Diana: In Pursuit of Love
Read Diana: In Pursuit of Love Online
Authors: Andrew Morton
DIANA
In Pursuit of Love
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
:
Diana: Her True Story
Diana: Her New Life
Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words
Moi: The Making of an African Statesman
Monica’s Story
Posh & Becks
Madonna
Nine For Nine: The Pennsylvania Mine Rescue Miracle
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by
Michael O’Mara Books Limited
9 Lion Yard
Tremadoc Road
London SW4 7NQ
This electronic edition published in 2013
Copyright © 2004 by Andrew Morton
Every reasonable effort has been made to acknowledge all copyright holders. Any errors or omissions that may have occurred are inadvertent, and anyone with any copyright queries is invited to write to the publishers, so that a full acknowledgement may be included in subsequent editions of this work.
All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of Andrew Morton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-78243-105-3 in ePub format
ISBN: 978-1-78243-106-0 in Mobipocket format
ISBN: 978-1-84317-084-6 in hardback print format
Designed and typeset by Martin Bristow
Jacket photograph: PA Photos
Jacket design:
www.glensaville.com
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
Hard Road to Freedom
CHAPTER TWO
The Year of Living Dangerously
CHAPTER THREE
The Comfort of Strangers
CHAPTER FOUR
Unfinished Business
CHAPTER SIX
A Princess of the World
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘They Want To Kill Me’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fakes, Forgeries and Secret Tapes
CHAPTER TEN
The Crowning of the Queen of Hearts
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Final Odyssey
CHAPTER TWELVE
Trials of the Torch Bearers
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Curse of the Lost Princess
EPILOGUE
Passport to Parachinar
For Mike
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
O
VER THE YEARS
I have come to know some of those in whom Diana, Princess of Wales confided, and it will be apparent in my narrative that I have had numerous off-the-record conversations with people close to major events in her life. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to them for their insights and advice.
In the eighteen months it has taken to research and write this book I have enjoyed numerous convivial conversations with many others whose lives were also touched in some way by the late Princess. My thanks go to: Dickie Arbiter,
LVO
; Steven Bartlett; Carolan Brown; Dr James Colthurst; Paul Cooper; Mohamed Fayed; Debbie Frank; Philip Garvin, CEO Response International; Geordie Greig; Richard Greene; David Griffin; Robert Heindel; Soheir Khashoggi; Robert Lacey; Brian Lask; Ken Lennox; Keith Leverton; Thierry Meresse; Betty Palko; Vivienne Parry; Jean-Marie Pontaut; David Puttnam; Jenni Rivett; Ian Sparks; Raine, Countess Spencer; Chester Stern; Oonagh Shanley-Toffolo; Penny Thornton; Stephen Twigg; Matthias Wiessler; Ken Wharfe, and Hassan Yassin.
My thanks too to my researcher, Lily Williams, for her valiant efforts under continuous pressure. As ever I owe an immense debt to my editors Dominique Enright and Toby Buchan, as well as to the rest of the editorial team at Michael O’Mara Books for their fortitude, steadiness and support, in particular Helen Cumberbatch, Kate Gribble, Judith Palmer and Chris Maynard. My thanks too to Martin Bristow for designing the text, to Glen Saville for his jacket design, and to Andy Armitage for the index. Finally, from the walk along the beach to the trip down memory lane, Michael O’Mara has been, as he has always been, a great supporter and witness.
I
NTRODUCTION
Love Factually
O
NE
S
ATURDAY
in March 2004 I was in my study adding the finishing touches to Chapter Eleven of this book when the front-door bell rang. It was a reporter from the tabloid
Sunday People
newspaper. She had been sent to get a quote from me about a story they were about to print. It concerned the contents of this book. They had learned, from the usual impeccable sources, that I was going to reveal in the book the identity of three of Diana’s secret lovers. The actor Terence Stamp, a rich captain of industry and a British movie heart-throb, who was in his fifties, were on my list. I flatly denied the story and went back to work.
The next day I bought the
Sunday People
newspaper and discovered that the story occupied the front page and two inside pages with the headlines, ‘Diana Sex Bombshell’ and ‘Named: Diana’s Three Secret Lovers’ (only one so-called lover was named). It went on to detail how the ‘besotted’ Princess had launched an ‘astonishing stalking campaign to woo the three secret lovers’, ‘lovelorn’ Diana bombarding the men with intimate letters. The authority for this story was my as yet unpublished ‘explosive’ new book. The article went on to suggest how the wealthy but unnamed captain of industry had consummated his affair with the Princess at the home of a mutual friend. The newspaper’s source was quoted as saying, ‘Some authors could be accused of picking names out of a hat but Morton has pored over thousands of
documents and interviewed hundreds of very well-placed people.’ All very flattering.
By Monday the story, which went round the world, was given a further twist in the
Daily Mail
when they described the ‘terrible anguish’ suffered by William and Harry over this new information. ‘There seems to be no end to it,’ noted a concerned royal source. Then it was the turn of the columnists to weigh in with their five-cents’ worth. In the
Daily Express
Vanessa Feltz was delighted that the Princess had found ‘tender, considerate romance’ with Terence Stamp, who, she was sure, would have treated her with the ‘utmost delicacy’. Not to be outdone, Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell – whose own book Diana’s sons called a ‘cold and overt’ betrayal – joined the commentary. ‘I think it’s disgusting, to be honest,’ was Burrell’s considered view of my unpublished book. ‘What goes on between two people behind closed doors should be private. I’ve always respected people’s private lives and I have never talked about Diana’s love life. What he is doing is terrible.’
To round off the coverage, the
Sunday Times
published a full-page profile of Stamp, who first made his name in the Swinging Sixties and has followed a distinguished career ever since, not only in the movies but as the author of a novel and an autobiography.
In consequence of all this media activity, within a matter of days, a large number of people, in Britain and beyond, had some sort of idea that Diana, obsessed and lovelorn, had pursued and had had affairs with Terence Stamp and several other unnamed men.
There was only one problem with the story. It was utterly untrue.
The bizarre episode reminded me of why I returned to the subject of Diana, Princess of Wales in the first place, some twelve years after my first biography,
Diana: Her True Story
, written with her consent and cooperation, was published in 1992. This latest work has its origins during a walk along St Petersburg beach in Florida with my publisher Michael O’Mara one morning in November 2002, when I was promoting a book called
Nine For Nine
about the rescue of a group of Pennsylvania miners who had been trapped below ground for three days.
At the time, the trial on charges of theft of Paul Burrell was taking place at the Old Bailey in London. During TV and radio interviews in America I would be asked about the miners but also about the significance of the evidence in the trial. As Mike and I discussed the trial and Diana during our morning stroll it seemed that the woman we had come to know during our collaboration with her during the early 1990s was rapidly disappearing from view, her personality diminishing with every passing year. Listening to the commentary on her life based on evidence from the trial, it was as though the jigsaw puzzle of her personality had been scattered – so much had been forgotten but also exaggerated or distorted. The letters which Prince Philip sent to the Princess following the publication of my 1992 biography, for instance, were discussed during the trial and given a quite disproportionate significance. In any case, the letters had been comprehensively discussed a decade before by myself and others.
This distortion has gone on apace since her death. Some of those who knew or worked for the Princess have offered their own recollections of her character, often exaggerating their own importance in her life, airing their disappointment with her, or continuing their own vendettas in the pages of their memoirs. Her private secretary Patrick Jephson, for example, probably burst into print too soon with
Shadows of a Princess
, about his years as the late Princess’s private secretary, the bitterness of his departure colouring many of his judgements. It is noticeable that in his subsequent newspaper articles he now writes much more warmly and sympathetically about Diana, perhaps realizing, from his own experience, the difficulties she faced in trying to forge her own life outside the royal compound. Similarly, Diana’s butler Paul Burrell allowed the anger he feels towards the Spencer family, whom he blames for his trial for theft at the Old Bailey, to infect the narrative of his memoir,
A Royal Duty
.
Stories and opinions abound, the bewildered public treated to a parade of witnesses giving often contradictory impressions and anecdotes from their own necessarily narrow perspective. Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed, father of Diana’s last lover Dodi, for example, has consistently argued that his son was going to marry
her. This contention, together with his staunch advocacy that there was a conspiracy to murder his son and the Princess, has affected the way the world assesses Diana’s last days. Others insist that she herself had told them she had no plans to remarry, while there are those who believe that it was Hasnat Khan she truly wanted to marry.
So even for those who know the characters involved, much has to be decoded. What is said or written is often not what is meant. This is difficult for someone who knows the royal terrain – it is virtually impossible for interested observers. The fact that Diana lived her life in compartments, closing off whole areas of her life to those who now say they knew her well, has made the process of assessing her life in the round even more complicated.