by Tim Clayton
. . . for her the joy would have been to come home and have a conversation with her husband about what her day had been like. Now she could have spoken to him on the telephone for all I was aware, but it would appear that this didn’t happen very often because she phoned me or she phoned some other friend to talk to about it.
She talked to me about Camilla and I did the best I could to calm her down, to make her put her energies into constructive things like her work, like her friends.
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Diana could be hard on those who had to work alongside her. Oliver Everett, her unofficial private secretary, was drawn deep into her confidence and then suddenly became a non-person. He was not called to meetings, his memos and phone calls were unanswered, his presence in the room was ignored. This lasted for months. What had caused Diana’s displeasure was never explained to him, but in December 1983 he resigned. Charles intervened to get Everett another job in the royal household, and was angry at the waste of his talent.
Michael Colborne had been at Charles’s side for almost a decade and had enjoyed an unusually frank and informal relationship with him. Now he found himself stretched between Prince and Princess and took the brunt of Charles’s occasional outbursts of temper, notably in Canada in 1983 when he was accused of spending too much time with Diana. Colborne said that he thought Charles wanted him to offer her advice and support. What followed was one of the most harrowing scenes of the marriage. Charles screamed at his friend, stomped around the room and kicked the furniture. Then, as he angrily wrenched open the door, he discovered Diana crouched outside, listening and sobbing. Charles calmed down and took her in his arms. For Colborne it was one trauma too many, and he decided to leave royal service.
Diana’s mental stability has been the subject of many briefings, and has been written about at great length. Less attention has been paid to her husband’s own unpredictable behaviour. While there has never been any suggestion that he physically threatened her, there could at times be a brooding menace in the Prince, as many who were close to him have remarked. Patrick Jephson, Diana’s future private secretary, ‘learned that, among other feelings he stirred in her, many of them warm and affectionate, the Princess also felt fear . . . When she felt herself to be on the receiving end of his anger, before her characteristic defiance set in, I often saw a look of trepidation cross her face, as if she were once again a small girl in trouble with the grown-ups.’
Jayne Fincher was still taking photographs of every royal event. She saw a real difference in Diana when Charles was not around.
When she was with him, the protocol was a lot more formal. When he wasn’t there she was very flirty, would giggle like mad, particularly if she went on visits with the military. She loved all the soldiers, and she’d giggle her head off and flutter her eyelashes and be completely silly.
Diana became pregnant again at New Year, and during 1984 Charles reduced his engagements once again. The marriage still clearly had its moments, but over time there were steadily less making-the-best-of-it mornings, and rather more you-never-loved-me afternoons. Michael Colborne tendered his resignation in the spring of 1984, but stayed to the end of the year. Charles was particularly shaken at Colborne’s departure, which brought home to him how much the bad state of his marriage was affecting his own behaviour.
Henry Charles Albert David was born on Saturday, 15 September 1984 in the Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. He weighed 6lb 140z. According to Diana, the birth of her second son marked the end of any hope for her marriage. Charles had been wanting a girl, was disappointed with Harry’s auburn hair colour, and left the maternity hospital for the polo field in unseemly haste. Such lack of feeling from a husband devoted to both his sons does not sound credible, but it’s what she told Andrew Morton seven years later: ‘as Harry was born it just went bang, our marriage, the whole thing went down the drain . . . By then I knew he had gone back to his lady but somehow we’d managed to have Harry.’
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During Diana’s second pregnancy Charles made a speech that changed several people’s lives. On 30 May 1984, at an anniversary celebration for the Royal Institute of British Architects, he gave vent to his dislike for the introduction of steel and glass into familiar neoclassical London landscapes. He pointed to a lack of communication between planners and the recipients of their efforts, and argued in favour of community architecture. So far, so uncontroversial: large sections of the public shared his horror at the urban planning of the sixties and seventies. But then he specifically attacked the current proposal for the extension to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, calling it a ‘monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend’. Although his remarks brought letters of support from the public, they outraged many in the architectural profession, and damaged the career of the architect responsible, Peter Ahrends. Ahrends, whose design was doomed the moment the Prince spoke out against it, tried to point out that it had resulted from long consultations with the gallery’s trustees. He called the Prince’s remarks ‘offensive, reactionary and ill-considered . . . if he holds such strong views, I’m surprised that he did not take the opportunity offered by the public inquiry to express them’.
Edward Adeane had spent days trying to persuade Charles not to make the speech, fearing that it would drag the Prince into a nasty public row with a profession he knew little about. It did. Within six months, Charles’s private secretary was gone too.
Ever since his first, upbeat biography in 1979, Anthony Holden had written and broadcast widely about the Prince. Charles valued the support of someone from a newspaper like the Sunday Times, and various of his friends provided Holden with briefings and insights into the Royal Family.
In 1979 Holden had seen Charles as a breath of fresh air. He had described him as a ‘self-conscious, deeply vulnerable, desperately well-meaning man . . . proud, ambitious, romantic and anxious to carve himself a place in history’. Holden had been impressed by Charles’s determination to involve himself in the core issues of modern Britain. But he had warned that:
He will need to prove himself more in touch with the progressive thinking and relaxed life-style of a large proportion of his own age group, who approach the seats of power quite as remorselessly as he approaches the throne.
The architecture speech convinced Holden that Charles had failed the test. His next book would be much less kind, calling Charles ‘a tortured, self-doubting, almost monkish introvert . . . born in a century which he increasingly mistrusted’. Warming to his wife’s more easy-going style, Holden would become one of Diana’s great champions in the years that followed, one of many who came to identify her with the spirit of the times, and Charles with the past.
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Diana was also developing a new image for herself – as the British fashion industry’s most influential model. It was an interesting twist on the role originally allotted to her by the press. As soon as Diana had appeared she had become the subject of an intense style critique. Judy Wade accepts responsibility:
It was the women’s pages that really went to town on Diana. I was writing endless features about the wonderful ruffled romantic clothes she wore. I wrote reams and reams about her wardrobe, her weight-watching, her diet secrets. The Palace thought that we were trivialising the monarchy by writing all this tosh about Diana’s frocks, her hairdo. I remember once [November 1984] she attended the State Opening of Parliament, and for the very first time she wore her hair up, and she totally pushed the Queen off the front pages that day.
Lookalike competitions took place in clubs and pubs across the world. Everything she wore was copied: the lamb sweater, the ruffled collars, the wondergirl headband, the chokers, the off-the-shoulder dresses. She brought glamour to the Royal Family at a time when glamour was the new big thing. More and more celebrity and style magazines appeared, and Diana featured in them all. Magazines were launched that were entirely devoted to the British Royal Family. They tended to avoid stories about communi
ty architecture, instead going to town on endless photographs of Diana and her children, Diana and her shoes, Diana and her beauty routine. They sold well, and they sold way beyond the old British and Commonwealth heartlands of royal enthusiasm, stocking news-stands in New York, Paris and Madrid.
Her dress sense had started out as frumpy and unadventurous, but it soon became genuinely and impressively stylish as she took to wearing the very best of British design. Her original fashion adviser, Anna Harvey, introduced her to Caroline Charles, Jasper Conran and Bruce Oldfield. Henceforth Diana became the standard-bearer for an entire industry, catapulting it out of the doldrums to worldwide acclaim.
Jayne Fincher, who still remembered her first encounter with Diana’s green woolly coat, was astonished:
It happened before our very eyes, the transformation from this shy teenager, who hid beneath big hats, and hung her head, into the self-assured woman and mother, confident in her beauty. It never struck me that she was conceited about this, I think she just enjoyed being who she was, and I’m sure too, grateful for being as beautiful as she was. I really saw no evidence of vanity in her, and sometimes I looked pretty hard, because I thought – come on, nobody can really take all this without maybe their head getting turned a bit.
Arthur Edwards recalls royal tours from this period:
When she got off the plane in a different country you were given a slip of paper: ‘The Princess is wearing a dress of blue silk made by so-and-so, and the hat is made by so-and-so in matching colours.’ It was quite amazing. I mean, we never got given a piece of paper with ‘and Prince Charles is wearing a suit made in Savile Row’ or anything like that.
On the tour to Italy in the spring of 1985 Diana wore dozens of different outfits, all striking and stylish. She looked fantastic descending from the plane at Olbia airport in a lavender-coloured suit by Jan van Velden. At La Spezia she sported a white pin-stripe with a white nautical hat in a tribute to her hosts, the Italian Navy. She appeared in a black and bright blue dress with shimmering silver and blue stars by Jacques Azagury at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. At lunch with the President of Italy she wore a silk seersucker by Bruce Oldfield; in Sicily, a candy-striped silk dress. Being in favour with Diana became important for top fashion designers. The Emanuels were frozen out for years after a dispute. In a gondola in Venice she signalled her forgiveness by wearing a green coat-dress that they had designed.
Diana was irritated when it was reported that for the Italian tour she had spent £100,000 on her wardrobe. She was particularly cross that the leak came from Andrew Morton, one of her favourites in the press corps. Ken Lennox remembers the moment: ‘Diana marched right up to him and said, “Mr Morton, don’t you know the difference between a lira sign and a pound sign? They are very close but even you should be able to spot that.’ ” Tall and bespectacled, with a modest manner, Morton bore a marked resemblance to Clark Kent, the journalist alter ego of Superman as played by Christopher Reeve. ‘Superman’ was his nickname in the press corps. Lennox notes that this was just one in a series of flirtatious encounters between Diana and the best looking of the royal pressmen. ‘The two of them used to have this little sort of blushing routine between them. She used to complain about his terrible ties, and Andrew used to blush and we always used to look at him and say, “You great big silly sausage, you.” ’ Judy Wade says:
I vividly remember the first time Diana and Andrew Morton met. It was at a cocktail party and Diana immediately seemed to be interested in him. She was toying with his tie and making comments about what a bright pattern it was. From then on Andrew always wore loudly patterned ties when Diana was around and she always made comments about them. It gave her an excuse to get close to him. Once she picked up his tie and pulled him towards her and we were all standing back amazed, gobsmacked, and the press officer who was standing near by said, ‘God, I think I’ll have to get a bucket of water and throw it over them.’
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In a decade of celebrity came one of the great celebrity events. In July 1985, Bob Geldof masterminded a sixteen-hour live concert held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia to raise money to help the starving population of Ethiopia. As the hours passed and Geldof demanded ‘give us your fucking money’, phone lines were jammed as millions put donations on their credit cards. The concert was watched by 1.5 billion people worldwide and raised $40 million.
The complicated relationship between glamour and good causes would be an important part of Diana’s future. In 1985 many established charity workers were cynical about the intervention of pop stars and fashion models. They expected it all to go wrong, and that Geldof would take money that would otherwise have gone elsewhere. Instead he introduced huge numbers of young people to the concept of helping others. What had been a matter of fusty old collection boxes wielded by pensioners suddenly became part of their world. Compassion and cool were a heady combination, charity made sexy and immediate by the involvement of superstars like Madonna, David Bowie and Paul McCartney and live television pictures that made suffering real in every home. The royal couple attended. Diana jigged along to the music, Charles looked uncomfortable in a suit. Afterwards, in private, he sought to befriend Geldof, telling him how much he admired his initiative. But in public Diana looked in tune with the times, he did not.
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The balance of power was altering. Diana, ‘fashion Queen’, appeared self-assured, whereas Charles, ‘loony Prince’, looked wayward in his judgment. Most of the tabloids delighted in mocking him. But in early February 1985 Andrew Morton, billed as ‘the man who really knows the Royals’, wrote an odd piece in the Daily Star in the wake of a public argument between the royal couple on the ski slopes in Liechtenstein. Diana had stalked away rather than talk to the press, leaving Charles standing there looking foolish. ‘Now I’ll get it in the neck,’ he said. Morton’s article presented a stormy but loving marriage of two strong characters with Charles willingly colluding in Diana’s modern ideas on child rearing. He ended by explaining that while Charles might be a mouse, if pushed too far he was a mouse that roared. On the same page the Star reported Diana’s sacking of her hairdresser, Kevin Shanley, and the alleged fury of Prince Philip that her new hairstyle, worn to the opening of Parliament the previous November, had forced the Queen’s Speech out of the news.
In October 1985, just before the couple arrived for a much-trumpeted tour of the United States, Morton’s ‘mouse that roars’ phrase was recast, along with some of his ideas, by Tina Brown for Vanity Fair. Prince Charles’s former ally, Anthony Holden helped Brown research what was a perceptive and prescient analysis of the royal relationship. Brown spelled out the role reversal. She spoke of reports that the Prince was ‘pussy whipped from here to eternity’. Diana had transformed herself from a mouse to a royal Alexis Carrington (the power-dressing anti-heroine of Dynasty), the Prince from an action man to a shabby gardener. Each was reacting badly to the changes in the other. Brown spoke with approval of Diana’s charisma, but noted that the ascension to stardom had affected her as it affected everyone: ‘she is in that adversary mood towards the press that is the first stage in the removal from life that fame inflicts. The second stage is “Graceland”, when the real world melts away altogether.’
Brown and Holden’s article also made a daring reference to Camilla Parker Bowles’s supposed role in helping Charles choose a submissive, controllable wife, and pointed out that the result was far from what Camilla might have intended.
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A trip to Brunei generated a letter from Charles that made clear how disenchanted he had become:
As always on these occasions I heard myself twittering away reproducing the most nonsensical rubbish while small gentlemen in white uniforms crawled about on their knees in front of us, pouring out cups of tea and offering plates of sticky cakes.
Charles had a keen sense of the absurd. The Goon Show, a gently subversive BBC radio comedy series from the 1950s, was an ab
iding passion from childhood. The Goons specialised in making fun of the pompous and the proud. Classic British authority figures, generals and bishops, were undermined with a loud, wet raspberry or the falsetto rendition of their trademark ‘Ying Tong, Ying Tong’ song. From early youth Charles had a satirist’s eye for the silliness of much of what he did: the meaningless meetings with self-important local dignitaries, the tuneless national anthems played in dusty foreign airports, the endless handshaking insincerities (’And what do you do?’) at the garden party and the fête. In the mid-1980s his disenchantment – fuelled by unhappiness at home and the disappointing reception given to his initiatives – was at an all-time high. Another 1984 excursion amid presidents, generals, tycoons and arms dealers found Charles fighting ‘the urge to say something provocative and outrageous’. As ever, he wanted to escape from the national anthems and the sticky cakes and do something serious. A toe-curling story in Brown’s Vanity Fair article illustrates the point. Brown recalls being introduced to the Prince alongside the celebrated playwright Tom Stoppard:
‘I’ve thought of a good idea for a play,’ he told Tom Stoppard. ‘It’s about a hotel which caters entirely for people with phobias. It was a small item in The Times.’ ‘We’ll go halves on the take, sir,’ Stoppard said kindly. ‘Actually I thought it was so amusing,’ Prince Charles persisted, ‘I telephoned Spike Milligan [the Goon Show writer] and told him. It’s a frightfully funny idea, don’t you think?’ His words conjured up a poignant picture: Prince Charles asking his secretary to put through a call to Milligan who, after conquering his astonishment, had to listen politely and humour the royal desire to throw out a spark that might ignite somewhere.