I had been aware for some time of the Princess’s close lines of communication with the reporter Richard Kay. Since her death, Richard Kay has spoken openly of the close friendship he believed he enjoyed with the Princess. He was often surprisingly close at hand, even during private holidays, and her messages on his mobile phone provided some of his tabloid competitors with considerable amusement. Articles bearing his name, usually on the front page of the Daily Mail, were sometimes so obviously briefed by the Princess that I recognized whole sentences from things she had said to me only the day before. Now, with the evidence of her complicity spread all over the front pages, the polite charade by which I turned a blind eye to such private initiatives could no longer be maintained.
On the morning the story broke, the Princess was sitting for the portrait painter Nelson Shanks in his airy studios in Tite Street. Of all the artists who painted her, Shanks developed the happiest relationship with his subject and, far from being a chore, his sittings became occasions that she looked forward to. When I arrived, artist and subject were engrossed in light-hearted banter as usual, while Nelson’s wife and daughter created a soothing background of happy domesticity – a background I sometimes found hard to enjoy with true equanimity, given the startlingly detailed nude portraits of his wife which even the most hastily averted eyes could not fail to spot among earlier work so proudly displayed.
My private secretary’s expression of worldly imperturbability, which I had carefully arranged on my face while climbing the stairs, must have failed in its task that morning. After just one glance at me, the Princess laughed and said, ‘Oh Patrick, I am sorry.’
I immediately put on a more normal expression – something between panic and pained tolerance. ‘Don’t worry about me, Ma’am,’ I said. ‘But some people are going to make this very awkward for you.’
Her denial reflexes were in good shape, however, and she seemed to have put the entire episode out of her mind already. Far from being deterred by her embarrassing exposure, she went on to exploit it to the point where Richard Kay acquired the status of an illicit, de facto spokesman. (As if life was not complicated enough already – as he and I joked over lunch several years later.)
Media troubles were never far away. In May the Princess had spent a not very restful weekend with friends near Malaga. Having dispensed with all the assistance she was accustomed to when travelling, she tried to pass through the airport incognito and attracted much uncomfortable attention. She then discovered that her destination was home to a particularly virulent strain of paparazzo. Her holiday on that stretch of coast duly produced a crop of fuzzy but otherwise unremarkable long-range photographs of the Princess sunbathing.
Then word reached me through Eduardo Junco, the proprietor of Hola! (sister magazine to Hello!), that an especially enterprising photographer had secured snaps of the Princess momentarily topless as she adjusted her swimsuit. ‘And you know, Señor Jephson, Her Highness is not as young as she was …’ No further description was necessary. Now that was an emergency!
The swimsuit’s owner was adamant that she had not allowed any such opportunity to occur. Knowing her to be extremely deliberate in matters of dress and appearance, I was inclined to believe her. The trouble was that, in the unlikely event that she really had let something slip at a critical moment, she did not relish the thought of such photographs appearing for public consumption.
The choice was between calling the photographer’s bluff or allowing the considerate Señor Junco to make good his offer to enter the market, buy the photographs and destroy them. Such an act of generosity was in line with the opinion I had formed of him during an earlier visit he had made to KP, but the Princess took a more worldly view and feared that to accept such an offer would lay her open to exploitation at a later date. In the end my view prevailed. We really had little choice, although sadly Señor Junco’s staff were unable to send me the negatives so that the Princess could destroy them herself. To my relief, the Princess’s Spanish benefactor never pressed the opportunity to exact a quid pro quo.
Another example of the media pitfalls which surrounded the Princess appeared at around the same time but in a very different disguise. In late May the hidden opposition to her which lurked among the darkened thickets of the old royal establishment made an appearance in the shape of Lord Charteris, former private secretary to the Queen, speaking to the Daily Express on 27 May 1994. His Lordship plainly found it impossible to maintain his reticence on the subject of the Duchess of York and the Princess of Wales. Without much dissent, he described the Duchess of York as ‘vulgar vulgar vulgar’.
The Duchess’s regal response to this outburst – ‘We’re all entitled to our own point of view’ – struck me as a supreme form of reticence in itself. A slighting remark about the Princess in the same article, however, could not be allowed to pass unanswered.
I duly telephoned Lord Charteris to convey Her Royal Highness’s disappointment. ‘She knows how these things can be exaggerated,’ I said, ‘and she hopes they were taken out of context. But as they stand she really finds them rather hurtful.’
My Lord would not accept a scold from a pup such as I. He also seemed to have developed great difficulty in hearing me. I suppose I would have done exactly the same, had our roles been reversed.
The Princess’s diary for the summer of 1994 was a pale shadow of the packed programme of previous years. No longer able to justify such a considerable public investment, the post of equerry to the Princess lapsed when its final occupant, Captain Ed Musto, returned to a promising career in the Royal Marines.
Having divested herself of much of her earlier activities but not, it seemed, of her desire for publicity, the Princess soon found that the rather more self-indulgent lifestyle that she had adopted had its shortcomings. Her preoccupation with mysticism turned temporarily sour as her former astrologer went public with a book claiming to have been sanctioned by the Princess herself. An extensive legal digression resulted which was costly both in time and money.
A series of uncoordinated and impulse-driven visits to hospitals, hospices and night shelters for the homeless produced little long-term benefit for visitor or visited. Only the hungry media pack, deprived for the moment of its normal rich diet, was happy to gobble up such scraps, especially if mysteriously tipped off in advance.
As I had so frequently observed, the Princess was happiest when she was working, preferably quite hard. The sort of work she had been doing since her great ‘withdrawal’ speech was desultory and lacked any sort of theme, other than that it was vaguely humanitarian with just enough social conscience to make her feel she was doing some good. It was not enough. I knew the emotional self-indulgence that only work could keep at bay was waiting to claim her under-filled time and under-used talents. My own waistline – both physical and mental – was also beginning to suffer. Nevertheless, trying to organize a satisfying programme without her active interest, let alone commitment, was like trying to make bricks without straw.
Any new programme of sustained, rewarding activity would, I reasoned, probably best be shared with an organization already familiar with its royal visitor’s mixed motives. I therefore put more effort than usual into persuading the Princess to take up the Red Cross’s offer of a place on a special planning commission, which was all that remained from the discarded package of proposals presented the previous winter.
My recent knowledge of the Red Cross had been largely confined to organizing the Princess’s regular contacts with its national and overseas activities connected to her position as patron of British Red Cross Youth. In Zimbabwe and Nepal, as well as in many centres around Britain, the link had proved a highly profitable one for both the charity and the Princess. The British Director General Mike Whitlam had established a good working relationship with the Princess, who enjoyed his frank conversation and buccaneering approach. This was intended to flatter her as a patron who was not just a figurehead, but one who actually got involved with the charity’s work
in some of its most harrowing missions at home and abroad.
The tactic succeeded. Mike’s concern for the Princess as an individual was genuine and appreciated. So, too, was his desire to maximize the relationship with the Princess to the benefit of his organization. With a few rare exceptions, he managed to achieve a remarkable balance between two such potentially opposing objectives.
With the Princess’s cautious agreement, Mike helped to arrange for her to be nominated as the British member of a special commission set up to advise the International Red Cross Federation and the International Committee of the Red Cross on how better co-ordination between these two sometimes discordant organizations might be achieved in the future. A knowledge of the labyrinthine politics of the Red Cross was not required. Where the Princess was thought to be able to make a valuable contribution was in her ability to speak from a position of some first-hand knowledge and to ask the sort of objective questions which the process required and which it was felt only a well-briefed layperson might provide.
The commission, about 20 strong, was made up of similarly influential Red Cross ‘outsiders’ from several different countries and came under the benign chairmanship of Darrell Jones, a retired Canadian judge. It was well funded, had a brilliant secretary in the redoubtable British former diplomat David Wyatt, and would be at liberty to poke its nose into almost any aspect of the Red Cross’s worldwide work with the not very onerous task of providing a report on its findings, at least in interim form, by the end of 1995. As an opportunity for the Princess to develop her own knowledge and confidence, to establish herself as a truly independent, working Princess and make good, visible use of her abundant talents in highlighting the plight of people in need, it seemed practically ideal.
The first few meetings were held in Geneva in the summer of 1994. The plan was to hold a series of two or three preliminary meetings there before the commission set off on its travels to world trouble spots. To begin with all went well. The image of the business-suited Princess, briefcase in hand, striding with the other commuting executives onto the morning Swissair flight at Heathrow appealed to her. From my viewpoint it also seemed appropriate for her current status and a promising model of things to come.
It was not to be. As the serious meetings got fully underway, I watched my boss’s eyes glaze over as the proceedings failed to grab her attention. By September she had had enough. Saying that she felt unwell, she cut short our involvement and headed back to the hotel to pack for an early flight home. Her formal resignation from the commission followed some months later. Her departure was greeted with understanding and sympathy from all sides, but I was not alone in regretting such a squandered opportunity.
On the day of her departure, however, I had other things on my mind. The Princess having excused herself early on the grounds of an unspecified indisposition, by a supreme irony I was the one who was feeling unwell. Something in the delicious Swiss lunch laid on for the commission, on which I had hoggishly indulged myself, suddenly began seriously to disagree with me.
It was the nightmare waiting to befall every courtier and suddenly it was coming true for me. Sitting next to the Princess during our interminable drive back to the hotel, I suddenly knew without any doubt that I was going to be sick. I had been unusually silent since our departure from the meeting as I debated whether or not to admit to the rebellion that was breaking out in my stomach. Foolishly, I had calculated that I could make it back to the sanctuary of my hotel bathroom before succumbing.
Interpreting my silence as tacit disapproval of her failure to stay the course with the commission, the Princess tried to cheer me up with irreverent impressions of her fellow commissioners. When this produced only a deeper silence from me, together with a faraway look in my eyes, she asked if there was anything the matter.
Without shifting my fixed gaze from the back of the driver’s head, I mimed being violently ill. She burst into giggles. ‘Well, for God’s sake don’t throw up over me!’ she said. ‘Do you want to stop the car?’
Having come this far, however, I was grimly determined to hang on. Breathing deeply, I gestured that we should carry on to the hotel as quickly as possible. As soon as we had stopped, for once in my life I jumped out of the car and ran through the hotel doors ahead of the Princess. Without turning round, I managed what was intended as a wave of farewell combined with apology and then dived into the Messieurs where, in marble luxury and before an offended audience of UN delegates, I was flamboyantly sick.
Later, feeling much better and having apologized for my frailty, I flew back to London with the Princess. Nothing more was said of the incident. The next morning I received a little note from her.
Patrick. Thank you so much for braving Geneva out when you’d been that sick … you are always a wonderful source of strength and support. That means an enormous amount to me! D.
At least for the moment, then, I was riding high in the Princess’s favour. Now outnumbered some 35 to 4 by her husband’s staff, she seemed to appreciate more than ever how much she depended on her small team at St James’s and, for what it was worth, their unswerving loyalty.
Regardless of her negative experience with the Red Cross commission – and in retrospect I blamed myself for having inadequately warned her of its more turgid aspects – it had done her a service, jolting her at least temporarily out of the directionless muddle that had threatened to become her working life. A world of possibilities for future projects still lay at her feet.
New ideas landed on my desk almost every day. After due research and discussion all were rejected, most for very good reason. There had to be another way. The idea was growing in me that there was an alternative option which would enable the Princess to choose her own rate of progress and select her own areas of involvement, while at the same time developing her reputation as an international and independent force for good. After exploratory discussions with some of her senior patronages as well as with the ever-helpful Lynda Chalker, Margaret Jay and others, I drew up an outline plan for a charity to be headed by the Princess which would be an adaptable but substantial vehicle for all her humanitarian ambitions.
Precisely how humanitarian her own motives were, I did not need to contemplate. In anybody, including the Princess, the answer to such a question is found only in the privacy of one’s own conscience. From what I could see, my boss’s capacity to care about others’ suffering was as great as it ever had been. It had just been joined by a growing and generally healthy wish to find her own fulfilment within it as well.
My job was simple. The Princess’s concern needed the right context, at least if it was to be noticed. If it was not 100 per cent genuine all the time, then whose was? It was certainly not in parts of the aid industry we had encountered in some grand Geneva headquarters. Nonetheless, they were on the side of good against the world’s countless evils and that was an adequate starting point according to my moral references. My priority was to lead the Princess to the right sort of work and from there her natural gifts as a caring communicator would work their own magic.
The core of her new charity would be the Princess of Wales’s Charities Trust, set up on her marriage in 1981. In the light of the much grander charitable organization set up after the Princess’s death, this earlier Trust looks modest by comparison. One reporter, stumbling upon it by chance, has even referred to it as ‘Diana’s secret charity’. Its income derived largely from investments made at the time of the Princess’s marriage. From time to time it was supplemented by donations, perhaps from a large company the Princess may have supported with an engagement, which then wished to mark the event by making a donation to an unspecified charity of her choice. I was one of two trustees, the other being Sir Matthew Farrer. It was a sign of the good sense and goodwill that still permeated much of the Wales organization that the Princess opted to keep Matthew as trustee of her fund, even though she had switched to Mishcon’s for all other legal requirements.
The main purpose of this fund was
to enable the Princess to make small donations to individuals and organizations who wrote to her asking for money. It was a quick, efficient and responsive system, albeit quite small in scale. The average donation cannot have been more than a couple of hundred pounds. Nonetheless, over the years during which I was responsible for it, we probably made several hundred donations, each of which was intended to make a crucial difference to a small but deserving project. (In a sublime piece of irony, one of the Trust’s small donations was to an organizer of trips for disabled youngsters who also happened to be a radio ham. He later used his hobby to record the notorious Squidgygate conversation and sent it to a newspaper.)
Since mid-1993 I had been considering ways in which the Princess of Wales’s Charities Trust could become a more useful tool in her evolving style of work. An early and successful example of such development came with the West End premiere of the Harrison Ford film The Fugitive.
Traditionally, royal film premieres are staged to benefit one or two charities, whose formidable ladies would assemble committees to sell tickets, arrange any accompanying reception and generally organize the event to their satisfaction, while the film company provided the film and the cinema. I had observed, however, that even with the best run premieres, and particularly when charities were being called upon to act in unison, there was considerable scope for duplication, inefficiency and even bickering – not least over the film company’s own wishes concerning seat allocation.
As an experiment, I negotiated with Warner Brothers and we agreed on an innovative arrangement. They would organize the entire event without the interference of any well-meaning charity committee, in exchange for a pre-agreed donation to the Princess of Wales’s Charities Trust.
Shadows of a Princess Page 46