Diana: In Pursuit of Love (30 page)

What Diana had not expected was that so many people would be surprised by her opinions, particularly of Prince Charles, as she had tried to prepare the ground beforehand. In many respects the interview was an abbreviated version of
Diana: Her True Story
, and it told those in her circle, and on its fringes, little that they had not heard many times before. The parade of newspaper editors and TV correspondents who had dined at Kensington Palace or entertained the Princess in newspaper boardrooms had listened to her talk much more frankly about her doubts concerning Charles and her aspirations for the future than she had on television. ‘No views were expressed that I didn’t know already,’ commented her butler, a view reflected by others in her circle. Submerged in the immediate commotion was the constrained and contained way she talked about her eating disorders, her post-natal depression, her selflaceration and even Camilla Parker Bowles. The impression she gave was of a woman discussing a persona she had left behind. Her message was plain: ‘I have moved on.’

When I listen to the tapes made in 1991, of Diana talking about that period in her life, which she called ‘the dark ages’, the difference is striking. Back then she spoke with a breathless haste, her tone urgent, emotional and at times even frenzied. It was the voice of a woman who, beneath the banter and laughter, had little sense of self-worth and was groping, almost shamefully, towards articulating her dreams of a life beyond the royal world.

In 1991 she had still been the fairy-tale princess who saw herself as, and indeed was, a prisoner inside the royal redoubt. Her television interview some four years later revealed a calmer, more controlled character, a woman who now had a clear sense of herself rather than one who was defined by others, notably the monarchy and the media. Here was a woman who was focused, self-reliant, articulate and emotionally literate, unafraid and unembarrassed to talk about her problems. ‘I think every strong woman in history has had to walk down a similar path, and I think it’s the strength that causes the confusion and the fear,’ she said defiantly. The Princess was effectively bidding farewell to the old Diana as she essayed her curriculum vitae for her future role in the nation’s affairs. Nevertheless, the overall effect of the interview was to prove very negative for Diana’s image, ambitions and legacy.

That Diana would one day have given a TV interview is not in doubt. In 1994 a three-pronged assault, from myself, Colthurst and the
Daily Mail
journalist Richard Kay, came close to persuading her to appear on an ITV documentary about her life. She herself was very keen to do an interview about her charitable work, but her senior staff, particularly her press secretary Geoff Crawford, opposed it. As a secret compromise, the Princess agreed to be surreptitiously filmed visiting down-and-outs on London’s South Bank. There was never any question that she might give the sort of explosive interview that appeared on
Panorama
.

So why did Diana choose to give this interview just when everything seemed to be going her way? The answer seems to be that she only agreed to the interview at this time because she was fearful of various conspiracies against her – fears that had been enhanced by her conversations with Martin Bashir and by the forged documents he had shown her. If Diana, who was much smarter than her opponents gave her credit for, had been able to choose the appropriate moment for a TV interview it would have been after her divorce when she was an independent woman, free from the constraints of royal protocol and able to talk openly about her life and ambitions. If she had lived, it would have been just the first in a series of TV interviews with big names like Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey or Clive James. While Bashir is now a star
in his own right, his career has been dogged by controversy, particularly over his interview with singer Michael Jackson, which Jackson called ‘a deception and betrayal’. Even the
New York Times
was moved to call Bashir’s show ‘callous self-interest masked as sympathy’ for the way he seemed to have duped the superstar. The Duchess of York drew parallels between the Jackson show and the Diana interview, claiming on the
The View
TV show that the Princess would never have said all the things she did if he hadn’t ‘tricked’ her – a claim he denied. A BBC executive who worked with Bashir noted after the Jackson row: ‘The dodgy graphic seems all of a piece with the Michael Jackson stuff.’ Diana’s premature death means that her only TV interview is both her testament and epitaph, the interview’s timing setting off a chain of events that are felt to this day.

On 29 November 1995, just nine days after Diana’s appearance on television, she and Patrick Jephson drove into Buckingham Palace to face the fallout from her fireworks display. The consequences of her actions were not long in coming. At a meeting with the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, and the Queen’s press secretary, Charles Anson, the Princess nominally agreed to accept the smothering bear hug of Buckingham Palace – an arrangement Jephson had wanted for some time – and allow them to organize her life, both financially and administratively. The grudging umbrella currently offered by her husband, who still paid for all her household and office expenses, would be withdrawn. Buckingham Palace was, however, only lukewarm about the scheme and Jephson, who was behind the plan, soon realized why. The Queen’s private secretary and other senior royal officials were busily pursuing a very different agenda.

Even as they discussed her future role, soundings were being taken at the highest level about a royal divorce. Nicholas Soames, the Armed Forces Minister and a close friend of Prince Charles, had already contacted Downing Street and asked the Prime Minister, John Major, to speak to the Queen about the matter. The Archbishop of Canterbury was also quietly canvassed. Soames, who, after watching the
Panorama
interview accused Diana of
displaying the ‘advanced stages of paranoia’, publicly urged the couple to divorce ‘promptly’. ‘It is plain that the marriage has broken down irrevocably . . . and that divorce is inevitable,’ he said bluntly. The historian Lord Blake, who advised Buckingham Palace on constitutional issues, lent his authority to moves to prepare the nation for the sad ending to the fairy-tale marriage. ‘The present situation in which they seem to be giving a sort of tit-for-tat, running each other down, really has become almost intolerable,’ he said.

The moment arrived sooner than Diana expected. While the Princess was in New York, where she received a humanitarian award on 12 December, the Queen had taken matters into her own hands and informed the Prime Minister that she would write to the couple and ask them to agree to ‘an early divorce . . . in the best interests of the country’. It was a sign of just how intractable and how damaging the continued dispute was to the fabric of the monarchy that the Queen, whose natural instinct is to avoid confrontation and not to interfere in the lives of her children, had, however reluctantly, become involved. The marital dispute was the talk of polite and impolite society not just in Britain but beyond our shores. As the former American Ambassador to Britain, Raymond Seitz, remarked of those days in his memoir,
Over Here
, ‘There was the party of the Prince and the party of the Princess, one demanding loyalty and the other sympathy, one describing the Princess as cunning, manipulative and publicity-hungry, and the other calling the Prince naive, whimsical and self-pitying.’

Diplomats and historians agree that the fallout went way beyond the personal breakdown between the Prince and Princess of Wales. The timing of the Queen’s historic letter, just days before the traditional royal family’s Christmas gathering at Sandringham, as well as her decision to become personally involved (admittedly encouraged and supported in this by the Prime Minister), reflected the genuine sense of crisis and exasperation felt by senior courtiers inside the beleaguered institution.

That frustration was directed not only at the Princess but also at her vacillating husband and the BBC, courtiers feeling pained by the lack of trust the public broadcaster had shown in the Palace.
As the Queen’s biographer, Sarah Bradford, told me, ‘The Wales divorce was undoubtedly the most damaging event since the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936. It brought into question the reality of the monarchy and the Queen’s personal attributes as a mother and as a monarch.’

Diana, however, did not see it that way when, on 18 December, the handwritten note from the Queen – the first letter, the Princess observed ruefully, she had ever received from the Sovereign – was delivered by uniformed courier to Kensington Palace from Windsor Castle. She was shocked, angry, tearful and indignant. Three weeks earlier, the Princess, presenting an image of strength and self-possession, had told the world that it was ‘not her wish’ to divorce; now she was being asked, nay ordered, by her mother-in-law to end her marriage. To add insult to injury the Queen had discussed the matter with the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury and others, without conferring personally with her daughter-in-law. Once she had calmed down, Diana realized that the Queen, whom she well knew preferred to put her head in the sand during domestic disputes – what the royal family call ‘ostriching’ – truly meant business.

What is more, the Queen had the law on her side. As Diana had been aware since the separation, she herself had fewer rights under law, particularly with regard to her children, than any other woman in the land. The Queen has under common law absolute right and authority for the care and education of her two grandsons, in particular Prince William, the heir presumptive. This right was last recognized in 1772 and the law has not been altered since. In theory, indeed, the Queen could at any time have overridden the wishes of their parents with regard to the boys’ education and how and with whom they were to be brought up.

No sooner had Diana digested the contents of the Queen’s note than she received another letter, this time from Prince Charles, personally requesting a divorce. In the letter, which began ‘Dearest Diana’, the Prince described the failure of their relationship as a ‘national and personal tragedy’. However, he used the same phrasing as the Queen in referring to the ‘sad and complicated situation’ of the royal marriage, which led Diana to suspect that the
Windsors were acting in concert against her. In typical fashion – Diana always prided herself on replying promptly – she sent the Queen and her husband handwritten letters almost by return, after first consulting one of her divorce lawyers, Anthony Julius. In her responses she was non-committal, saying that she would need time to reflect and that she would ‘consider her options’.

Even though the Princess was shocked and wrong-footed by the Queen’s intervention, tactically it had inadvertently played into Diana’s hands. Ever since the separation she had had a fear, verging on the pathological, that she would be blamed for the divorce and had always played the waiting game. Now that that threat was lifted, the Princess had a genuine opportunity to make good her great escape. At the same time the Queen’s pre-emptive strike had neatly let Prince Charles off the hook as the apportionment of blame would be more limited. The Queen’s letter, which was leaked to the mass media within days – ‘For once they can’t blame me,’ said Diana – meant that the public perceived that it was the Sovereign who was, quite unusually but properly, taking the initiative in order to protect the institution of monarchy.

There were immediate practical issues to be attended to, most notably whether the Princess should accept or decline the Queen’s invitation to join the royal family at Sandringham. Before the separation she had found family gatherings difficult. In the last few years she had avoided them as far as possible. While her
Panorama
interview may have, in her mind, ended the chance of any real threat to her, that did not mean that the hostility felt by ‘the enemy’ had abated. In her mind, Sandringham was enemy territory, a feeling underscored by Prince Margaret’s hostile letter and by the almost tangible antipathy of other members of the royal family. An off-the-cuff comment made by Princess Margaret to a titled lady friend at the time seemed to encapsulate the family’s attitude: ‘Poor Lilibet and Charles have done everything they can to get rid of the wretched girl, but she just won’t go.’

Diana was already anxious and uncertain about spending Christmas with ‘the leper colony’ as she disparagingly called the royal family. The divorce letter from the Queen finally decided her – even though it meant leaving the boys, she would not go to
Sandringham. ‘I would have gone up there in my BMW and come out in a coffin,’ she remarked afterwards. Instead she spent Christmas Day on her own at Kensington Palace before flying off for a Caribbean holiday. In the days before her holiday she twice visited her therapist Susie Orbach and had time to phone her friend, the magazine editor Liz Tilberis, who had been her honorary lady-in-waiting in New York, to encourage her in her fight against cancer, as well as contacting a family in Lancashire whom she had befriended, who had lost their daughter to the disease.

The Princess’s decision to decline the Sovereign’s invitation, normally viewed as a command, to spend Christmas at Sandringham proved to be a momentous judgement, marking the nadir of her relationship with the Queen. For the first time in her royal career Diana had placed herself in direct conflict with the head of state. Since the separation Diana, who sincerely believed in the monarchy, had carefully maintained their relationship and remained somewhat in awe of a woman who, while not beyond reproach, commanded her complete respect. So, however compelling her reasons, this was, as far as the Queen was concerned, an affront too many. From now on Diana found that the Queen was not available to take her telephone calls and that meetings with Her Majesty’s courtiers were cool, brisk and formal. While the Queen ensured that the door to her daughter-in-law remained open, the Princess discovered that the hinges were much stiffer and she had to push much harder to get what she wanted. As she later remarked, ‘The only thing we had in common was Charles, and now I didn’t have Charles any more.’