by Penny Junor
On the evening of 5 November, a small film crew from the BBC flagship current affairs program, Panorama, including the journalist Martin Bashir, visited Diana at Kensington Palace posing as hi-fi salesmen. It was a Sunday when all her staff were off. Only a handful of people knew who they really were, or why they were there, and it was kept that way until shortly before the program aired at 9:30 p.m. on 20 November, fifteen days later. Viewers watched transfixed as one of the most explosive and deadly fifty-eight minutes of television unfolded in front of their eyes.
HRH Diana, Princess of Wales, sitting forlornly in Kensington Palace, wiped away the occasional tear as she talked about her marriage, her in-laws, her love affairs and her children.
She described her feelings of isolation and emptiness, of being a strong woman, a free spirit. She talked about her bulimia, her self-harming, her cries for help. She talked about the Prince’s friends who waged a war in the media against her, indicating that she was “unstable, sick and should be put in a home.” She talked about his obsession with Camilla—” There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded”—and “the enemy,” her “husband’s department” that tried to undermine her. She had held those telephone conversations with James Gilbey, she admitted, and she had made calls to Oliver Hoare, but not three hundred. She had had an affair with James Hewitt, whom she had adored, and she had been devastated when his book came out “because I trusted him, and because… I worried about the reaction of my children… and it was very distressing for me that a friend of mine, who I had trusted, had made money out of me… The first thing I did was rush down to talk to my children. And William produced a box of chocolates and said, ‘Mummy, I think you’ve been hurt. These are to make you smile again.’ ”
For someone whose first instinct had been to rush down and make sure her children were all right when Hewitt’s innocuous book hit the shelves, this was an inexplicable interview to have given. A few hundred people might have seen Hewitt’s book, a few thousand at most. This interview was seen by over twenty million viewers; it was picked up by just about every newspaper and news magazine in the world, and by every radio and television news bulletin. This was dynamite, and she knew it. She knew that the media would go crazy; she knew that it would strike the man who had spurned her where it hurt most. But was she forgetting that that man was also her children’s father? In those fifty-eight minutes she had taken a swipe at all the people William and Harry loved best. And she had talked about things that neither ten-year-olds, nor even thirteen-year-olds, want to hear, and certainly don’t want their friends to hear either.
But at times like this, Diana wasn’t thinking like a mother. She was the child still nursing those feelings of abandonment and emptiness that she had carried for so much of her life; hell-bent on self-aggrandizement and self-justification and ultimately self-destruction.
The most damaging remarks in the interview had to do with her doubts that their father should ever be King. She had been devastated, she said, when she heard on the news that he had disclosed his adultery to Jonathan Dimbleby, but she had admired his honesty, which for someone in his position was “quite something.” When asked whether the Prince of Wales would ever be King or would wish to be, she said, “being Prince of Wales produces more freedom now, and being King would be a little bit more suffocating. And because I know the character, I would think that the top job, as I call it, would bring enormous limitations to him, and I don’t know whether he could adapt to that.”
And for the final deadly twist of the knife, when asked if, when he came of age, she would wish to see Prince William succeed the Queen rather than his father, she said, “My wish is that my husband finds peace of mind, and from that follows other things, yes.”
It was pure, unadulterated theater, as those who knew her recognized, but the wider audience saw her as a victim; a sinner perhaps, but a sinner whose only sin was to love—and certainly more sinned against than guilty of any crime herself. She had used Bashir and the BBC just as surely as she had used Andrew Morton.
Patrick Jephson, her Private Secretary, only knew a week before transmission that she had filmed an interview—she hadn’t been able to resist telling him—and he managed to establish it was for Panorama, which set alarm bells screeching, but she’d refused to tell him any more. “It’s terribly moving,” was all she would say. “Some of the men who watched were moved to tears. Don’t worry, everything will be all right…” He immediately alerted Buckingham Palace and everyone from the Queen to Diana’s lawyer, Lord Mishcon, tried to persuade her to reconsider, or at least to let them know what she had said, but they too were left to wait until the credits rolled that November night, to find out just what she had done. Geoff Crawford, Diana’s Press Secretary, watching the program in the press office at Buckingham Palace with a group of courtiers, had jovially bet everyone a bottle of champagne that it would be a “damp squib.” He handed in his resignation on the spot.
Patrick Jephson hung on a little longer. “Panorama … was only one (albeit a heavy one) of the several straws that ultimately broke the camel’s back of my loyalty,” he wrote. “With several years’ close-hand experience of my boss’s capricious and occasionally cruel approach to personnel management, I was more than ever aware of my professional mortality. However much I might appear to be in favor, I knew my shelf life was akin to that of the organic yoghurt with which the KP fridge was so well stocked.”
He tried to broker a reconciliation with Buckingham Palace but it was too late. The Queen had seen and heard enough. Her main concern was for William and Harry, and the effect that all this public point scoring between their parents was having on them, not just the Panorama program and its subsequent publicity. The time had come to bring the marriage that had caused such grief, heartache and humiliation to an end. After consulting with the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, she wrote formally and privately to her son and daughter-in-law asking them to divorce as soon as possible. Negotiations began but, while they were still in the early stages, Diana made a premature and unauthorized statement to the press. Calling it “the saddest day of my life,” she said she had agreed to Prince Charles’s request for a divorce. She would continue to be involved in all decisions relating to the children and would remain at Kensington Palace with offices in St. James’s Palace. She would be giving up her title and in future would be known as Diana, Princess of Wales. She made it clear that she had agreed to this last term under pressure.
The Queen, who had kept her lips sealed throughout the years of provocation and the assaults on the institution she had given her life to, was incensed, not least that Diana had broken the confidentiality of the meeting. She immediately issued a statement. “The Queen was most interested to hear that the Princess of Wales had agreed to the divorce. We can confirm that the Prince and Princess of Wales had a private meeting this afternoon at St. James’s Palace. At this meeting details of the divorce settlement and the Princess’s future role were not discussed. All the details on these matters, including titles, remain to be discussed and settled. This will take time. What the Princess has mentioned are requests rather than decisions at this stage.” And more specifically on the question of titles, her Press Secretary, Charles Anson, continued, “The decision to drop the title is the Princess’s and the Princess’s alone. It is wrong that the Queen or the Prince asked her. I can state categorically that is not true.” Adding, “The Palace does not say something specific on a point like this unless we are absolutely sure of the facts.”
The months of negotiations that followed could not have been more difficult or acrimonious. Diana was represented by Anthony Julius, a celebrated divorce lawyer from the firm Mishcon de Reya, and the Prince by Fiona Shackleton from the royal solicitors, Farrer and Co. It was Julius who encouraged Diana to give up the title—a move she later regretted and tried unsuccessfully to reverse—in return for a better financial deal. It was said she had first asked for £46 million. The settlement th
ey finally reached in July 1996 gave Diana a financial package thought to be a lump sum of £17.5 million and £350,000 a year to run her private office. Both parties signed a confidentiality agreement so the precise deal was never known but, according to Geoffrey Bignell, who acted as the Prince’s financial advisor for ten years, it cleaned Charles out. “I was told to liquidate everything,” he said, “all his investments, so that he could give her the cash. He was very unhappy about that. He had no personal wealth left; she took him to the cleaners.”
As regards the children, the Prince and Princess retained equal access and responsibility for them. Diana would carry on living at Kensington Palace, but her office would be there rather than at St. James’s Palace, as she had wanted. Importantly, she was still to be regarded as a member of the Royal Family and be invited to state and national occasions, which was entirely fitting for the mother of a future King. But there were many who felt that the mother of a future King should also have remained Her Royal Highness. And no matter which of them had been the first to suggest losing the title, taking it away turned into an own goal for the monarchy, and gave Diana’s brother emotional ammunition for his eulogy at Westminster Abbey a year later.
As for the future King himself, when Diana asked William if he minded her losing her royal status, he replied, “I don’t mind what you’re called—you’re Mummy.”
Ironically, by the time of the Panorama interview, she had become quite relaxed about Camilla Parker Bowles. The person she was now fixated on was the effervescent Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who she thought was stealing her children’s affection. She started a smear campaign, bombarding Tiggy’s answering machine with disturbing messages, and suggesting that Charles might be having an affair with her.
At the office Christmas lunch party at the Lanesborough Hotel in Knightsbridge, she went up Tiggy, who had just been in hospital for a minor operation, and whispered in her ear, “So sorry about the baby.” Devastated, Tiggy rushed out of the room in tears, leaving everyone else to party on with Diana in their midst. It was only when libel lawyer Peter Carter-Ruck was instructed by Tiggy four days later that anyone realized what had happened. Just one person already knew. As they were leaving, Diana told Patrick Jephson what she had done. She was “exultant”; and that was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.
“I knew I was right,” she said, and explained to him that Tiggy had practically fainted after she’d told her, and had to be held upright.
“Ma’am, have you any evidence?” he asked.
“I’ve just told you. Anyway, I don’t need evidence. I know…”
HUMANITARIAN CRUSADE
Harry wasn’t the only boy at Ludgrove whose parents had divorced but not many had done so in such a high-profile way. And not many had mothers who caused such a stir. Diana had no plans to retire from public life and fade quietly into the background after her divorce, as some might have hoped. She was on a roll, buoyed up by a raft of therapists of one sort or another; she saw herself as someone who could save the world, help the sick and dying, support the destitute, the homeless, the addicts and the starving.
She had once said of her visit to Mother Teresa’s mission home in Calcutta in 1992, “That was when I found my direction in life.” Martin Bashir had asked her if she thought she would ever be Queen. She’d replied, “No… I’d like to be a queen of people’s hearts, in people’s hearts… when I look at people in public life, I’m not a political animal but I think the biggest disease this world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved, and I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give—I’m very happy to do that and I want to do that… I think the British people need someone in public life to give affection, to make them feel important, to support them, to give them light in their dark tunnels.”
What she did do after the divorce, however, was scale down her support—she dispensed with a Private Secretary, whose role was to offer strategic advice and guidance as well as organize her diary, she dispensed with Ladies-in-Waiting, who would accompany her to events along with the Private Secretary, and she dispensed with Police Protection Officers, who were with her twenty-four hours a day and who would never have allowed her to be driven by someone who had been drinking.
Asked by Bashir whether she thought the monarchy should change, she had said yes, that monarchy and the public “could walk hand in hand, as opposed to be so distant,” and in taking William and Harry round homelessness projects, she said she was trying to effect that change. “I’ve taken William and Harry to people dying of AIDS—albeit I told them it was cancer—I’ve taken the children to all sorts of areas where I’m not sure anyone of that age in this family has been before. And they have a knowledge—they may never use it, but the seed is there, and I hope it will grow because knowledge is power… I want them to have an understanding of people’s emotions, people’s insecurities, people’s distress, and people’s hopes and dreams.”
As for her future, she said she saw it as being “an ambassador for this country… When I go abroad we’ve got sixty to ninety photographers, just from this country, coming with me, so let’s use it in a productive way, to help this country.”
William and Harry were rightly very proud of their mother and all her achievements. She probably told them too much about everything but, in talking about her work, particularly the less glamorous side, she was preparing them and hoping to mold them for the future. But by the second half of the 1990s, the sixty to ninety photographers were more interested in Diana’s love life than her humanitarian expeditions.
A particular focus, in the last few months of her life, was on her involvement with the Al Fayed family. Mohamed Al Fayed, the wealthy, controversial, Egyptian owner of Harrods department store, had been a friend of Diana’s father, Earl Spencer, and his wife Raine. Diana didn’t know him well but, whenever she shopped at Harrods, Al Fayed would appear at her side. Every Christmas he sent a hamper to Kensington Palace. On birthdays he sent the Princess and the boys generous gifts, and he had issued several invitations to stay with his family in St. Tropez in the South of France, which she had always declined. This year, she had decided to accept; as a result, Al Fayed had specially bought a new yacht—the 200-foot, £14-million Jonikal—to accommodate his royal guests.
So on 11 July, once the summer term was over, the Princess and two Princes, plus two PPOs for William and Harry, were collected from the helipad at Kensington Palace by Al Fayed’s private helicopter and taken to lunch in Surrey with his family. He, his wife, Heini, and three of their children, then boarded his private Gulfstream IV jet and flew to Nice, where a private yacht took them the remainder of the way to St. Tropez. Diana and the boys had been to St. Tropez the previous summer with Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and her daughters, their cousins, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. The holiday had been ruined by the paparazzi. This time, Al Fayed promised total privacy. There was a sumptuous villa on the coast that was closely guarded, and several yachts, including the newly acquired Jonikal. It promised to be an exciting trip with the prospect of jet-skiing, speedboats and scuba-diving.
What they didn’t realize was that Al Fayed had organized another plaything for the holiday. Four days later his eldest son, Dodi, joined them on Jonikal, attracting a boatload of photographers, who had already spotted Diana with Al Fayed.
Diana and Dodi hit it off and, during the next five days, as they cavorted on and off the boat, the long lenses sensed a romance. Dodi, a playboy film producer with a jet-set life, was engaged to American model, Kelly Fisher, but soon called that off. Diana’s two-year affair with Hasnat Khan, a Pakistan-born heart surgeon, had come to an end. Friends say she had been very much in love with Khan and wanted to marry him. She would have converted to Islam for him and moved to Pakistan, but he knew it could never work. He had been to Kensington Palace on many occasions and had met William and Harry. William was always uncomfortable about meeting his mother’s bo
yfriends, but Harry, as ever, was more relaxed about it. She was devastated when Khan ended the affair, so when Dodi wowed her with his considerable charms and extravagant gestures, Diana was receptive.
No one could have been happier about the liaison than Mohamed Al Fayed. For years he had tried to ingratiate himself with the establishment and for years he had been denied British citizenship. A Department of Trade investigation in 1989 into his takeover of Harrods had condemned him as a serial liar with “a capacity for fantasy.” What could have given a better two-fingered salute to the country that spurned him than for his son to be courting the Monarch’s ex-daughter-in-law and the mother of a future King?
William and Harry were only too pleased to get away from the Fayed set-up—they were looking forward to Balmoral. They had not felt comfortable with either the company or the lifestyle and they hated the publicity. Harry had clashed with Mohamed Al Fayed’s youngest son, Omar; William and his mother had had a row; and Fayed’s bodyguards had attempted to give their PPOs envelopes stuffed with notes. And no sooner were they back in London than Dodi was on the phone to their mother, whisking her across the Channel in a helicopter to dinner in Paris, a night in the Imperial Suite of the Ritz—his father’s plush hotel—and a visit to the house Mohamed owned in the Bois de Boulogne that had belonged to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. She had rung home squealing with excitement; Dodi had given her a gold and diamond watch, and her head was spinning. No sooner was that jaunt over than she was off again, back for a second holiday on board Jonikal, this time cruising between Corsica and Sardinia, and this time alone with him.