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

by Andrew Morton

  A mortal blow had been struck at the royal family’s image as the ‘perfect’ family. For too many years Diana had been an unwilling party to the hypocrisy surrounding her life within the royal clan. It had left her emotionally drained and physically exhausted. Now the true story was out in the open, and there was no more need to go on lying or hiding from the truth.

  Only a year before it had seemed an impossible dream, but now the Princess was ready to leave the past behind her. A new life beckoned, a freer existence without the shackles of a desperately unhappy marriage. She was making a fresh start alone, although she would still be part of the royal family and living under the constraints of the royal system she had come to despise and distrust. It was an uneasy compromise, and it would not be long before Diana rattled once more at the bars of her gilded cage. As she told her friends: ‘I have contracted, I’ve agreed to pay the piper for now. The fun is to come, maybe in two or three years.

  ‘I’m learning to be patient.’

  10

  ‘My Acting Career Is Over’

  For many years, there had been little laughter and even fewer smiles in the apartments at Kensington Palace where the Prince and Princess of Wales had made their London home. Visitors were quick to sense the cheerless atmosphere, and words like ‘dead energy’, ‘gloomy’ and ‘tense’ became the commonplaces of their descriptions. ‘I feel I have died in that house many, many times,’ Diana told friends. Even her bedroom gave out an air of sadness. ‘I can imagine her lying in bed at night cuddling her teddy and crying,’ one former member of staff remarked of this little-girl’s bedroom, with its population of staring toy animals left over from an equally unhappy childhood.

  Now she was separated, not only from her husband, but from much of the misery in which her marriage had plunged her. Perhaps symbolically, her first decision was to throw out the mahogany double bed she had slept in at Kensington Palace since her wedding 11 years before. Then she had the bedroom painted and new locks fitted, and changed her private telephone number. Her new life alone had begun.

  During the winter of 1992 there was much to-ing and fro-ing between Highgrove, Kensington Palace and St James’s Palace as the couple’s personal possessions were ferried back to them in their now bachelor homes. ‘It was,’ said one Palace official, ‘an undignified and very sad finale to the fairytale.’ The Prince and Princess, who had received an Aladdin’s Cave of gifts during their marriage, unsentimentally consigned unwanted possessions to the flames. A bonfire of their vanities was made in the grounds of Highgrove; valuable items were sent for storage at Windsor Castle or given to charity. At Kensington Palace, only a few items were left as reminders of Prince Charles’s tenure there.

  For Prince Charles, his wife was not even permitted that small remembrance. Over the next few months every sign that she had ever lived at Highgrove was systematically wiped away. A designer was then hired to redecorate the house completely, as well as the Prince’s new home at St James’s Palace. Visitors to Highgrove could not fail to notice that, among the scores of family photographs, there was not a single one of the Prince of Wales’s estranged wife.

  In the months following the separation, frequent visitors to Kensington Palace began to notice a change in the previously forlorn Apartments Eight and Nine. The staff seemed friendlier, less formal, the atmosphere lighter and more relaxed. There were, too, small decorative changes: walls were repainted, terracotta pots appeared, filled with arrangements of mosses and twigs, and Prince Charles’s stark military and architectural pictures were replaced with gentle landscapes and dance paintings. Guests were greeted by the sound of loud music and the scent of freesias or white Casablanca lilies. The prevailing mood was inevitably more feminine, although Diana never quite made up her mind to follow her initial impulse and completely redecorate her house.

  The truth was that the Princess had a love-hate relationship with her home in Kensington Palace, as hostages are said to do with their captors. To her, the Palace represented so much accumulated misery and heartache, and yet, as she told friends, ‘I feel secure here.’ Throughout her marriage her first-floor sitting room had been, in her words, ‘My retreat, my empire and my nest.’ In truth, it was a shrine to the two men in her life, Princes William and Harry. In front of the fireplace was a five-foot leather rhino cushion for them to lie on as they watched television, while on every conceivable surface there were photographs in wooden or silver frames of the boys go-karting, in tanks, on horseback, cycling, fishing, on police bikes or in school uniform. More framed photographs, this time of her late father, Earl Spencer, her sisters Jane and Sarah, and her brother Charles, the present Earl, adorned the mantelpiece. In this gallery, too, were pictures of the Princess herself: a signed black-and-white photograph of her dancing with the film director Richard Attenborough, another with singer Elton John, a third with Liza Minnelli, and privately taken pictures of her imitating Audrey Hepburn in outfits from the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  Crowded with comforting groups of pottery animals, enamel boxes and porcelain figurines, the room gave the impression of belonging to a woman trying to protect herself from the incursions of the outside world. ‘It is like an old lady’s room,’ a girlfriend observed, ‘packed to the gunwales with knick-knacks … You can hardly move.’ Another close friend explained something of the mentality behind this profusion: ‘It’s very common for people coming from a broken home to want material possessions around them. They are building their own nests.’ The general air of claustrophobia was, however, lightened by evidence of Diana’s gentle, occasionally self-deprecating sense of humour. On every chair were silk cushions embroidered with humorous motifs such as ‘Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere’, ‘You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince’, and ‘I feel sorry for people who don’t drink because when they wake up in the morning that is the best they are going to feel all day.’ Her bathroom and lavatory were decorated with newspaper cartoons depicting Prince Charles talking to his plants and their visit to the Pope in the Vatican; these, too, give another glimpse of what she found amusing.

  But even these light touches could not conceal her general feeling of dissatisfaction, manifested in her ambivalent attitude towards her home. For months following the separation she vacillated between wanting to stay at Kensington Palace and feeling she would like to move into a place of her own in the country. The sensation of living inside an open prison at Kensington Palace, constantly under the eye of staff and police, gnawed at her spirit. She longed to break free, yet at the same time realized the interpretation that press and public alike would put on her buying a house of her own; it would seem such a very obvious break with all that had gone before since her marriage had started in 1981. A friend recalled: ‘One thing which concerns her above all else is a deep fear of censure and condemnation. So, as ever, she drew back.’

  By the spring of 1993 Diana had become increasingly unhappy with having to live in Kensington Palace. So she was ‘excited and delighted’ when, in April, her brother Charles, Earl Spencer, offered her the Garden House, a four-bedroomed property on the estate at Althorp. It was an offer that also neatly sidestepped the problem of her being thought to be extravagant. ‘At long last I can make a cosy nest of my own,’ she told friends, filled with enthusiasm at the idea of furnishing and decorating her own place; indeed, the desire to make the place ‘cosy’ became her constant refrain. For the first time she would be able to express herself without having to look over her shoulder or be reminded of sad events. She contacted a family friend, Dudley Poplak, a South African-born designer who had organized the interior decoration of the apartments she had shared with Prince Charles in Kensington Palace. Together they discussed colour schemes, fabrics and wallpapers – pale blues and yellows were provisionally chosen. The exciting vista of a new life opened up before her. Moreover, the Garden House had another advantage. It was not overlooked by any other buildings on the estate, allowing her absolute privacy, and, best of all
, the ubiquitous armed bodyguard would not have to intrude on her new home, since there was a small house nearby in which he could be based.

  Just three weeks later Diana’s brave new world collapsed around her. Earl Spencer telephoned her and said that he no longer felt comfortable with the idea. He argued that the extra police presence, the inevitable cameras and other surveillance would involve unacceptable levels of intrusion. With Althorp open to the public, various restrictions would have to be placed on her freedom of movement. Diana was stunned, for once absolutely lost for words. While her brother’s arguments were perfectly valid, for her his decision constituted much more than simply the loss of a house. Her ‘cosy nest’ had represented both a challenge and a new beginning; more than that, however, the Garden House had literally been the home of her dreams. For several months there was a coolness between the Princess and her brother.

  Relationships within the Spencer clan had never been easy. Her parents’ divorce and her father’s subsequent remarriage to Raine, Countess of Dartford, daughter of the romantic novelist Barbara Cartland, had left the family bitter and divided. Diana had never forgiven her grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, one of the Queen Mother’s ladies-in-waiting, for her decision to give evidence against her own daughter – and Diana’s mother – Frances, during the bitter divorce case. When Prince Charles and her granddaughter separated, Lady Fermoy once again failed to side with her own flesh and blood. It was therefore with a surprise bordering on astonishment that the family heard of two visits Diana made to see Lady Fermoy at her Eaton Square apartment in June 1993, just three weeks before the latter’s death. Rather than allow her feelings of resentment to simmer, the Princess simply decided to confront the woman who had hurt her so badly. They were understandably difficult, and at times frosty, encounters, Lady Fermoy visibly taken aback by Diana’s courageous decision to raise the problems which had driven them apart, instead of – as is the royal way – engaging in meaningless small talk while the real issues remain unspoken. It would be an exaggeration to say that these meetings brought about a reconciliation, but they did lead to a truce between the two warring relations.

  Her willingness to build bridges was a sign of Diana’s determination to lay the ghosts of her past. This new-found resolve was at the heart of her reconciliation with her stepmother in May 1993. It was no secret that Diana, her sisters and brother had little love for the woman they called ‘Acid Raine’. When her father died, the Princess could have been excused for consigning her stepmother to the dustbin of her life, but she chose not to do so, inviting Raine and her new husband, a French aristocrat, Count Jean-François de Chambrun, to lunch. It was an emotional encounter, and one that marked a turning point in their relationship, although their frequent meetings subsequently were frostily received by the rest of the Spencers, and led on one occasion to an angry confrontation with her mother, Frances Shand Kydd. During this exchange Diana pointed out that as she had hated Raine the most, and yet had been able to forgive and forget, then so should the rest of the family.

  Diana’s success in clearing away some of the emotional brushwood of the past left her free to begin laying the foundations of a new life. A new home had been the keystone of her dream, and the collapse of that ambition dealt her a grievous blow. Her hopes dashed, the Princess spent many months licking her wounds, enduring, though not enjoying, life at Kensington Palace, which by now possessed an atmosphere that led one royal employee to dub it ‘Bleak House’. She had become, in a sense, a prisoner of her own making, a captive of her psyche. She had won a measure of freedom, even if not full emancipation. The door of the gilded cage was open. Now she had to find the will to make a new life for herself. Instead, she seemed to half live the old.

  It was, in truth, a quiet, almost monastic, life. The Princess’s daily routine rarely varied. Her day started promptly at 7am. After a light breakfast of pink grapefruit, home-made muesli or granary toast, or fresh fruit and yoghurt and coffee, she departed for her daily workout at the exclusive Chelsea Harbour Club. She never showered at the club, preferring to change at home, away from curious eyes – and possible camera lenses. Around 9am her flamboyant hairdresser, Sam McKnight, put in an appearance. He was one of the few men in her life who could keep the Princess waiting – and still keep her smiling. While he attended to her hair (a change of style invariably signalled a change in the direction of her life), the Princess was busy on her bedroom phone, for friends knew that early morning was a good time to catch her. At that time of day she was usually chatty and lighthearted. By evening, however, when the events of the day had exhausted her and left her emotional batteries depleted, making conversation could be, as one friend noted, ‘like pushing glue uphill’.

  There was a mound of correspondence to be dealt with every day, with the help of her private secretary, Patrick Jephson, and her secretaries. Diana insisted on opening much of the mail herself. As well as letters from her charities, there were others from members of the public. These, usually diffident in style, contained homilies, felicitations and accounts of difficult personal experiences. The Princess was deeply touched by many of them and would often write personal replies. She was, in any case, an assiduous correspondent, one who remembered dozens of birthdays every year and who, in her friend Rosa Monckton’s words, ‘wrote thank-you letters more promptly than anyone else I know’. Jephson recalled: ‘After a tour she might write to your wife and say sorry for taking him away. She could be an inspiring boss as well as a demanding one, and often displayed great acts of kindness to those who worked for her.’

  From about 10am, she liked to telephone friends. Regular callers included Lord Palumbo, her lawyer, Lord Mishcon, the Duchess of York and, following their reconciliation, her stepmother, Raine. If she was feeling depressed or bored or lonely, she would go shopping to cheer herself up. There were also weekly trips to see her therapist, Susie Orbach, at her North London home, and what the Princess herself called ‘Pamper Diana’ days, where she enjoyed a variety of New Age therapies.

  At lunchtime she might meet friends at a restaurant or occasionally host a business lunch at home. Most of the time, however, she ate a modest meal alone at Kensington Palace. After lunch, she might receive official visitors connected with her charities or the regiments she was involved with, or spend an hour or so catching up with correspondence, leaving her butlers to field the constant telephone enquiries. Sometimes she would visit her offices at St James’s Palace, or drive to the boys’ schools, watching them play in their sports teams. On summer afternoons she would spend hours sitting in the garden, engrossed in the latest blockbuster novel.

  In her Kensington Palace fastness, Diana knew that every time she ventured out from behind the safety of her front door she made herself a hostage to fortune. Occasionally she would go to the cinema with a couple of girlfriends, but she cancelled a trip to see What’s Love Got To Do With It? – about Tina Turner’s violent relationship with her husband – in case her choice of film was misconstrued. She often spent her evenings alone, retiring to bed to eat a light supper from a tray and watch television.

  Her increasingly solitary existence became a matter of concern to her circle of friends. ‘Such loneliness, she doesn’t know who she can trust,’ said her friend Lucia Flecha de Lima. The Princess’s global celebrity only heightened this sense of emotional isolation. ‘She feels that she is in a prison, not just a goldfish bowl but within her own experience, a prison with no way out and no shoulder to cry on. It is a terrible space to be in,’ said an adviser.

  She missed her children badly, particularly at traditional times of family celebration. On Christmas Day 1993, a little over a year after the separation was announced, the Princess stayed with the boys at Sandringham, the Queen’s Norfolk retreat, on Christmas Eve, but left, smiling bravely, for Kensington Palace on the morning of Christmas Day. Back in London she ate her Christmas lunch alone before going for a swim, again alone, at Buckingham Palace. The next day she flew to Washington to spend a week with L
ucia Flecha de Lima. As Diana herself recalled: ‘I cried all the way out and all the way back, I felt so sorry for myself.’

  Her weekends were, if anything, even quieter than her weekdays, except when the boys came to stay. Under the terms of the separation, the Princess saw the boys on alternate weekends when school holidays allowed. Diana would pick them up from Ludgrove and, later, Eton, and drive them back to London for tea in the nursery. Like most youngsters, they sat glued to the latest action movies on satellite television, which the Princess had installed so they wouldn’t miss their favourites. After supper, the boys watched a rented video like Rambo – Arnold Schwarzenegger was something of a hero – or played a Nintendo computer game before going to bed.

  On Saturday and Sunday mornings, at around 8.30, William and Harry had breakfast with their nanny. The Princess kept to her own schedule even when the young Princes were there, and it was left to the nanny to supervise dressing. When they were ready, they might join their mother at her gym, where they were learning to play tennis, or stay at home, riding their BMX bikes in the Kensington Palace grounds, or let off steam in vigorous water-pistol fights, spraying each other with hosepipes, or have pitched water-bomb battles with schoolfriends. There were other diversions, too, especially when their mother’s schedule allowed her to take them on outings. Harry’s favourite pastime then was go-karting at a circuit in Berkshire. As a sportsman he was quite fearless, eager to run William into the ground. The older prince preferred to go riding or shooting with his friends, where he was not constantly frustrated by his inability to better his younger brother. He was, in any case, the more serious of the two, Harry the more nimble and impish, both in sport and conversation. Yet while Harry teased his elder brother mercilessly, he needed him desperately.