Diana: Her True Story - In Her Own Words: 25th Anniversary Edition

by Andrew Morton

  Birthdays were obviously a treat. My father once organized a dromedary to come along and give us rides around the lawn. He got it from Bristol [Zoo]. Birthdays were always a good time. Daddy loves parties. But there was still none of the arms round the shoulder, or hugging. It was always the other things.

  I always wanted a pram for my birthday, and dolls. I was fiendish about the dolls and the prams. And I collected pieces of china. All sorts of fairytale things, and tiny little rabbits. I mean, anything that was small was wonderful as far as I was concerned.

  SCHOOLDAYS

  Adored that [her preparatory school, Riddlesworth Hall]. I felt rejected, though, because I was busy looking after my father most of the time and then suddenly realized I was going to be away from him so I used to make threats like, ‘If you love me you won’t leave me here’, which was jolly unkind to him at the time. Actually, I loved being at school. I was very naughty in the sense of always wanting to laugh and muck about rather than sit tight in the four walls of the schoolroom.

  [I remember school plays] and the thrill of putting on make-up. It was one of those nativity plays. I was one of the twits who came and paid homage to the baby Jesus. In another I was a Dutch doll or something like that. My big moment. But I never put myself forward to speak in a play. I never read the lessons at school. I would go quietly. If I was asked to do it, my condition was I’d do it if I didn’t have to speak.

  [My first sporting cup] was for diving. I won it four years running, actually! I always won all the swimming and diving cups. I won all sorts of prizes for the best-kept guinea pig – maybe because mine was the only guinea pig in the guinea pig section. But in the academic department, you might as well forget about that!

  I nearly got expelled because one night somebody said to me: ‘Would you like to do a dare?’

  I thought: ‘Why not? Life’s so boring.’

  At school we were only allowed one animal on the bed. I had a green hippo and painted his eyes luminous so that at night – I hated the dark – it looked as though he was looking at me!

  I nearly got expelled because one night somebody said to me: ‘Would you like to do a dare?’ I thought: ‘Why not? Life’s so boring.’ So they sent me out at 9 o’clock to the end of the drive which was half a mile long in pitch dark. I had to go and get some sweets at the gate from somebody called Polly Phillimore, I think she was called. I got there and there was nobody there.

  I hid behind the gate as these police cars were coming in. I thought nothing more about it. I saw all the lights coming on in the school. I wandered back, terrified, to find that some twit in my bedroom said that she had appendicitis. Then they asked ‘Where’s Diana?’ ‘I don’t know where she’s gone.’

  Both my parents were summoned – they were divorced then. Father was thrilled and my mother said: ‘I didn’t think you had it in you.’ No telling off. Lots of girls had been doing it the previous nights as well – I think they’d been meeting boys or something – and they got expelled. There were all sorts of things that went on in the pack, and I just joined them for a bit of excitement. I must have been eleven or twelve.

  History fascinated me … Tudors and Stuarts, I adored them. To think that all these people lived x many years ago. I never anticipated I’d end up in the system, in the books.

  I ate and ate and ate. It was always a great joke – let’s get Diana to have three kippers at breakfast and six pieces of bread, and I did all that.

  My sister [Jane] was a prefect at West Heath School, and I was pretty ghastly for the first term. I was a bully because I thought it was so wonderful to have my sister as a prefect. I felt very important but the second term they all paid me back, all the people I was horrid to, and by the third term I was completely calm and sorted out.

  I remember the food – terrible! The food was just gross. There was an enormous hall there which they had just built on. I used to sneak down at night when it was all dark and put on my music and do my ballet there in this enormous hall for hours on end and no one ever found me. All my friends knew where I was when I crept out and it always released tremendous tension in my head. I recognize it now but at the time it just seemed a good idea.

  I liked all subjects. History fascinated me. Tudors and Stuarts, I adored them. To think that all these people lived x many years ago. I never anticipated I’d end up in the system, in the books. In English I loved Far from the Madding Crowd and Pride and Prejudice. But in O-levels you were so besieged with every single line that it became a chore rather than a pleasure. I took five – I got Ds for the lot. That’s not even a pass. I remember when I wrote essays I wrote ten times more than I should have done. It just came out of the pen. On and on.

  But I didn’t think I’d end up in a place where I’d have to use all the information. I just thought it was part of the course, that you just learned it. If I could study a subject now it would be about people. The mind. Definitely the mind. I’d love to [study psychology].

  [At school] I played the piano. I loved the piano. I did my tap dancing which I absolutely adored; tennis, I was captain of the netball team; hockey, you name it, because of my height. I was one of the tallest there. I adored being outdoors again, visited old people once a week, went to the local mental asylum once a week. I adored that. It was a sort of an introduction for bigger things. Then, by the time I got to the top of the school, all my friends had boyfriends but not me because I knew somehow that I had to keep myself very tidy for whatever was coming my way.

  I had more girlfriends than boyfriends. I was always mucking about with girls rather than boys. But I didn’t really have any friends that stuck.

  I wasn’t a good child, in the sense that I had horns in my ears. I was always looking for trouble. Yes, I was popular. I didn’t shout out the answers in class because I didn’t think I knew them. But I always knew how to behave. There was a time to be quiet and a time to be noisy. I could always tune in to which it should be. But I always felt that I was different, like I was in the wrong shell.

  I had crushes, serious crushes on all sorts of people, especially my sisters’ boyfriends. If they ever got chucked out from that department I used to try my way. I felt so sorry for them because they were so nice. That was purely it. Anyway, that was a dead miss.

  MOVING TO ALTHORP

  When I was 13 we moved to Althorp in Northampton and that was a terrible wrench, leaving Norfolk, because that’s where everybody who I’d grown up with lived. We had to move because grandfather died and life took a very big turn because my stepmother, Raine, appeared on the scene, supposedly incognito. She used to sort of join us, accidentally find us in places and come and sit down and pour us with presents and we all hated her so much because we thought she was going to take Daddy away from us but actually she was suffering from the same thing.

  She was very clever and she wanted to marry Daddy; that was her target and that was it. I’ve sat and boiled for years and years and two Septembers ago [1989] my brother got married and I told her what I thought about her and I’ve never known such anger in me. It’s because my stepmother and my father were very rude to my mother at the rehearsal before [Charles’] wedding; they refused to speak to her, even sitting next to her on a pew. I thought that just for one day, for the sake of my brother, we could all be grown-up and get on with it. I just thought it was unbelievable. So I took it upon myself to air everyone’s grievances in my family. And it was very difficult. My father didn’t speak to me for six months. Raine doesn’t speak to me now. But I stuck up for Mummy and my mother said that was the first time in 22 years anyone had ever stuck up for her. I said everything I possibly could. Raine said: ‘You have no idea how much pain your mother has put your father through.’ I said: ‘Pain, Raine? That’s one word you don’t even know how to relate to. In my job and in my role I see people suffer like you’ve never seen, and you call that pain? You’ve got a lot to learn.’ I remember really going for her gullet – I was so angry. I said: ‘I hate you so much, if only you
knew how much we all hated you for what you’ve done, you’ve ruined the house, you spend Daddy’s money and what for?’

  DIANA’S FATHER’S ILLNESS

  And he had a haemorrhage, a brain haemorrhage. He suffered headaches, took Disprins, told nobody. I had a premonition that he was going to be ill whilst I was staying with some friends in Norfolk and they said: ‘How’s your father?’ and I said: ‘I’ve got this strange feeling that he’s going to drop down and if he dies, he’ll die immediately; otherwise he’ll survive.’ I heard myself say this – thought nothing more about it. Next day the telephone rang and I said to the lady, that will be about Daddy. It was. He’d collapsed. I was frightfully calm, went back up to London, went to the hospital saw Daddy was gravely ill. They said: ‘He’s going to die.’ The brain had ruptured and we saw another side of Raine which we hadn’t anticipated as she basically blocked us out of the hospital; she wouldn’t let us see Daddy. My eldest sister took charge of that and went in sometimes to see him. Meanwhile, he couldn’t talk because he had a tracheotomy so he wasn’t able to ask where his other children were. Goodness knows what he was thinking because no one was telling him. Anyway, he got better and he basically changed character. He was one person before and he was certainly a different person after. He’s remained estranged but adoring since. If he comes and sees me he comes and sees me, if he doesn’t he doesn’t. It’s not my problem any more. It’s his.

  Being third in line was a very good position to be in – I got away with murder. I was my father’s favourite, there’s no doubt about that.

  ON HER BROTHER

  I’ve always seen him as the brains in the family. I still see that. He’s got S-levels and things like that. But if you’re talking about how to deal with situations and how to deal with people – no. I think that my brother, being the youngest and the only boy, was quite precious because Althorp is a big place. Remember I was the girl who was supposed to be a boy. Being third in line was a very good position to be in – I got away with murder. I was my father’s favourite, there’s no doubt about that. Do you know he hasn’t spoken to me since July? Incredible. And he hasn’t given me a birthday present, nothing. He says he’s going off to Paris to get one. He thinks by ringing me up saying he’s going to Paris I’m going to get excited. I don’t want a present from Paris. I just want to see him. Anyway. He’s not the same since he’s had that haemorrhage.

  I longed to be as good as Charles in the schoolroom. I was never jealous of him. I so understand him. He’s quite mature in some ways; he’s quite immature in others. But that’s to be expected, for God’s sake, the boy’s only [28]. He’s very like me as opposed to my two sisters. I understand, he’s a great one. He will always suffer, Charles, because he’s like me. There’s something in us that attracts that department. Whereas my two sisters are blissfully happy being detached from various situations.

  FINISHING SCHOOL

  I know that when I went to finishing school [the Institut Alpin Videmanette in Switzerland] I wrote something like 120 letters in the first month. I was so unhappy there – I just wrote and wrote and wrote. I felt out of place there. I learned how to ski but I wasn’t very good with everybody else. It was just too claustrophobic for me, albeit it was in the mountains. I did one term there. When I found out how much it cost to send me there I told my parents it was a waste of their money. So they whipped me back.

  My parents said: ‘You can’t come to London until you are 18, you can’t have a flat until you are 18.’ So I went and worked with a family in Headley, Bordon in Hampshire, Philippa and Jeremy Whitaker. I looked after their one daughter, Alexandra, and lived as part of their team. It was all right. I was itching to go to London because I thought the grass was greener on the other side.

  BACHELOR GIRL IN LONDON

  It was nice being in a flat with the girls. I loved that – it was great. I laughed my head off there. I kept myself to myself. I wasn’t interested in having a full diary. I loved being on my own, as I do now – a great treat.

  ... being in a flat with the girls.

  I loved that – it was great.

  I laughed my head off there.

  [On her nannying jobs] They were often pretty grim employers – velvet hairbands. I was sent out to all sorts of people from my sisters – their friends were producing rapidly. They sent me out the whole time – it was bliss. Solve Your Problems [employment agency] sent me on cleaning missions but nobody ever thanked me for it. But that was just a fill-in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I worked in a kindergarten. So I had two jobs, which was great.

  I did a cookery course in Wimbledon with Mrs Russell. She’s French. I quite liked it, but more velvet hairbands. I got terribly fat because my fingers were always in the saucepans, for which I got fined. It wasn’t my idea of fun but my parents wanted me to do it. At the time it seemed a better alternative than being behind a typewriter – and I got a diploma!

  MEETING THE PRINCE OF WALES

  I’ve known her [the Queen] since I was tiny so it was no big deal. No interest in Andrew and Edward – never thought about Andrew. I kept thinking, ‘Look at the life they have, how awful’ so I remember him coming to Althorp to stay, my husband, and the first impact was ‘God, what a sad man.’ He came with his labrador [Harvey]. My sister was all over him like a bad rash and I thought: ‘God, he must really hate that.’ I kept out of the way. I remember being a fat, podgy, no make-up, unsmart lady but I made a lot of noise and he liked that and he came up to me after dinner and we had a big dance and he said: ‘Will you show me the gallery?’ and I was just about to show him the gallery and my sister Sarah comes up and tells me to push off and I said: ‘At least, let me tell you where the switches are to the gallery because you won’t know where they are’, and I disappeared. And he was charm himself and when I stood next to him the next day, a 16-year-old, for someone like that to show you any attention – I was just so sort of amazed. ‘Why would anyone like him be interested in me?’ and it was interest. That was it for about two years. Saw him off and on with Sarah and Sarah got frightfully excited about the whole thing, then she saw something different happening which I hadn’t twigged on to, i.e. when he had his 30th birthday dance I was asked too.

  ‘Why is Diana coming as well?’ [my] sister asked. I said: ‘Well, I don’t know but I’d like to come.’ ‘Oh, all right then’, that sort of thing. Had a very nice time at the dance – fascinating. I wasn’t at all intimidated by the surroundings [Buckingham Palace]. I thought, amazing place.

  Then I was asked to stay at the de Passes in July 1980 by Philip de Pass, who is the son. ‘Would you like to come and stay for a couple of nights down at Petworth because we’ve got the Prince of Wales staying. You’re a young blood, you might amuse him.’ So I said ‘OK.’ So I sat next to him and Charles came in. He was all over me again and it was very strange. I thought: ‘Well, this isn’t very cool.’ I thought men were supposed not to be so obvious, I thought this was very odd. The first night we sat down on a bale at the barbecue at this house and he’d just finished with Anna Wallace. I said: ‘You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at Lord Mountbatten’s funeral.’ I said: ‘It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. My heart bled for you when I watched. I thought: “It’s wrong, you’re lonely – you should be with somebody to look after you.”’

  I remember him coming to Althorp to stay, my husband, and the first impact was ‘God, what a sad man.’

  The next minute he leapt on me practically and I thought this was very strange, too, and I wasn’t quite sure how to cope with all this. Anyway we talked about lots of things and anyway that was it. Frigid wasn’t the word. Big F when it comes to that. He said: ‘You must come to London with me tomorrow. I’ve got to work at Buckingham Palace, you must come to work with me.’ I thought this was too much. I said: ‘No, I can’t.’ I thought: ‘How will I explain my presence at Buckingham Palace when I’m supposed to be staying with Philip?’ Then he asked me to
Cowes on Britannia and he had lots of older friends there and I was very intimidated but they were all over me like a bad rash. I felt very strange about the whole thing; obviously somebody was talking.

  I came in and out, in and out, then I went to stay with my sister Jane at Balmoral where Robert [Fellowes, Jane’s husband] was assistant private secretary [to the Queen]. I was shitting bricks, I was terrified, because I had never stayed at Balmoral and I wanted to get it right. The anticipation was worse than actually being there. You’re all right once you get in through the front door. I had a normal single bed! I’m just telling you. I have a double bed now, but it works as a single. I have always done my own packing and unpacking. Now, obviously, I don’t – I haven’t got the time. But I was always appalled that [Prince] Charles takes 22 pieces of hand luggage with him. That’s before all the other stuff. I always have four or five. I felt rather embarrassed.

  I stayed back at the castle because of the press interest. They just considered it a good idea. Mr and Mrs Parker Bowles were there at all my visits. I was the youngest there by a long way. Charles used to ring me up and say: ‘Would you like to come for a walk, come for a barbecue?’ so I said: ‘Yes, please.’ I thought this was all wonderful.