by John Pearson
Certainly his own hopes of playing any real part in the lives of his royal grandchildren were already proving over-optimistic. He had bought three seaside houses in Raine’s name at West Wittering near Bognor, on the south coast. He loved going there, and would often drive down from Althorp on his own while Raine stayed in London in the home he had also bought for her in Mayfair. His dream was that the young princes would come down to West Wittering during their summer holidays. But although Charles and Diana visited once, the infant princes never came at all.
Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, was at the same time finding his position as brother-in-law to his future monarch equally frustrating. With his loyalties divided between his parents and his battles with his stepmother, his adolescence had not been easy. He had little respect for his father and found it difficult to accept authority. He proved his intelligence when he went to Oxford and gained a good degree in history. But at twenty he was immature and could be arrogant and unreliable. It was a time in his life when personal publicity was the last thing he needed, but, as Diana’s brother, anything he did was news and it needed only a few ‘incidents’ of the sort indulged in by most lively undergraduates to get him christened ‘Champagne Charlie’, which was neither fair nor helpful in his situation. He still resented Raine as much as ever and tried to avoid going to Althorp whenever she was there.
As a result of this situation he pleased himself and led a surprisingly independent life for one so young. Shortly before his twenty-first birthday he already had his own London establishment in the form of a £200,000 house in Notting Hill Gate, purchased with money from a family trust. In 1986, just down from Oxford, his role as brother of the Princess of Wales, far from causing him trouble, prompted the American NBC to offer him a contract as a TV reporter for another royal wedding - between Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. The easy-going Viscount was fluent and relaxed in front of the cameras, and, however much he came to hate the media later, he spent five successful years in television.
By now, Raine was firmly in charge of double-glazed and tourist-friendly Althorp, where she had set up a shop in the stables, arranged a conference centre and invited Americans to ‘Dine with Di’s Dad’, as the Evening Standard put it, for £360 a head. Raine very much aware of her role as the royal stepmother, was happy with the increase in visitors the royal connection brought to Althorp. She called the extra income this produced ‘my Di money’.
One gets some idea of the style in which she and Johnnie lived by the lavish party which she gave to celebrate Johnnie’s sixtieth birthday in 1984. Alan Clark described it in his diaries: ‘A magnificent sight … Barbara Cartland in electric pink chiffon, with false eyelashes as thick as those caterpillars that give you a rash if you touch them … some mature ladies so encrustulated with jewellery that they could barely move … the Bishop of Southwark in a purple cassock … and the Princess of Wales looking absolutely radiantly beautiful and not wearing one single piece of jewellery.’
This glimpse of Diana shows that she had been learning fast. The unsophisticated bride had turned into a glamorous woman of the world, who knew exactly how to make her stepmother and her rich friends look like overdressed Christmas trees. What is also interesting is that she was able to look so beautiful at a time when she was so unhappy. As she said herself, ‘I’ve got what my mother’s got. However bloody you’re feeling you can put on the most amazing show of happiness. My mother is an expert at that.’ And so was she, for by now she was entering the worst years of her marriage.
The Windsors were playing an extremely dangerous game by treating her the way they did. Jealousy would make her dangerous-misery would make her lethal. But not even the most pessimistic courtier could have imagined all the problems they were now creating for themselves in this beautiful, unhappy young princess.
During the months following Prince Harry’s birth in September 1984 something snapped within the royal marriage, after which any hope of reconciliation was gone for ever.
This was the moment when Charles and Diana, had they been an ordinary couple, would have made contact with their lawyers, made arrangements for the custody of the children, submitted to the mundane misery of divorce, and hopefully got on with their separate lives. But the royal taboo against divorce remained as strong as ever, and Prince Charles was in the historic situation often faced by royalty in failed marriages of convenience, where the need to maintain appearances at court locks them into personal relationships of the profoundest misery.
One of the strangest features of this situation was the lack of authority shown by the monarch. It is always difficult to interfere in children’s married lives, but what was happening with Charles and Diana was so crucial to the monarchy itself - and, as it soon turned out, would have such dire consequences for the institution and for everyone involved - that it seems extraordinary that there is so little evidence of any real direction from either the Queen or from Prince Philip.
Just as Diana was originally chosen to be future queen partly at least because she was a Spencer, so now it was almost certainly her Spencer blood that helped her to cope with her predicament. Most women of her age, finding themselves in such a situation, would have totally collapsed. Not so Diana, and it was now that she revealed extraordinary resources, many of which must have come from her heredity.
She was an extremely complex personality, with qualities that contradicted one another, as one might have expected in someone coming from a family so rich in history, with many powerful individuals who might have contributed to her genetic make-up. The saintly monk, Ignatius Spencer, and her grandmother, Cynthia, both had the qualities of caring and concern for others, which became the hallmark of Diana’s work among the sick and needy. The depressive streak in the Fermoys may well have aggravated her sense of worth-lessness, her bulimia, and the half-hearted suicide attempts which happened early in her marriage. But the most striking thing about the Spencers is that this has always been a family of immensely powerful women. There was the Duchess Georgiana, who was fashion queen of London. There was her mother, the gambling bluestocking, Georgiana Poyntz, first Countess Spencer. Above all, there was the indomitable, intolerable Sarah Marlborough.
One of Diana’s close relations goes as far as to ascribe much of Diana’s character to Sarah Marlborough’s genes. Speaking from personal experience, she believes that ‘the Jenyns strain persists with the Spencers. They are such great haters, and they positively thrive on dramas.’
In 1989 Diana’s brother Charles, impetuous as ever, following a two month engagement, married twenty-three-year-old Victoria Lockwood, the young and pretty daughter of an airline executive. His aunt, Lady Margaret Douglas-Home, remembering her own unhappy marriage, had urged caution. ‘Aunt Margaret,’ he replied, ‘this one is different. I really love her.’
At the wedding reception, Diana found herself standing next to Raine, and some years later told Andrew Morton what occurred. Raine had apparently ignored Diana’s mother, Frances, so ‘I told her what I thought about her, and I’ve never known such anger in me. I took it upon myself to air everyone’s grievances in my family. I stuck up for mummy and she said it was the first time in twenty-two years anyone had ever stuck up for her. I said everything I possibly could. I remember really going for her gullet. I said, “I hate you so much. If only you knew how much we all hated you for what you’ve done, you’ve ruined the house, you spend Daddy’s money, and what for?’”
This extraordinary outburst reveals how deeply and passionately Diana could nurse her sense of anger and revenge when her jealousy became involved. Her ongoing battle with her step-mother had taught her how to fight and convinced her that she had to win.
It was the Queen herself who called 1992 her annus horribilis. Charles and Diana must have felt the same. At the end of March Johnnie Spencer died. It was a sudden death, just a few days in hospital, pneumonia, a heart attack and he was gone.
Twenty-eight-year-old Charles Edward Maurice, now ninth Earl Spencer, too
k over Althorp, reclaiming the house for his family and insisting on removing every vestige and reminder of the person he already called ‘my former stepmother’. Raine’s clothes were packed into plastic black bin liners and, in a final symbolic gesture, were apparently kicked down the great Althorp staircase. Raine’s portrait by Carlo Sanchez had already been removed from the head of the staircase, like the image of a hated ruler at the end of his reign. This must have made the Earl feel better, but it was actually a fairly futile gesture, for during those precious years following his stroke, Johnnie had provided for her future by ensuring that she left the marriage several million pounds richer than when she entered it.
Moving into Althorp with Victoria and their three young children, the new Earl already had great plans for the future. Almost at once he set about trying to return the interior of the house to what it had been like in the days of his grandfather. He also said that by setting up home there with his young family, he intended ‘to fill this house with joy for the first time in its history’. This would not be an easy task, for although he was now undisputed owner of Althorp and an estate valued at £89 million, despite all Raine’s endeavours to turn it into a paying proposition, it was still running at a heavy loss and costing over £450,000 a year to maintain.
Exactly as had happened with his own father Johnnie, Charles was now the father of three daughters - Kitty, born in 1990, and twin girls, Eliza and Katya, born two years later. It was not until 1994, in spite of his much publicised marital misdemeanours, that Victoria gave him the heir to Althorp and its title that he so badly wanted, but the birth of Louis Frederick John would bring only temporary happiness to an otherwise unhappy marriage. After Victoria had undergone a course of treatment for anorexia and drink and drug addiction, Charles would decide to buy two homes in South Africa, taking them away from the constant intrusion of the worldwide media.
Diana, like her brother, was becoming increasingly obsessed by the role of the media in her private life. Since the days of Queen Victoria, it had been an unspoken rule at court that the Royal Family was protected by a wall of silence and discretion. But this did not prevent Diana from using the media to her own advantage when it suited her, even if it meant breaking this royal rule. By 1992, with her marriage all but over, she decided that the time had come to have her story told.
If nothing else, the undercover operation Diana devised shows how manipulative life at court had made this once innocent princess. Having chosen the former royal reporter, Andrew Morton, to write her book, she made absolutely sure that she never met him, so that when her book was published she could deny any responsibility for it. Instead she answered his written questions on a tape recorder.
The book, Diana, Her Own True Story, was a damning indictment of Prince Charles, Camilla and the marriage, but Diana consistently denied any involvement in the affair, even when the Queen’s private secretary, who was also her brother-in-law, Sir Robert Fellowes, asked her outright if she had assisted Morton. Few at court believed her, least of all her own grandmother, Lady Fermoy. For her, the shame of what she saw as her granddaughter’s betrayal of the Royal Family was unforgivable. With Diana’s story in the open, further pretence about her marriage was impossible. She and the Prince of Wales would separate officially just before Christmas 1992, and divorce would follow four years later.
The saga of Diana and her own family was far from over. After her official separation from the Prince, she was anxious to have somewhere to escape to from Kensington Palace, and she particularly wanted a home in the country where she could take her children in the school holidays. Early in the new year she discussed this with her brother Charles, who, without thinking of the consequences, offered her the elegant, early eighteenth-century Garden House, in the park at Althorp.
She was happy at the thought of having her own country home at last, and where better than in the grounds of her ancestral home close to the brother she had always loved? In her excitement she sought the advice of her friend, the interior decorator, Dudley Poplak, took the princes to see it, and started making plans and choosing furniture and decorations. It had to be done swiftly as she wanted the house to be ready for the Easter holidays in April. But before this could happen, her brother had second thoughts and changed his mind.
Charles Spencer was particularly worried by the problem of security for his own family, as well as the invasion of his privacy. But Diana, who had set her heart on the house, became distraught. In retrospect it does appear a great missed opportunity, for a home at Althorp would have helped her to rebuild her life in close contact with Charles and her family, thus giving her and the children the stability they badly needed. But it was not to be. Charles Spencer was obdurate and, despite her pleas, returned her angry letters unopened.
This was not a good time for Diana and the Spencers. With relations now strained between her and her brother, Diana more than ever felt the need for love and reassurance from her mother. But Frances, now divorced from Peter Shand Kydd, needed help herself after another failed love affair, and could not give Diana the support she wanted.
Feeling hurt and angry at being let down by both her brother and her mother, it was now that Diana did the one thing that she knew would upset them more than anything. It was Diana at her most manipulative, and it proved to be the greatest mistake of her life.
Early that July, Jean-François, Comte de Chambrun was a happy but puzzled man. He had just become the third husband of the briefly widowed Raine, former Countess Spencer, and had been reading press reports about Diana disowning her former step-mother, and telling reporters that they were no longer related now she had remarried. Feeling that these words gave a false impression, the Count wrote a letter to The Times.
‘Sir,’ he wrote. ‘Certain newspapers this morning have published information which states that H.R.H. the Princess of Wales might have made disobliging comments about my wife, Raine, the former Countess Spencer.
‘I feel obliged to say this cannot be the truth. I had the privilege of being invited by H.R.H. to Kensington Palace. This was an informal family lunch, with just H.R.H., Raine and myself. After the coffee, H.R.H. took Raine by the hand, and said to her as she was next to me, “Raine, thank you so much for the love you gave to my father over all those years.”
‘Raine and H.R.H. fell into each others’ arms, and they kissed goodbye in the most affectionate way … As a witness of the most charming and delicate manner in which H.R.H. spoke to and kissed Raine, I felt it would only be meet and proper to write you this letter.’
On reading this letter in The Times, Frances was incensed. To her it seemed inconceivable that Diana’s feelings towards her stepmother could possibly have changed so quickly. She also learned that around the same time Diana had also seen fit to visit her grandmother, Lady Fermoy, shortly before she died that summer.
When Frances asked Diana what she thought she was playing at, her daughter answered that if she could forgive these two former enemies, the rest of the family should do the same. Since the rest of the family had no intention of doing anything of the sort, the result of Diana’s peace offensive actually increased the tensions within the family, especially when her reconciliation with Raine began to turn into a much publicised friendship.
Diana’s life remained unresolved and fraught with problems. She still had no home other than Kensington Palace. Her marital battle dragged on, and after the Princess’s television interview on ‘Panorama’ in 1995, the Queen herself urged the couple to end their marriage. There had been too much dirty linen washed in public and too much bitterness between them. There was no alternative to the divorce, which came in 1996.
After the divorce, with a £17 million settlement, Diana felt free for the first time since her marriage to the Prince. Even Camilla was no longer a threat. Her two sons were of the utmost importance to her now, and she tried to teach them that there was a world outside the rigid confines of the palace, a kinder, more human world where people genuinely cared about eac
h other.
Having put the past behind her, she still felt she had an all-important role to play and tried to use her extraordinary position to the maximum effect, whether by focusing attention on the plight of refugees in Bosnia or arousing world opinion against the lethal scourge of land-mines. Her enthusiasm for these causes was contagious and appeared to give a new purpose to her life. But more than ever now she wanted to resolve the problem of her private life. She still had romantic dreams about her future, but was wary of committing herself. During this period, she had had a number of affairs which came to nothing. But she was not expecting to marry overnight. As she herself said: ‘I haven’t taken such a long time getting out of one poor marriage, to get into another.’
Since their reconciliation, Raine had become increasingly important in Diana’s life. As a woman of the world she was always there with practical advice, and soon they were speaking daily on the telephone and lunching together almost every week, either at the Connaught Hotel or Claridges. Then, one fateful day, Raine took Diana for lunch at Harrods to meet her old friend, the Chairman, Mohammed al Fayed.
Over lunch al Fayed talked with pride about the close friendship he had always had with her father and with Raine. He told her, ‘My old friend, Earl Spencer, was like a brother to me. On his deathbed he asked me to take care of his family.’ This was a promise he would like to keep.
In fact it was the Spencers’ involvement with the aristocracy and the Royal Family that had aroused the interest of al Fayed from the start. He had always had an obsession with the Royal Family, so much so that he even spent a vast sum of money buying the former Paris home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. After his ruthless battle for control of Harrods, al Fayed had become suspect in the eyes of the British Establishment. Both he and his brother were refused British citizenship, which offended them deeply, and his friendship with Raine and her royal step-daughter may have helped to heal the wounds of such a very public rejection.