She needed no lectures from me on the subject, having had a longer if less abrasive experience of royalty than I had. She probably thought I was completely paranoid. ‘Doesn’t bother me,’ she said. ‘I’m just the nursery maid, guv.’ I knew, though, that her idealism and transparent good nature would be sorely tested. Whatever world of security and happiness she intended to build up around William and Harry, it was inevitably at risk of becoming an exposed position in the no-man’s-land between two hostile front lines.
She immediately became an object of curiosity and suspicion to the Princess, of course, and an innocent target for much of her unhappiness about the rest of the world. In fact, it was ultimately the Princess’s attitude towards Tiggy, especially when suspicion turned to vitriol, that was a conclusive factor in my decision to resign.
Meanwhile, a female figure from an earlier generation – from an earlier era, even – returned briefly to the Princess’s preoccupations. Not long after our return from Zimbabwe, the death occurred of the Princess’s grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy. Much has been written about this redoubtable lady’s role in the original plans for the Prince to marry Lady Diana Spencer, and about her estrangement from her granddaughter in later years. Much of it may well be true. My own observations were few, but they did bear out the widely held belief that Lady Fermoy personified an attitude which was anathema to the Princess.
This attitude might be described as a stoic ability to suppress emotion in the interests of maintaining a certain outward appearance. The outward appearance was determined by reference to a code forged in the years of Empire, war, class-consciousness and deference. The Princess refused – or was unable – to subscribe to it. It was a code which imbued the system into which she had married and against which, less from conviction than from instinct, she provided a national rallying point. In its place, however, she could put nothing but a haphazard expression of emotion and a rather calculated self-interest.
Not surprisingly therefore, Lady Fermoy felt that she had nothing to learn from her granddaughter, but her granddaughter must be made to learn from Lady Fermoy. I was not present during the occasions when this ‘learning’ was supposed to take place, but I did see the aftermath. Emerging from an encounter with her grandmother, the Princess was as flustered as I had ever seen her – shocked and upset, but defiant. The cause of her defiance was a simple sense of injustice that she should be made to pay the full price for errors that had largely been committed against her rather than by her. She later famously said of her marriage in the Panorama interview, ‘I’ll accept 50 per cent of the blame.’ Observers of the code would have had her shoulder far more of the guilt, as well as mend her ways to conform with the attitudes of a much older generation.
Despite this unhappy background, in a gesture of great symbolic importance, by the time of Lady Fermoy’s death in 1993 grandmother and granddaughter had been at least partly reconciled. As further evidence of the contact that could be established across the generations if the will were there, the Princess was flown to and from her grandmother’s funeral in the company of the woman who has come to symbolize all that was good about the values of that older era, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
The summer drew to an end and in an abrupt return to the Palace politics of our less gracious times, the Princess seemed to be attracting growing interest from a new constituency that might traditionally have beaten a path to her husband’s door. They approached her, I assumed, for reasons of curiosity or sympathy, or perhaps merely out of some form of disenchantment with mainstream royalty.
For some weeks that autumn I was in discussion with the BBC, who saw her as a strong candidate to deliver that year’s Dimbleby Lecture. The irony of such an honour – bestowed only on speakers of undisputed national influence – had an irresistible appeal. The name alone saw to that. Such a prestigious platform would also have conferred on the Princess an unaccustomed intellectual credibility, a lethally powerful weapon in her battle to establish herself as an independent figure of international importance. I do not know whether it was for this or some other reason, but the project evaporated to the accompaniment of suitably scathing and suspiciously well-placed comment in establishment newspapers.
Another invitation which perhaps also owed its origin to the three reasons mentioned above, as well as to a desire to adorn an otherwise rather ponderous occasion with some youthful female company, came from Conrad Black, host of the Hollingsworth Dinner at Spencer House. The guest list read like a Who’s Who of British and American media and political heavyweights. It was here that the Princess and Henry Kissinger first established what was to become something of a mutual admiration society, with tangible benefits for her in the form of guidance and assistance with later visits to the USA and for him in the shape of a lovingly presented pair of her trademark blue cuff links.
Also at the dinner were many representatives of the establishment press, some of whom appeared rather taken aback by her appearance among them. Criticism – witty and pompous by turns – which seemed so easy to dispense from the safety of the editor’s desk suddenly seemed less relevant when confronted eye to eye with the elegant figure radiating a natural royalty which their equally natural sense of deference found hard to dismiss.
The Princess was well aware of both the opportunity and the effect she was having on the various dinner-jacketed commentators who were pulled out for her inspection. As was usually the case, through sheer force of personality she achieved more in an evening than a team of spin-doctors might fail to achieve in a month.
‘Ah, Mr X,’ she might say, as a hostile editor made his embarrassed bow. ‘I always enjoy reading your paper.’
‘Ahem. You’re very kind, Ma’am, but I’m afraid we’re not often very kind to you.’
‘On the contrary,’ she would reply, with a precisely judged condescension. ‘We all need some criticism sometimes,’ and the black-tied miscreant would retreat, hopefully to brood on the encounter and think twice about how to present this loose cannon when next in front of his computer screen.
The aim of establishing the Princess’s independent status received a further modest boost in September, when she fulfilled an official engagement to boost British interests in Luxembourg. Although small in area, Luxembourg carries a disproportionate importance in both royal and political terms. The principality’s royal family is conspicuously Anglophile, the Grand Duke himself having participated in the liberation of Luxembourg while serving in the Irish Guards. We could expect their opinion of the Princess’s performance to be passed down the most prestigious grapevine of all – that connecting the interrelated royal families of Europe.
The joint appearance at the British Trade Fair of the Princess with the Luxembourg Crown Prince made the point very clearly. Whatever tendencies there might be to ostracize the Princess from certain levels of the British royal family, so far as the European cousins were concerned, she was a welcome guest. Moreover, this welcome would not have been as warm – or might not even have been extended at all – without at least the acquiescence of the Queen.
In political terms, Luxembourg’s role at the heart of the EC made it a significant addition to the Princess’s collection of high-profile European outings. This dimension was comprehensively covered with her attendance at a small dinner given by the Luxembourg Prime Minister, a certain Jacques Santer. For sharp-eyed watchers, his appointment soon afterwards as President of the EU was a reminder of the sort of circles in which the Princess was now accustomed to move. Even in territory so far removed from her traditional role as charity worker, it also drew from the Princess a letter of congratulation on his promotion which, from his reply, Monsieur Santer obviously appreciated very much.
A couple of months later a similar set of objectives was achieved with a visit to Brussels during which the Princess, as patron of Help the Aged, attended events intended to promote the work of the affiliated international charity HelpAge. Once again her well-shod heels were found treading corridors
of distinctly unglamorous power in the EU headquarters. There she demonstrated that she could discuss provision for elderly people with the EU Commissioner for Social Affairs with the same self-assurance as she could quiz a refugee camp organizer in Zimbabwe, a drug addict in Huddersfield or a society hostess in Washington.
She certainly did not possess a comprehensive understanding of EU provision for elderly people. Nor, however, did she claim any special expertise beyond an understanding based partly on instinct and partly on the accumulated experience of her years of concentrated exposure to great social issues and people’s emotional needs.
She was quick-witted, flirtatious, a sharp observer and a natural enemy of pomposity, yet she was royal to her fingertips – a fact you would be advised not to forget for long. In Brussels, no less than in any other of the places I have mentioned, this was a formidable combination of talents. It also had the potential to be a vehicle for far greater causes – the grand, global welfare crusades for which she seemed outwardly so suited. As events were to show, however, in the end she was tragically unable to prove herself a reliable standard-bearer for many of these.
Tea with Queen Fabiola at the Palace and a reception at the British Ambassador’s residence rounded off a European awayday that would have been fairly typical of any hard-working senior member of the royal family. For a semi-detached member of that family, hanging on by her fingertips to her acquired status and questing about for a new role, it was significant to an extent that I do not think she fully realized.
Once again her regal performance owed more to an instinctive knowledge of her special status than to any rational understanding of its rather precarious foundations. Her deep curtsy to Queen Fabiola only emphasized her natural affinity with royalty – of any house – but I knew, even if she did not, that it would take more than such public self-assurance to repair the damage of the past year. I was left, perforce, to do much of the worrying for her on this account, all too conscious of the vital importance of notching up these cast-iron examples of her royal rank. By contrast, however, most of the time she just accepted it as her natural due. Ironically, it was probably the most royal thing about her – and a vital prop for her fragile self-confidence.
I did feel that we were making headway in some areas. All over ‘the system’ which operated the interfaces between royalty and government, the simple reality was dawning that the Princess of Wales remained a major player, certainly in media terms. It also seemed that she could be entrusted with increasingly substantial responsibilities. Her status thus gained an important new element in many eyes. It had not been acquired or conferred; instead, through the ordeal of having to plough her own solo furrow, it had been earned. This was certainly a far cry from the dark days of the previous winter, when spite and bewilderment would have denied her the means to be as effective as she was now proving herself to be.
Back home, her standing on the diplomatic circuit showed itself equally resilient. In October she attended a reception at the Russian Ambassador’s residence in support of the Moscow Children’s Hospital, of which she had become patron. At various times, the Russian Ambassador and his Chinese, American, Hungarian, Pakistani and Argentinian counterparts, among others, were all entertained personally by the Princess at Kensington Palace. If I was any judge, they took as seriously what was going on between her ears as almost anything else they encountered in the drawing rooms of London. What was going on London’s front pages on an almost daily basis could hardly have escaped their attention either.
The same growing awareness of the Princess’s potential had occurred to others. From time to time that autumn she had meetings with influential figures as diverse as Clive James, Lord Attenborough, Lady Thatcher and Lord Gowry. As with the Ambassadors, these encounters produced high-grade discussions on subjects ranging from international events and world health problems to the possibilities now opening up for her own future occupation. The Princess contributed well when she could, listened attentively when she could not, and matched such signs of obvious intelligence with well-judged and disarming humour. (I had remembered an old French saying, that in England it is necessary only for a man to remain silent for everyone else to think he is wise. I relayed this to the Princess and I sometimes think she took it to heart.)
For some weeks, too, the prospectus for Birkbeck College lay on her desk. I was not alone in believing that the self-discipline one of its courses would have required – not to mention the external credentials it would have earned her – was just what she needed. Sadly, this prospectus was as close as she came to embarking on a brush with higher education. It has to be said, however, that I misspent three years at Cambridge in the company of people who could not have touched her for streetwise cleverness, however illustrious their academic record turned out to be.
Influences from the worlds of show business and the glossy media were rather less cerebral and therefore perhaps more warmly received. The Princess drew great comfort from the sympathetic affection she received from stars such as Elton John and George Michael – people whose lifestyles and experiences she felt more closely matched her own than a whole army of European royalty. Media figures such as Eduardo Sanchez Junco, proprietor of the society magazine Hello!’s Spanish parent, also supplied a surprising degree of understanding mixed with a generosity of spirit not normally associated with the notoriously superficial world of which they were the recording angels.
Also well received – at least for a week or two – were suggestions from the dynamic American management guru Anthony Robbins that the Princess should take advantage of his techniques for maximizing untapped potential. His course of study appeared in the form of a set of enticingly wrapped video tapes, but I fear, despite its glossier packaging (in the shape of the proprietor as much as the tapes themselves), it ultimately received no more interest than Birkbeck College’s more bashful charms.
More to her liking was the sort of university activity so courteously provided by Norman St John Stevas who, as Lord St John of Fawsley and flamboyant Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, invited the Princess to lay the foundation stone for the college’s new library. The engagement was a gem of its kind. The setting in one of Cambridge’s more elegant colleges could not have been bettered. The host’s sensitive and perceptive choreography of the proceedings was peerless. The choir sang love songs both courtly and vivacious. Even the November weather smiled. Only the building’s questionable architectural merit might have added a note of controversy, but that was definitely her husband’s province.
Perhaps best of all that day, by one of those unexpected, happy chances, the Princess found in the college chaplain Brendan Clover a man of God whose approachability and social conscience provided her over the next couple of years with occasional sips of spiritual nourishment as she visited him at his later work on behalf of London’s homeless. At St Pancras Church in North London she took a low-key but regular interest in Brendan’s plans to convert the crypt into a shelter and advice centre for the army of rough sleepers who congregate around the capital’s railway termini.
This was religion at its most practical and Brendan’s understated spirituality gave her, I believe, a valuable chance to see faith in action. It was not that she acquired an air of holiness as a result. Instead she gave support just by her presence and in turn, Brendan and his helpers lent her the peace that comes from spending an hour or two in the company of dedicated servants of those at the bottom of the heap.
Almost a year after the formal announcement of her separation from the Prince of Wales, the Princess reached a peak in a year of remarkable survival against the odds. Despite heavy discouragement from influential quarters in the establishment; despite a miasma of tacit disapproval which seemed to hang over Buckingham Palace; despite a public sympathy that was beginning to show signs of unravelling (‘HAS IT ALL GONE WRONG FOR PRINCESS DIANA?’ asked the Daily Express on 3 November above a well-briefed piece on her ‘regret’ at having ‘split with Charles’, while Tatler
magazine quoted a survey which saw a small majority of participants define her as ‘a neurotic manipulator’); and despite God knows what internal trauma, she had successfully built a foundation for herself.
She had become an independent voice on matters which were unfamiliar to traditional royal thinking yet were uncannily close to the unhappy daily experience of a huge constituency of ordinary people. It was an impressive achievement. Underpinning this success – and obviously an effective antidote to the trauma she had suffered – was a daily sense of relief that the worst was surely behind her. The sky did not fall in after she separated from the Prince. Her public life continued much as before, and so did her seemingly unstoppable popularity with the public at home and abroad.
There was a similar, if less sustained, improvement in her temperament behind the scenes. Being a new and different style of royal household appealed to her and for a while her desire to be seen as modern, responsive and unstuffy made her a great deal easier to work for. She became noticeably more flexible on matters such as when she was prepared to start work – previously never before 10.00 a.m. – or how much advance briefing she needed on straightforward engagements. Although some of this flexibility persisted, as time went on it emerged that there was a limit to how seriously she was prepared to take this ‘working Princess’ image, much as she liked the idea in principle. In reality she was a creature of royal habit and that meant reserving the right to turn very grand when the mood took her, and at short notice too.
Shadows of a Princess Page 42