by Kitty Kelley
Charles blamed Diana for making him look like a callous parent. Feeling slightly chastened, he made a point a few weeks later of being photographed riding a bicycle with his sons, but Diana told the press that Charles left the boys twenty-four hours later to go to a polo match. Jean Rook accused Charles of treating his sons like “well-fed pets who know their place in the world of their utterly self-involved parent. Certainly, it must hurt William and Harry to see their father more often on TV than in the flesh.”
Photos appeared of Charles going to church with his sons at Sandringham, but when someone in the crowd asked him where the Princess was, he replied with a strained smile, “She’s not here today, so you can get your money back.”
Other photographs had also indicated friction between the couple. On a royal tour of India, Diana was shown sitting by herself in front of the Taj Mahal. That sad picture (which some reporters said was staged by the Princess) recalled Prince Charles’s visit to India before his wedding. He had promised to bring his bride back to the seventeenth-century temple, a world-renowned monument to eternal love. But when he brought Diana in 1992 for a four-day tour, they were not speaking. They had arrived in India on separate planes; he flew from Oman, and she flew from London. They followed separate schedules. They stayed in separate suites on different floors of the hotel in New Delhi and communicated through their staffs. They smiled only in front of the cameras.
Then came a picture of Diana in front of the Pyramids—alone again. She had let it be known that while she was traveling on an official tour of Egypt, her husband was vacationing in Turkey with his mistress. More pictures followed of Charles playing polo while Diana visited leper colonies; Charles shooting birds at Sandringham while Diana consoled cancer patients in Liverpool; Charles partying with the Sultan of Brunei, the world’s richest man, while Diana conferred with Mother Teresa, who ministered to the world’s poorest people.
The Palace tried to counteract the discordant images of the Waleses and their marriage, but new disclosures kept popping up like frogs from a swamp. When police constable Andrew Jacques, a guard at Highgrove, disclosed that the Prince and Princess led separate lives, the Palace dismissed his story as tabloid fiction. The constable, who worked at Highgrove for four years, stood firm. “The only time they meet up is at mealtimes,” he said, “and very often that ends in a blazing row for all to hear.” He revealed that Prince Charles slept alone in one bedroom (with his childhood teddy bear in bed with him), while the Princess slept by herself in the master bedroom. “They never smile, laugh, or do anything together…. In four years, I only ever saw him kiss her good-bye once, and that was a peck on the cheek.”
Predictably, the establishment press called upon peerage expert Harold Brooks-Baker to respond to the constable’s assertions, and, as always, the American-born royalist complied. “You can’t break down a marriage that’s been put up the way the press has put this one up,” the peerage expert told The New York Times. “The press made a lot out of the fact that they were apart on her thirtieth birthday last month, but very little out of the fact that on the following weekend she and her husband were together; there was a birthday cake, and he gave her a lovely bracelet.”
The former housekeeper of Highgrove disclosed that the gift from Charles was paste. In a diary she kept while working for the Prince and Princess of Wales, she noted that when Diana found out, she burst into tears. The Princess, accustomed to being consoled with expensive gifts, was distraught that her husband bestowed a diamond necklace on his mistress but gave her only costume jewelry. The housekeeper quoted Diana as saying: “I don’t want his bloody fake jewels. I thought cheating husbands took great care to keep their wives sweet with the real things, saving the tawdry stuff for their tarts.”
For her thirtieth birthday Charles offered to throw a party. But Diana didn’t want to celebrate with him. So she said no and celebrated privately with her lover, James Hewitt, who had recently returned from the Gulf War. Charles was stung by press accusations that he had neglected the occasion of his wife’s birthday, so he dispatched a friend to call Nigel Dempster to set the record straight. The gossip columnist obliged with a front-page story in the Daily Mail about the Prince’s loving gesture. Diana responded the next day through a friend, who told the Sun that the Princess did not want a grand ball filled with her husband’s “stuffy friends.”
Princess Anne, disgusted by the newspaper sparring, confronted Diana about turning her marriage into a media free-for-all. “Before you joined, there were hardly any leaks,” said the Princess Royal. “Now the ship is so full of holes, it’s no wonder that it’s sinking.”
Diana stared hard at her sister-in-law without saying a word. But Anne didn’t flinch.
“I wouldn’t go telling too many tall tales if I were you,” she warned. “They might just come back to haunt you one day.”
After Anne’s rebuke, Diana became convinced that the entire royal family was against her. She decided then to cooperate with Andrew Morton by giving her friends permission to talk to him about her dismal marriage. “Do what you think is best,” she told her friends when they called her about the book. She made sure that nothing was said to the author about her love affair with James Hewitt.
Upon publication she could hardly disavow the book, so when Robert Fellowes called and read her the statement he had drafted for release, she withheld her approval. He insisted that she publicly disapprove the book, but she said, “I cannot be held responsible for what my friends say.”
Waiting for the Princess to respond, the editor of the Sunday Times was getting jumpy. “We thought she would break under all the pressure,” recalled Andrew Neil. “We would not have been surprised had she committed suicide at that point. She was that unstable.
“Initially, I did not believe the book. Not for a minute. The Princess of Wales suffering from bulimia, throwing up in toilets, and attempting suicide? Impossible. But I grilled Andrew Morton, demanded to have the names of his sources, and independently interviewed all of them. Once I was satisfied the book was accurate, I decided to go with it, provided the two major sources, Carolyn Bartholomew and James Gilbey, signed affidavits backing up what they had said was true.”
The newspaper’s sensational excerpt appeared on the morning of June 7, 1992. That afternoon the Queen invited Camilla Parker Bowles and her husband to join the royal family in their box at Windsor to watch a polo match. Diana saw the gesture as one more kick in the teeth. Privately she questioned the Queen’s sensitivity. “If she wants this marriage to work, why won’t she help by acting like a decent mother-in-law?”
The next day the editor of the Sunday Telegraph said the editor of the Sunday Times was a scandal-monger who deserved to be horsewhipped. Andrew Neil published James Gilbey’s statement:
“I can confirm that the Princess discussed with me on numerous occasions her attempted suicides, as she has done with other close friends.”
The Sunday Times editor said he knew the monarchy was beginning to crumble when he received calls of support from aristocrats like Alan Clark, a former Tory minister of state. “It’s a shame,” Clark told Andrew Neil, “but no great loss. The royal family is just a bunch of pasty-faced Germans.”
An avalanche of news stories, editorials, and television commentaries questioned what was once accepted as unassailable—the future of the monarchy and whether Britain really needed a royal family. There were even questions about the dutiful monarch, who lavished more attention on her dogs and horses than on her children. Public opinion polls showed overwhelming support for the Princess, especially among American women. People magazine, whose twenty million weekly readers are predominantly female, put her on forty-one covers in sixteen years; and the issue featuring her with an excerpt from Morton’s book was the best-selling cover in the magazine’s history. The American writer Camille Paglia proclaimed the Princess a twentieth-century icon: “Diana may have become the most powerful image in world popular culture today.”
Frust
rated aides in the Palace press office strained to be civil. Their original denunciation of the book had been unequivocal: “outrageously irresponsible.” Now they backtracked. “We have no further comment at this time.” Their accents became more clipped, as if cut-glass enunciation would ward off further questions.
As the press office was trying to deflect questions about the extramarital affair of the Prince of Wales, an internal memo surfaced that illustrated the standard of behavior the Queen expected from her servants. Her estate manager at Balmoral had issued a “gentle reminder” to any employee engaged in an illicit love affair. The reminder threatened eviction from Her Majesty’s premises. “If you’re living in sin,” warned the Queen’s manager, “you could lose your home.” The Palace tried to dissociate itself from the tone. “Any correspondence on whatever is going on up there is totally private,” said a press assistant. But Diana said the Queen should send a “gentle reminder” like that to her son. Although she had plenty to say about Morton’s book privately, Diana said nothing publicly. With no response from her, the editor of the Sunday Times was worried. “I didn’t know what to do to restore our credibility,” said Andrew Neil. Within hours he was saved by an anonymous female caller. She told the Press Association, England’s national news agency, that the Princess of Wales would be visiting the home of Carolyn Bartholomew. A photograph of Diana embracing her friend, a major source of information in the book, put the lie to skeptics.
When the picture was published, Sir Robert Fellowes knew he had been deceived by Diana. Having inaccurately reassured the Queen that Diana had had nothing to do with the book, he now offered the Queen his resignation, but Her Majesty turned it down. She summoned Charles and Diana to Windsor on June 15, 1992, for a family conference. With self-preservation on her mind, she insisted on a public show of unity, beginning with the Royal Ascot. Her husband objected. “Why the bloody pretense?” he snapped. “Let’s be done with it.” But the Queen had seen the crowds cheering Diana days before and waving placards: “Diana, We Love You” and “God Bless the Princess of Wales.” The Queen knew those crowds would be angry if Diana was not part of the royal family’s traditional carriage procession into Ascot. She stressed the importance of not disappointing people. Turning to Diana, she said, “Do you understand?”
Diana did not have the nerve—then—to openly defy the Queen, so she did as she was told. “I know my duty,” she said, lowering her eyes. When the crowds saw her riding with the Queen Mother in the carriage, behind the Queen and Prince Charles, they roared wildly and gave the second coach more applause than the first. The Duke of Edinburgh scowled.
“He openly snubbed Diana that day,” said reporter James Whitaker. “When she walked into the royal box, Philip turned away and would not speak to her. She sat by herself as he buried his nose in the program. He did not look up or acknowledge her presence, but she didn’t seem particularly to care.”
When someone mentioned the Duke’s rebuff, Diana shrugged and said, “The man has the warmth of a snow pea.” She was buoyed by the rousing cheers she had received, but her elation later evaporated as her confidence sagged.
During the meeting at Windsor Castle, the Queen had asked Diana what she wanted. “A legal separation,” she replied. Instead the Queen recommended a cooling-off period. “We’ll revisit the subject in six months,” she said, adding that she expected the couple to proceed with their long-standing plan to tour South Korea. They agreed, but the trip was a public relations disaster. Diplomatic cables indicate almost as much tension between Charles and Diana as between North and South Korea. Press photos supported the top-secret cables flying back and forth from Seoul to London: they showed a dour Prince and a grim Princess, who clearly despised each other.
When the Queen saw the pictures, she called her son. “Charles, I don’t understand,” she said. The implication was that he was not trying hard enough.
“Don’t you realize she’s mad?” he said angrily. “She’s mad!”
Before the Queen could respond, Charles had hung up on his mother.
Upon their return to England, Diana told friends that she did not think her husband was fit to be King. In the past she had said she knew she would never become Queen and that Charles would ascend to the throne without her. Now she questioned his ability to reign. She said she based her assessment on her instincts and her intimate knowledge of her husband. This raised questions about Charles, who was remembered as a shy little boy who always seemed fretful. Was he too timid to become King? asked an editorial under the headline “Unfaithful AND Reluctant?”
Charles wanted to respond but didn’t know how best to defend himself. His zealous equerry urged him to cooperate with the journalist Jonathan Dimbleby on a book about his life. So the Prince decided to give the respected journalist unprecedented access to his private diaries and letters. The biography, to be preceded by an exclusive television interview, was timed to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Charles’s investiture as Prince of Wales.
Such anniversaries gave the royal family opportunities to celebrate themselves with stirring parades and fireworks. But in 1992 the Queen, then in her fortieth anniversary* year on the throne, canceled plans for a grandiose celebration. She stopped the fund-raising for a $3.6 million fountain that had been planned in Parliament Square and said no to a military parade. “The past year is not one I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure,” she said in a speech. “In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an annus horribilis.” One newspaper headlined her remarks: “One’s Bum Year.” Another criticized her for using Latin to express travesties made all too plain in English throughout the year:
January: Publication of photos of the Duchess of York and Steve Wyatt on vacation in Morocco. The Palace denies there is a problem in the Yorks’ marriage.
February: The Princess of Wales is criticized as unpatriotic when she exchanges her British-made Jaguar for a German-made Mercedes. “This is another example of the royal family showing contempt for British workers,” says Dennis Skinner, a Labor MP. “They live off the fat of the land with taxpayers’ money coming from British workers, and then they spit in their faces.” At the Queen’s insistence, Diana gives up the Mercedes—seven months later.
March: The Palace announces the separation of the Duke and Duchess of York.
April: After three years’ separation, Princess Anne divorces Captain Mark Phillips. A paternity suit filed against Phillips by a New Zealand teacher who claimed she conceived after “a one-night stand” is settled. Without acknowledging fatherhood, Phillips agrees to pay the mother an undisclosed sum of money for “equestrian consulting services.”
May: A love affair is reported between Princess Anne, forty-two, and thirty-seven-year-old Navy Commander Timothy Laurence. That prompts one newspaper columnist to exclaim, “Not Again, Anne!” Another warns: “Keep Your Hands off the Hired Help.” The Palace denies the Princess is involved with her equerry. Seven months later she marries him in Scotland, where divorce is permitted. Some courtiers deem the match unsuitable, not because the royal bride is divorced, but because the bridegroom on his great-great-great-grandfather’s side was Jewish. In 1826 the Laurence family had changed their name from Levy. Almost two centuries later this still prompts comment. One royal correspondent wrote, “One could not avoid the idea… [of]… his Jewish ancestors.”
June: Prince Edward, the Queen’s twenty-eight-year-old son, denies again that he’s homosexual. He then denies that he issued the denial, which prompts a Washington Post columnist to observe, “The youngest son gets by far the best press, by Windsorian standards, which means that he merely needs to spend every second Tuesday denying in print that he is a woman.”
July: Diana’s masseur tells the press Diana wants to end “the inherent deceit, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction” of her marriage. “The situation has to end,” says Stephen Twigg, who visited Kensington Palace regularly for three years to give the Princess holistic
massages. “Otherwise there will be a tragedy.” Hours later Diana fires the therapist.
August: Newspaper photos show Sarah Ferguson topless with John Bryan in the South of France. Days later the Sun publishes a tape-recorded telephone call between Diana and James Gilbey in which she complains about her treatment from the royal family. “My life is torture,” she says. “Bloody hell. And after all I’ve done for this fucking family.”
September: The Palace denies there is a problem in the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
October: The Queen is booed in Germany. Residents of Dresden throw eggs at her limousine shortly after the British unveil a statue in London to honor the memory of Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who directed the fire-bombing of Dresden during World War II.
“November brought the worst,” said the Queen. On Friday morning, November 20, 1992, the skies over Windsor Castle filled with orange balls of flame etched with black clouds of acrid smoke. A fire, started by a lamp that ignited the curtains in the Queen’s private chapel, threatened to destroy what Samuel Pepys called “the most romantic castle in the world.” Instead of sounding fire alarms, the staff called the castle switchboard for help. Prince Andrew, who was staying at Windsor for the weekend, rushed to save his mother’s treasures. He joined the human chain of employees who passed pictures and tables and clocks from hand to hand until they were safe from destruction. Firemen poured a million and a half gallons of water on the structure, but the fire burned for fifteen hours.
“The Queen is devastated, absolutely devastated,” Andrew told CNN television shortly after his mother arrived from London. “She is helping to take stuff out of the castle—works of art. She has been in there for thirty minutes.”