, and he felt quite pleased, especially when the proposed plan was canceled. “I’ve fought hard for a role as the Prince of Wales,” he told the editor of the Sunday Telegraph during a private lunch. “I feel I should do and say things in my position that, one hopes, can be a stimulus to the country’s conscience, a bit of a pinprick.” Some architects griped that he was less the first half and more the last half.
“I later felt obliged to challenge his opinion,” said Gordon Graham, former president of the Royal Academy of British Architects. “I did it politely, but I did do it.” Graham said he had experienced no royal repercussions after his speech, but his friends disagreed.
“Nonsense,” said Ian Coulter, an international consultant who once worked for Randolph Churchill. “Gordon Graham gave up his knighthood with that speech. By directly challenging the heir apparent, he tilted at the biggest windmill of them all. If the Sun King turns his back on you, you’re in his shadow. Royalty has patronage and support, and if it’s withdrawn, you’re a dead man.”
Charles understood his power, but he did not understand criticism. He was accustomed to excessive praise, but for months now magazines and newspapers had ridiculed him, his wife, and his marriage. Vanity Fair said he was “pussy-whipped from here to eternity.” His mistress had described his wife as a mouse, but others considered her a royal rat. She had purged his staff of over forty people who had either resigned or been fired. She retired most of “the pink mafia,” as she called the homosexuals on Charles’s staff, because she did not want them around her young sons. She even banished her husband’s old Labrador because the dog was incontinent.
Diana was just as miffed as Charles by the tabloid stories of her “compulsive shopping” and the “exorbitant amounts of money” she was “squandering” on “high-style fashions.” One newspaper estimated that after British Vogue started advising her, she spent $1.4 million in one year—for 373 outfits, complete with hats, belts, shoes, and purses. “It’s not true, it’s not true,” she wailed. “In the beginning, I had to buy endless new things, of course, because on a tour you change three or four times a day. I had to buy new things. I couldn’t go around in a leopardskin.”
Since then her closets had expanded to six suites in Kensington Palace. One room was reserved solely for shoes: “Three hundred and twenty pairs,” she gleefully told her friend Sarah Ferguson, “and that’s not counting my trainers.” Diana soon learned to send her bills to the British Foreign Office for the designer clothes she wore on royal tours. For a sixteen-day trip of Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, her clothing bill was $122,000.
She was distressed by the stories of how she had changed from a dewy-eyed virgin into a self-obsessed harridan. She felt inaccurately blamed for turning her husband into a muzzy mystic, whom she no longer allowed to hunt and shoot.
Charles fretted continually about his media coverage. He did not read the tabloids, which he called “the cheap and impertinent gutter press.” But he complained that the quality papers he did read were not adequately reporting his worthy endeavors. Over a private lunch he grumbled to Sunday Telegraph editor Peregrine Worsthorne, “I sometimes wonder why I don’t pack it in and spend my time playing polo.”
Like politicians, who live and die by polls, Charles and Diana scrambled to find spin doctors. They asked everyone around them for advice, calling upon Tory Members of Parliament, discreet editors, and worshipful courtiers. They sought counsel from lawyers and media consultants, inviting them all to Kensington Palace to pick their brains.
“It was in November 1984 that I lunched with them,” John Junor, former editor of the Sunday Express, wrote in his memoirs. “The Prince remarked that he hoped Princess Diana would begin to give interviews. But he added, ‘Perhaps not just yet. It might be wise to wait until she has more experience.’ ”
The Princess agreed. “I just hate the sound of my own voice,” she said. “I can’t bear it. When I launched that new liner last week, I just couldn’t believe it when I heard myself afterward. It just didn’t sound like me.”
The Prince laughed. “I felt exactly the same way. I just couldn’t believe that yakkety-yak voice was mine. So upper-class.”
Charles asked Junor for advice on how to handle public relations and combat “the idiotic stories” that appeared in the press. The Prince spoke at length about his concerns—the disadvantaged youth of the country, the inadequacy of the Church of England—and the editor listened. So did Diana, until Junor turned to include her in the conversation.
“Darling, I’m so sorry,” said Charles. “I’ve done all the talking. Did you have something you wanted to say?”
The Princess nodded. Then she poured out to Junor her resentment about the way in which she had been attacked for influencing her husband and turning him against shooting and hunting.
The Prince broke in. “I’m angry about that, too. Because my wife is doing nothing of the kind. My wife actually likes hunting and shooting. It is I who have turned against it.”
“It’s all his own decision,” Diana told another journalist. “I was brought up in the country and like shooting. I shot a deer at Balmoral on our honeymoon. I just think Charles has gone a bit potty.”
Charmed by the Princess, John Junor had reservations about the Prince. “Charles was a serious, perhaps too serious, young man, obsessed with the idea of serving the nation, in some danger of overwhelming his wife, and in even greater danger of boring her.”
After weeks of consultations with their advisers, including an astrologer, the Prince and Princess decided to go on television. They said
they wanted to be interviewed (“by a respectful interviewer, of course,” Charles stipulated) so they could present themselves to people without the subjectivity of newspapers. “Let people see us as we really are,” said Diana. In exchange for the privilege of this interview, Independent Television gave them editorial control and assured them of soft lighting. “I wouldn’t want my [bald] patch to blind viewers,” Charles joked.
They called Sir Richard Attenborough, the film director, to coach them. Under his guidance they became world-class illusionists. Charles played the romantic lead; Diana was the pretty ingenue. The two little Princes, Wills and Harry, were the extras pounding the piano in the background. As the future King, Charles was to appear strong, resolute, and worthy of trust. As his consort, Diana was to sit by his side, sweetly and supportively. By October 1985 they knew their parts to perfection.
“People expect a great deal of us,” Charles began earnestly, “and I’m always conscious—I’m sure you are, too, darling—of not wanting to let people down, not wanting to let this country down.” Diana looked up at him demurely and nodded.
She was asked about her role. “To support my husband,” she said, “and always be behind him and encouraging. And also a more important thing, being a wife and mother.”
For forty-five minutes they performed flawlessly. She said she never dieted; he didn’t even know what a Ouija board looked like. She denied being a shopaholic; he did not practice homeopathy. She professed the greatest respect for Princess Anne. He kept an open mind about architecture.
When the interviewer delicately approached the rumors about Diana’s being a domineering wife and dictating her husband’s taste, she looked surprised. “I might pick the odd tie now and then,” she said, “but that’s it.” Later, she said Charles chuckled about that response, remembering her frenzied efforts to overhaul his appearance. She had spent days rummaging through his closets, discarding his solid blue shirts—”so boring”—and substituting Turnbull & Asser’s stripes, tossing out single-button jackets in favor of double-breasted blazers, throwing away lace-up cordovans—”too fuddy-duddy”—and bringing in tasseled loafers. She even sent him to her hairdresser with instructions for blow-drying: “Cover up the patch.” Because of his big ears, she told Charles not to wear hats. “You’ll look like a Volkswagen with both doors wide open.”
On television the royal couple shared an easy camaraderie and playfulness that dispelled rumors about their marriage. They bantered briefly, smiled frequently, and enchanted viewers. The interview was later shown on American television to coincide with their 1985 trip to Washington, D.C. This was to be Diana’s first visit to the United States, so the Queen sent her Palace press secretary to the States to handle the media. Michael Shea briefed American reporters on how they were expected to behave, admonishing them to question only the Prince and not the Princess. “She will not answer,” he said, “so don’t even try.”
Throughout the two-day tour Diana said nothing publicly. As they were leaving, she was asked how she liked Washington.
“Very good,” she said softly, “I—”
Charles interrupted. “Speaking as her spokesman,” he said in a booming voice, “she thinks it’s wonderful.”
Shea shot a reproving look at the reporter who had dared to address his question to the Princess instead of the Prince. The reporter rolled his eyes.
“Well then, sir,” said the reporter, looking at Charles, “did the Princess enjoy the White House dinner?”
“I think you enjoyed it, didn’t you, darling?” said Charles. “She would be an idiot if she did not enjoy dancing with John Travolta, wouldn’t she?”
Days before the Reagans’ dinner dance for the royal couple, the President’s wife had instructed the Marine Band to rehearse the music from Saturday Night Fever so that its star, John Travolta, could twirl the Princess around the Grand Foyer of the White House. Knowing that Diana once dreamed of becoming a ballerina, Mrs. Reagan had seated her next to Mikhail Baryshnikov, director of the American Ballet Theater. The First Lady also invited Diana’s favorite stars: Neil Diamond, Tom Selleck, and Clint Eastwood. Much as the Republican First Lady loved Prince Charles, she did not invite his favorite movie star—Barbra Streisand—because Streisand was a liberal Democrat. By happy coincidence, all of Diana’s favorite stars were conservative male Republicans who had supported Ronald Reagan.
Still, the Princess was not impressed by the President and the First Lady. Diana privately referred to Reagan as “Horlicks,” her slang for a boring old person, and she told Andrew Neil (editor of the London Sunday Times) that she considered Nancy Reagan a vulgar American. She said the only reason the First Lady had come to London the year before was to get her picture taken with the royal couple and Prince William.
At the White House the President claimed the first dance of the evening with the Princess, who had to bite her lip to keep from laughing when he flubbed her name during his after-dinner remarks. Standing up to welcome the couple, Reagan offered a toast to Prince Charles and “his lovely lady, Princess David.” He quickly corrected himself and called her “Princess Diane.”
“What did he say?” whispered ballerina Suzanne Farrell. “Did he call her Princess David?”
“Don’t worry,” replied actor Peter Ustinov. “He’s just thinking of next weekend at Camp Diana.”
The White House dinner in honor of the royal couple was touted as the most glittering party of the year. But the British press corps was unimpressed. They sniped at the Reagans and their tireless efforts to mingle with royalty and criticized the White House press corps as lazy. “They don’t even know how to doorstep,” said James Whitaker of the Daily Mirror. Whitaker and his colleagues prided themselves on dogging reluctant targets to their doorstep. Mrs. Reagan had barred press coverage of the dinner dance, so the British reporters followed the movie stars to their hotels. “We ambushed them to find out what went on,” Whitaker said proudly. “The American reporters didn’t care. They went home to bed. They were indescribably indolent.” For their part, the American reporters said the British might sound cultivated but behaved like animals.
The BBC correspondent had set the scornful tone of British media coverage when he reported the royal couple’s arrival at the White House: “President Reagan greeted the Prince and Princess wearing a plaid jacket that was remarkably similar to the carpet at Balmoral Castle.”
That evening, after the royals and the Reagans had danced the first dance, the First Lady approached Travolta. “It’s time now, John,” she said. The movie star walked over to the Princess’s table and asked her to dance. “I was thrilled,” Diana said. Everyone stopped talking to watch them and completely ignored the Prince of Wales, who was dancing with the ballerina Suzanne Farrell.
“The Princess got wind that it was a special moment,” recalled Travolta, “and she really seemed to take off. She had great rhythm. We did spins and turns. We did a kind of modern fox-trot, and she followed me very well. She’s a good little mover.”
The guests applauded wildly when the music stopped and Travolta escorted Diana back to her seat. The willowy Princess, flushed with excitement, wanted to dance again. She whispered to Clint Eastwood how much she would enjoy dancing with a man taller than she was. She confided to him that at five feet ten inches, she had been told to wear low heels so she would not tower over her husband.
“But you’re over six feet tall,” she said to the craggy-faced actor.
“I’d ask you to dance,” Eastwood said, deadpan, “but you’re too old for me.”
“I’m only twenty-four,” Diana said flirtatiously.
“Oh, all right,” said the fifty-five-year-old movie star. “I’ll make an exception.”
Eastwood described his dance with Diana by paraphrasing a line he had made famous in his Dirty Harry movies: “She made my day.”*
As dazzled as the celebrities were to meet Diana, she in turn was just as excited to meet them, including explorer Jacques Cousteau, skater Doro
thy Hamill, artist David Hockney, Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton, and actress Brooke Shields. She told Baryshnikov that she had gotten his autograph years before when he’d appeared at Covent Garden.
“I was one of those girls who was waiting for you for hours and hours after your performance,” she said.
She asked Dorothy Hamill if there were gossip magazines and society magazines in America as there were in England. “They can be so nice,” Diana said. “They ask you three lovely questions, and then they throw in a zinger question.” She also inquired about television talk shows and wanted to know about Johnny Carson and the Tonight show.
“Of course, Joan Rivers’s name came up,” recalled Dorothy Hamill, who sat at Diana’s table, “and Baryshnikov chimed in, ‘No, don’t do that! Don’t go on Joan Rivers’s show.’ ”
At a luncheon the next day in Upperville, Virginia, at philanthropist Paul Mellon’s estate, the British royal couple were introduced to Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. A few days later in Palm Beach at a charity ball, the Prince and Princess met Bob Hope, Gregory Peck, and Joan Collins, who had recently married a man sixteen years younger than she. Diana was fascinated by the fifty-three-year-old television star of Dynasty and cornered a reporter from the Daily Mail to pump him about Collins’s latest wedding. “She’s amazing,” said Diana. “At her age. Husband number four.”
In Washington and Palm Beach large crowds had lined the streets to welcome the royal couple. Young girls jumped up and down and screamed with excitement when they saw Diana. The Princess of Wales had become an international icon, who inspired the same kind of ear-splitting ruckus as a rock star. When she accompanied her husband to religious services in Washington’s National Cathedral, more than twelve thousand people turned out. “I think it’s her flying saucer hat,” said Prince Charles. He gestured to the large discus on top of his wife’s head.