Diana: In Pursuit of Love (43 page)

Top of the hit list were Michael Fawcett, who was felt to be too close to the heir, ‘too flaky and too extravagant’, and Mark Bolland, whose spin-doctoring in the Prince’s favour had left other members of the royal family, including the Queen, as collateral jetsam. In the fallout from these scandals, Bolland and Fawcett, both enthusiastic supporters of Camilla Parker Bowles, were ousted, though Peat himself was not immune from bitchy criticism. Bolland, in his newspaper column, took the opportunity to score points against his nemesis, claiming in the
News of the World
that, after the collapse of the Burrell trial, Sir Michael had telephoned him and asked if Prince Charles was bisexual. ‘I was astonished at Sir Michael’s question. I told him emphatically that the Prince was
not
gay or bisexual,’ Bolland insisted. ‘It is astonishing that even he . . . wanted to check the various allegations with as many people as possible.’

If the fallout from the Burrell trial had caused even those closest to the Prince to question his attitudes and behaviour, fate had not finished toying with him. In October 2003, Paul Burrell, now running a flower shop in Cheshire, published his memoir.
A Royal Duty
was not just an act of vengeance on the Spencer family, whom he blamed for his two-year ordeal from the day the police raided his home in January 2001 till the collapse of his trial in November 2002; it was also to prove a further torment for Diana’s husband. Much as Burrell tried to paint a portrait of Charles and Diana as affectionately reconciled following their divorce, William and Harry, in an unprecedented public attack, called it a ‘cold and overt betrayal’.

At the same time the book contained a secret that even the butler refused to reveal, a secret that went to the bitter heart of their marriage, the tragedy of her death, and was manna from Heaven for conspiracy theorists the world over. In the handwritten letter,
allegedly given to the butler in October 1996, just ten months before her death, the Princess had written about her suspicions of a plot to kill her. When the book was published, the name behind this plot was blacked out.

However, the
Daily Mirror
, which serialized the book, eventually named Prince Charles following the formal announcement of an inquest into her death in January 2004. ‘My husband is planning “an accident” in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry,’ she wrote. As previously discussed, it is more likely that this was written a year earlier, in 1995, not long before her famous television interview – certainly these thoughts haunted her then. This extraordinary turn of events was propelled by the decision of the official coroner, Michael Burgess, to instruct Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, to open his own investigation into Diana’s death, rather than simply rubber-stamping the findings of the exhaustive two-year French inquiry. In announcing his decision, the coroner said that he wanted to ‘separate fact from fiction and speculation’ and indicated that he was aware of ‘speculation that their deaths were not the result of a sad, but relatively straightforward, road traffic accident in Paris’. It meant that, with ten officers assigned to go over the ground again, it will probably take until mid-2005 before a full inquest is completed.

The release of further details from Diana’s letter to coincide with the inquest announcement caused further anguish for Prince Charles. Headlines stating, ‘Charles: How much more can I take?’ accompanied stories saying that the heir to the throne was expected to be interviewed by Britain’s top policeman who was formally assigned to investigate her death. Diana’s letter, which spoke of her husband’s cruelty and her own anguish, now formed a vital part of the inquiry. During a visit to the Pont de l’Alma crash site in April 2004, Sir John emphasized his determination to ‘draw a line’ under the affair, while interviewing all concerned, including Prince Charles.

For the first time since her funeral, the Spencers and Windsors were united, dismayed that the coroner had seen fit to leave open the Pandora’s box of rumour and speculation once again. ‘As far as
my family is concerned, the sooner the legal technicalities surrounding Diana’s death are finalized, the happier we will all be,’ declared Earl Spencer. ‘I have never seen a shred of evidence that it was anything other than an accident.’ A friend of the shell-shocked Prince of Wales admitted: ‘We just never saw this coming,’ while Princes William and Harry, who had, in 1998, urged the nation to stop grieving and move on, were ‘hurt and upset’ when their mother’s letter accusing their father of plotting against her was published.

It was also a slap in the face for the French investigation which had used thirty detectives and interviewed 300 witnesses. They condemned the British media for creating an ‘atmosphere of controversy’ which in turn fed ‘hypotheses, theories and allegations’ which they had already investigated. The only torchbearer of Diana’s memory who was delighted by the inquiry was Mohamed Fayed, who had spent £5 million and hundreds of thousands of man-hours attempting to prove that his son and the Princess were murdered. ‘Absolutely black-and-white, horrendous murder,’ he stated, a view which resonated deeply with the public, particularly in the Arab world where it is widely believed that the couple were killed because the royal family did not want a Muslim to marry a princess.
Who Killed Diana? Order From the Palace
was the title of one best-selling book in Egypt, while the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, joined in, broadcasting his view that British and French secret services arranged ‘the assassination of the Princess of Wales and the Arab citizen who were planning to get married’.

Many went along with Fayed’s conspiracy theories – one British newspaper survey revealed that 43 per cent of the public believed that Diana was murdered. Fayed, however, was a largely discredited figure as so much of what he had previously contended had been found to be untrue. Even though many of his assertions, notably that the paparazzi had caused the crash, that she had said last words to a nurse which he had passed on to Lady Sarah McCorquodale, and that she was pregnant, proved to be demonstrably false, he doggedly continued to pile up theory upon conjecture upon allegation. Every official conclusion was contested, every avenue explored. He offered a £1 million reward
for information leading to the discovery of the driver of the mysterious white Fiat Uno that he believed had forced the Mercedes to crash, while his lawyers even strong-armed the American National Security Agency to produce 1,056 pages of documentation they possessed which related to Diana for the period surrounding the accident. As 124 pages were classified as ‘Top Secret’ this further encouraged the belief that her telephone calls were being tapped by a security agency.

The private investigation conducted by Fayed also zeroed in on other unexplained occurrences: the fact that surveillance cameras in the tunnel were switched off; that the Mercedes may have been deliberately forced into the tunnel; the roadworthiness of the car, which had been stolen and tampered with three months before; and that just before the accident a blinding flash was seen by certain witnesses aimed at the driver. Much conjecture surrounded the driver, Henri Paul, who was fingered as a possible secret-service informer based on his freelance work as a tipster and the large and unexplained amount of cash in his many bank accounts. There was speculation too that his blood sample, which showed his high level of alcohol and drugs, had been, accidentally or deliberately, switched. Evidence for his apparent sobriety was the fact that CCTV footage showed him tying his shoelaces in the lobby of the Ritz Hotel without any evident problem. After carefully reviewing all the available evidence, Mohamed Fayed’s firmly held view that it was Prince Philip – rather than Prince Charles – who had ordered the British secret service to murder Diana and Dodi.

While the supposed mastermind behind her ‘murder’ was a matter of debate, certainly the most popular conspiracy theory concerned the involvement of Britain’s secret services in Diana’s death. This was given extra weight by maverick former British intelligence agents, Richard Tomlinson and David Shayler, who cited a plan to kill the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in a fake car crash in Geneva. Even the KGB, the Russian secret service, found this hard to swallow. The espionage writer Philip Knightley quoted a KGB agent as saying, ‘It takes a genius to make murder by car look like an accident.’

Yet the car crash theory seemed utterly plausible when ranged against the 36,000 conspiracy theory websites devoted to Diana’s death. Hypotheses ranged from claims that she was killed by international arms dealers because of her support for a ban on landmines, to those that say Osama bin Laden had her murdered as she was a bad role model for Muslim women, to some that insist that she was murdered by the royal family. On the wilder shores of credibility is a theory that she was killed by the shadowy Babylonian Brotherhood as she was named after the moon goddess and Pont de l’Alma, the underpass where the crash occurred, means passage of the moon goddess.

The truth is that, at heart, people find it difficult to believe that a modern-day goddess could meet her maker in the banality of a car accident where a drunk driver simply drove too fast. It seems that psychologically, individuals need conspiracy theories to make the chaotic, inexplicable universe more ordered and bearable. As Dr Patrick Leman of Royal Holloway College, University of London, who has conducted research into mental attitudes, observed: ‘When a big event happens we prefer to have a big cause. It upsets our view of the world if there isn’t a significant powerful explanation.’ So the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the death of Elvis and even the attack on the World Trade Center are surrounded by a multitude of competing and ever more elaborate hypotheses. In times gone by, the Jews and Freemasons were at the centre of every conspiracy. These days, given the increasing disrespect for and disbelief in authority, it is the secret service, the hidden agents of a malign Establishment, who are held responsible. ‘The new irrationalism,’ remarked the writer Francis Wheen, ‘is an expression of despair by people who feel impotent to improve their lives and suspect that they are at the mercy of secretive, impersonal forces, whether these be the Pentagon or invaders from Mars.’ We may be less deferential but we seem to be more gullible.

The plain fact of the matter, as a correspondent to the
Daily Telegraph
pointed out, was that if Diana truly believed that she might die in a pre-arranged car accident then why did she not wear a seat belt? The world-weary comment of former royal
coroner Dr John Burton captured the official exasperation with the continued focus on secret plots. ‘When it’s all over,’ he commented, ‘ninety-five per cent of the people will still disregard the facts and want to go back to their conspiracies.’

While the maelstrom of scandal swirling around the Prince of Wales has diminished his standing, it has done little to enhance the reputation of Diana, Princess of Wales either. Her letter of foreboding, which was both pathetic and comic, served to seal the growing perception that she was, as
The Times
noted, either a ‘drama queen or a tragic princess’. The witty, self-deprecating, courageous, caring and humane woman who her friends knew, and to whom the world responded when she died, was becoming lost in the riot of lurid allegations and theories. In life she had always feared that she would be dismissed as mentally unstable. Now, in death, she was described at best as flawed, by many as mad, a woman who had preserved her reputation by dying young. The commentator David Aaronovitch figuratively shook his head in despair at the confluence of conspiracy theories and Diana’s volatile personality. Writing in the
Guardian
he commented: ‘The polls show me to be in a minority. They suggest that Diana was indeed the people’s princess. She, it turns out, was barking – and so are we.’

With the passing of the years her critics felt more able to speak out. Her behaviour, particularly her seemingly ill-judged relationship with Dodi Fayed, concerned many commentators. The Queen’s biographer Robert Lacey told talk-show host Larry King in March 2004: ‘I think she was out of control and that it would have got worse. And I think – this is a tragic and maybe cynical thing to say – her death was the best possible thing that could have happened to her reputation.’ Others, like royal writer Hugo Vickers, joined the growing chorus of condemnation: ‘I still think she was spiralling into chaos. I don’t think it was going to get any better. It might have been a very sad middle age for her.’

Even before the release of Diana’s damning letter, supporters of the royal family had given occasional glimpses of how Britain’s First Family felt about the lost princess. A television documentary
by William Shawcross, now the Queen Mother’s official biographer, which was broadcast during the Golden Jubilee weekend, featured two of the Queen’s close friends, Countess Mountbatten and Lady Penn, a lady-in-waiting, casting doubt on Diana’s character. ‘The Queen found Diana’s ill health or mental instability very hard to understand because she’s a very matter-of-fact person,’ was the damning verdict of Lady Penn.

Charles’s biographer Penny Junor twisted the knife further when she wrote a laudatory book about the Prince of Wales, arguing that the late Princess suffered from Borderline Personality Syndrome, a recognized medical condition. She had been briefed by St James’s Palace which had read the final manuscript. The profile of Diana by American writer Sally Bedell Smith reached a similar conclusion, presumably influenced by off-the-record sources. As Diana’s former private secretary, Patrick Jephson, noted, ‘It passed into the public consciousness that the Princess of Wales was mentally ill in some way.’

Mad and, like Princess Caroline before her, seemingly soon forgotten. The fact that there were only a handful of bouquets outside Kensington Palace on the sixth anniversary of her death was seized upon as a sign of her wilting legacy and fading memory. It gave ammunition to those eager to dismiss the cult of Diana, the primacy of feeling over reason, of the personal over the political, as nothing more than a disguised version of self-love, a fad as ephemeral as the Carolinian movement. Intellectuals who had viewed with alarm the outpouring of public grief at her death now regarded this phenomenon as a symbol of society’s general retreat from reason and rationality, the death knell of the Age of Enlightenment.