Afterward, Diana wrote to Angela Serota that caring for Ward-Jackson gave her a “more positive and balanced” view of life, although her subsequent actions didn’t indicate a new level of maturity. She had come to similarly optimistic conclusions before, but lost sight of them during periods of personal adversity. “Afterward she didn’t rather mention Adrian,” said a woman who knew her well. “For her, that was not odd. It was intense and current, and then when it was over, that was it: out of sight, out of mind.” “She was extraordinarily affected at the time,” one of Ward-Jackson’s friends said. “But she absorbed pretty superficially. I don’t think she learned long-term lessons.”
Diana carried on with her duties, living with the subterfuge of the Morton book. By then, deception had become second nature. In August, she joined Charles and the boys for a Mediterranean cruise on a yacht owned by John Latsis, a wealthy Greek friend. The tabloids were appropriately moonstruck, pronouncing it a “second honeymoon,” and the Waleses “two lovebirds” who were “happier and closer than for ages … scotching rumors of a big freeze.” Charles and Diana were also reasonably successful maintaining appearances on an official visit to Canada with William and Harry in October, immortalized by one of Diana’s favorite photographs of herself: smiling with arms outstretched as she ran up the gangplank of the Britannia to greet her two sons.
Meanwhile, the Waleses were navigating their daily life through their private secretaries. As James Gilbey summed up their existence at the time, “Their lives are spent in total isolation.” Diana had a successful four-day solo tour of Pakistan that fall, giving the tabloids another opportunity to draw pointed contrasts. “While the caring princess meets crippled Afghan child refugees,” Ashley Walton wrote in the Daily Express, “Charles will be fishing and stalking deer with friends.”
A month later, Penny Junor, who earlier in the year had authored a book saying the Wales marriage was “actually very healthy,” wrote a magazine article on Diana pronouncing 1991 “the greatest year of her life,” when she became “the new Diana, the complete woman.” Charles and Diana, Junor wrote, “are together far more than you would believe from reading the reports in the tabloid press.”
Diana was eager to send the opposite message the following February during the couple’s tour of India. A memorable image of Diana sitting alone in front of the Taj Mahal, the tomb built by a Mogul emperor for his wife, was the most vivid example up to then of her use of photographs to make a point. On a visit many years earlier, Charles had vowed to bring his future wife to the romantic monument. Palace officials planning the schedule for the Indian trip had no knowledge of the Prince’s pledge and didn’t give a second thought to Diana’s solo visit. It was only the day before, when they saw the tabloid pack’s excitement, that they realized the photographers wanted a picture to fit the story they planned. Diana understood, too, and obligingly posed in “wistful solitude” (Daily Mail) as a “poignant reminder of the royal wish that did not come true” (Daily Mirror). Her message, Dimbleby wrote: “The marriage was indeed on the rocks.”
As it turned out, the photograph was the first in a run of potent images crafted by Diana that spring. The next day in India, when Charles tried to kiss her after a polo match, she turned her head so the cameras would catch him awkwardly pecking her neck. Diana was well aware the tabloids were hoping for a proper smooch; she and her aides even discussed the photo opportunity beforehand, and the Evening Standard set the stage by saying “all eyes will be on them.” OH COME ON YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT CHARLES! blared the Daily Mirror’s front-page headline, placing the blame for the botched kiss on the hapless Prince. But the Mirror’s man James Whitaker later admitted, “It was she who seemed to make sure it didn’t work. She knew that there would be a lot of judgment on it.” On a solo visit to Egypt several months later, Diana echoed her Taj Mahal shot by posing in solitude in front of the Pyramids. “Here she was again, the innocent victim,” The Sunday Times noted. “And once again, the image was carefully created.”
In March 1992, Johnnie Spencer died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age sixty-eight while the Waleses were skiing in Lech, Austria. Even in her grief, Diana wished to cut a lone figure, agreeing to travel home with Charles only after their staff argued at length that if they went separately they would suffer a “tabloid mauling.” For her father’s funeral, however, they arrived and departed on their own, at Diana’s request. The press showed some restraint in its interpretation this time. Charles had a meeting in London afterward, “leaving Diana to attend her father’s cremation without him,” noted the Daily Mail.
As Diana put distance between herself and Charles, she was already worrying about the consequences of the Morton book, which was due to be published on June 16. Some Palace officials were aware of the project, but not the extent of Diana’s involvement. The previous November, Diana’s friend Roberto Devorik had met with Patrick Jephson, Diana’s recently appointed private secretary, over lunch at Mark’s Club in London. Devorik had heard Diana was cooperating with a book and that she had sanctioned a previously unpublished photograph by French photographer Patrick Demarchelier for the cover. Devorik recalled, “I asked, ‘Are you aware of this book?’ Patrick [Jephson] said, ‘This is my nightmare.’ ” By January, Robert Fellowes and other top Palace aides were poking around to figure out what line they should take. They got nothing from Diana because she could truthfully say she had no contact with Andrew Morton, but she was unnerved by the inquiry.
Diana gave a speech on AIDS that March at a monthly dinner gathering of high-powered media executives called the Thirty Club. About 150 members showed up at Claridges, and although Michael Adler, chairman of the National AIDS Trust, was by Diana’s side, she was extremely nervous—so much so that she was visibly shaking. But she rose and talked about the incidence of AIDS among women, and afterward fielded questions from the likes of Telegraph owner Conrad Black and Mail owner Lord Rothermere. “It was a hard-boiled crowd,” Andrew Knight said. “She spoke well, but it was awfully stilted, and she didn’t say much. During the question period, she would say something sweet, and Michael Adler would add chapter and verse. But overall, she did awfully well.”
The most revealing part of the evening occurred before her speech. At dinner, she was seated next to film producer David Puttnam, who was a friend, though not part of her intimate circle. Perhaps as a result of her nervousness, “suddenly she started confiding in me how unhappy things were in her marriage,” Puttnam recalled. “She said, ‘Neither of us has been perfect, but I’ve done a really stupid thing. I have allowed a book to be written. I felt it was a good idea, a way of clearing the air, but now I think it was a very stupid thing that will cause all kinds of terrible trouble.’ She said, ‘I would like to reel the movie back. It is the daftest thing I have ever done.’ ”
In May, the rumors began to surface as The Sunday Times announced it would serialize the book starting on June 7. When Morton’s publisher, Michael O’Mara, had first taken the book to Andrew Neil in March 1992, the Sunday Times editor had replied, “I think it would be better off in a tabloid.” Neil was intrigued by O’Mara’s description of the book’s disclosures, along with his assurance that it had been “effectively” authorized by Diana, yet Neil at first “did not believe it,” he later said. “It seemed too fantastical.”
Morton then came to see Neil to persuade him otherwise. “He started going through and naming sources, even those not named in the book,” Neil recalled, “and he said, ‘I have a lot more backup.’ I was impressed.” Neil dispatched his deputy Sue Douglas to read the manuscript. Although she was put off by the “gushing prose,” she was jolted by the revelations, but even more by O’Mara’s tip that the photos had come from Diana’s father and that some of her best friends had spoken to the author. Douglas spoke to Andrew Knight, who revealed Angela Serota’s role and vouched for her as a “person of integrity.” “We have something serious on our hands,” Douglas told Neil, who agreed to consider publishing ex
cerpts if Douglas and a task force could independently verify the allegations.
Based on his knowledge of Serota’s involvement—and recalling Diana’s request—Knight lobbied for publication. “I was able to say to Andrew Neil, ‘I think you are right to get more interested in this book, because I have been following it through one person, and she is completely trustworthy, and she and Diana are close.’ I knew it was a huge story which was sure to break in one paper or another, and The Sunday Times’s function over the years was to break that kind of story without favor.” Douglas’s task force corroborated the book to their satisfaction. A number of the major sources had signed statements certifying their quotes, and the photos from the Spencer family confirmed Diana’s authorization. “I never had any doubt that this was a reasonably accurate version of what she believed to be the truth,” Neil said. When Neil went to Rupert Murdoch to say The Sunday Times was prepared to publish, “Rupert said, ‘I’ll back you on whatever you do, but remember, if you do this they will try to destroy you.’ ”
The Daily Mail had also read the manuscript and made a bid, but The Sunday Times upped the ante to £250,000 ($440,000) and secured the rights. By then, Neil, Douglas, and others believed Diana had read the manuscript. Douglas knew “there were large chunks of tape-recordings. Andrew Morton let me believe these were friends being briefed by Diana and taped by him.” Morton had also told Stuart Higgins of The Sun, “Treat that book as though the Princess had signed every page.”
Given the number of journalists aware of Diana’s fingerprints, it was probably inevitable that an article of unsettling accuracy about the Morton book would appear only weeks before publication. “It is believed,” said the Daily Express in early May, that “the author has had close cooperation with the Princess and her family to produce startling revelations about her marriage … The Princess is already reported to have read the proofs and has the power to make amendments.… Officials are also concerned that pictures in the book have come from the Princess’s family and will be seen as more evidence of her tacit approval.”
A few days later at a dinner at the British ambassador’s residence in Cairo, Diana startled her fellow guests by announcing, “I still see myself as Lady Diana Spencer.” When someone asked what would happen when Charles became king, she replied, “I think I will still be Lady Di.” It was an uncomfortable moment that turned reckless a few moments later when an Egyptian said, “Here we can change our royal family every few years.” Catching his words, Diana shouted across the room, “In our country, we are stuck with ours.”
The misgivings she had expressed to David Puttnam seemed to have vanished, and Diana was again emboldened. Weeks away from her thirty-first birthday, she was on the verge of seeing her “true” story in print, buttressed by the respectable imprimatur of The Sunday Times. It is impossible to know what she expected: certainly sympathy for how she had been treated and understanding of her problems, as well as the ruination of Camilla Parker Bowles. She also seemed to think that the press would accept her story and move on, that she could preserve her marriage, and that she could maintain her innocence. “The Princess hoped by putting her side across with the Morton book that the press would do her a favor,” said Robert Hardman of The Daily Telegraph. “She was very wrong.”
Chapter 17
The uproar that followed the serialization and publication of Andrew Morton’s book in June 1992 shocked everyone, including Diana. By exposing her emotional torment and mental illness, the book created enormous sympathy for her, but nearly destroyed Charles by blaming him for her problems and portraying him as a callous and unfaithful husband, as well as an insensitive parent. Perhaps the most wounding quote of all came from Diana’s close friend James Gilbey, who said, “She thinks he is a bad father, a selfish father; the children have to tie in with whatever he’s doing.”
Diana may have explained herself to the public, but she had alienated her husband, his family and their retainers, members of her own family, and the establishment, whose support she needed. She had exposed a group of her friends to press harassment. Most of all, in creating new story lines for the inquisitive press, she had invaded “her own privacy,” as Lord McGregor, Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, put it. “There was no commercial advantage to holding back once we got an inkling of how bad things were,” said Max Hastings, then editor of The Daily Telegraph.
In the weeks before the book’s publication, senior advisers in the Palace had believed it increasingly likely that Diana had colluded in some way with Morton, but she had deflected their efforts to pin her down. Three days before the first excerpt appeared in The Sunday Times, The Sun ran an article saying that Diana was “coming under strong pressure … to publicly disassociate herself” from the book, even as Morton and Buckingham Palace “strenuously denied” that she had cooperated. Nevertheless, the tabloid pointed out that “other royals” had begun to question Diana’s role after learning about the inclusion of pictures from Spencer family albums and her approval of the cover photograph. Morton later characterized the atmosphere as “a war situation. I felt very much on her side.”
Diana’s brother-in-law Robert Fellowes asked her directly, not once but several times, if she had cooperated with the book. Each time she assured him that she had not, and he believed her.
Fellowes had served the Queen for fifteen years, and since 1990 had been her private secretary, the highest position in the courtier ranks. A former Guards officer educated at Eton, Fellowes was regarded as intelligent, steady, and deliberate in his work. Fealty to his sovereign was paramount: He devoted himself to protecting the Queen’s interests and took the heat on her behalf whenever necessary. Since their marriage in 1978, Robert and Jane Fellowes had been an exemplary couple, living modestly and avoiding the limelight. “Robert is absolutely incorruptible,” one of his friends said. “He’s the sort who bicycles to work with his father’s old battered leather briefcase. He isn’t interested in money or power. He is not fashionable today because he is so straight.”
Behind his Bertie Wooster manner, however, Fellowes could be astute and worldly, and in his own quiet way he was trying to modernize the monarchy—helping to ease the Queen into paying income tax, for example. But he had a blind spot when it came to Diana and, recognizing that Diana was troubled, he tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Perhaps if Robert had been more Machiavellian, it might have served him better,” said another of his friends. He might have profited from more imagination as well. When Diana denied cooperation with Morton, Fellowes took her at face value, assuming she had responded straightforwardly (as he would have), and disregarding evidence that indicated otherwise.
The first Sunday Times excerpt on June 7 highlighted Diana’s bulimia, suicide attempts, and Charles and Camilla’s secret relationship. Although clearly one-sided, the article was persuasive in its details and its naming of Diana’s friends as sources. After reading it, one of Diana’s close friends called her immediately. “She pretended to me it had nothing to do with her,” said her friend. “But my heart sank, reading it, because I could see she had. One thing gave it away, that quote, ‘He was all over me like a bad rash.’ But I never brought it up again.” Dining with another friend a few days later, Diana said, “I couldn’t stop my friends talking.” As the friend recalled, “It was fantastically disingenuous. If you are a friend of the royal family, you don’t talk unless they tell you to.”
“I HAVE NOT COOPERATED WITH THIS BOOK IN ANY WAY,” announced the Daily Mirror’s page-one headline on June 8, quoting Diana. That day, Lord McGregor of the Press Complaints Commission contacted Robert Fellowes, who assured him, as did the Queen’s press secretary Charles Anson, that Diana had no involvement in the Morton book. McGregor then drafted a statement condemning press coverage of the Wales marriage as an “odious exhibition of journalists dabbling their fingers in the stuff of other people’s souls.” Before releasing the statement, McGregor checked once more with Fellowes about persistent rumors t
hat Diana had leaked information on the Wales marriage. Fellowes said the rumors were baseless.
Prince Charles first read the excerpt over breakfast at Highgrove on Sunday, but when he tried to talk to Diana about it, she fled to London in tears. Charles and Diana met at Kensington Palace the next day to discuss what to do next. Diana recounted her version of that meeting to Morton’s middleman James Colthurst, who recorded her description in a diary: “Diana and Charles agreed that they were incompatible, and decided on a parting of the ways…. He was being reasonable, grown-up and himself. No tears. First time Diana slept through night without sleeping pills.”
On Tuesday, top Murdoch executive Andrew Knight wrote what he later described as a “pompous” letter to McGregor, insisting that The Sunday Times had serialized the book only after establishing its authenticity. According to Colthurst’s diary, Robert Fellowes called Diana that day to probe her further about the book, saying “she was making his life unbearable.” Diana also told Colthurst she had talked to friends about finding a lawyer and had drawn up “a shortlist of five.”
Lord McGregor phoned Knight on Wednesday the tenth. “Are you really telling me the Princess knew?” McGregor asked. “She did know,” replied Knight. “She authorized it.” Only moments earlier, Knight had heard from Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of The Sun, who said, “You’ll never guess what today’s story is. We’ve been phoned and told there is a photo op with Diana at the home of one of her friends.”
Diana in Search of Herself Page 32