by Penny Junor
Later, Sandy was up in the tower at Balmoral, where letters were pouring in by the thousand. ‘Harry arrived with Tiggs and said, “What are you doing?” I explained that all of these people wanted to say how sorry they are that your mummy’s dead and that they’re thinking of you.
“‘Can I open some?” said Harry, snatching up some envelopes. “Of course you can. Go on, help yourself.”’ She was a motherly figure, with no children of her own, but stepchildren, and she was the perfect person for the sensitive task of coaxing the boys out of their shell. She had worked for their father, and known both boys for four years, but because of Diana’s suspicion that everyone who worked for ‘the other side’ would betray her or let her down, she hadn’t had much to do with them. ‘Sad,’ says Sandy simply. ‘Our view [meaning Alan Percival, her predecessor] was that if you let one of them down, you let the children down, but more importantly, you let the institution down.’
William was no longer a young boy, but not yet a man; it was a difficult age. He didn’t speak to Sandy about his feelings or his mother, and she never saw a tear; he appeared to internalise the grief, just as he had internalised so much in his life already. He never allowed much of himself to be exposed in all the years she worked with him, from the age of eleven to eighteen, and he was always more guarded than his brother. He was always someone who seemed to be dealing with whatever situation arose in his own way.
‘I think he has an innate sense of self-protection,’ Sandy says, ‘and wouldn’t have answered questions about his mother even if I’d asked him. He’d have been polite. He’s a politician that man, he can charm people. If you ask him a personal question he will be as honest as he wants to be but you will never get down, thank God, into the real root of William, because that’s how he protects himself.’
The day the flag appeared on the roof of Buckingham Palace the family ventured out of the gates of Balmoral for the first time since the day of Diana’s death. William and Harry expressed a desire to go to church again so the Prince took the opportunity to give them a small taster of what awaited them in London. The funeral was just two days away. There were hundreds of flowers and tributes, but nothing compared to those that had piled up outside Kensington Palace, where there were said to be a million bouquets and goodness knows how many teddy bears and other offerings, 1.5 metres deep in places. There were almost as many outside Buckingham Palace.
About sixty members of the press were waiting outside the gates of Balmoral that day, a crowd for the Highlands, yet they uttered not a single word as the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Peter Phillips (who had flown up to be with his cousins), the Prince of Wales and his sons stepped out of their cars to look at the flowers and the tributes. The only sound to be heard, apart from the clicking of the camera shutters, was the voices of the royal party. It was the first time in the five days since their mother’s death that the country had seen Diana’s boys. It was a touching scene. All three Princes, father and sons, were visibly moved by what they saw and taken aback by the messages attached to the bouquets.
‘Look at this one, Papa,’ said Harry, grabbing hold of his father’s hand and tugging him down. ‘Read this one.’ Captured on film, the gesture was surprising, if not shocking. The Prince of Wales did seem to have a heart after all. He actually held his son’s hand, something no one could ever have imagined before. And he seemed to have aged.
Of all the criticisms Diana threw at the Prince during their bitter war of words, the one that hurt the most was that he was unfeeling and cold. It was patently untrue, as anyone who has seen Charles with his children knows very well. Diana knew it too, and later regretted her words.
The sight of the Prince of Wales and his sons did much to soften the public mood, and when the Queen made a surprising live television broadcast that Friday evening before Saturday’s funeral, the mood softened further. The fact that it was only the second time during her reign that she had broadcast to the nation other than at Christmas – the first being during the Gulf War – made it an additionally impressive gesture.
‘Since last Sunday’s dreadful news we have seen throughout Britain and around the world an overwhelming expression of sadness at Diana’s death.
‘We have all been trying in our different ways to cope. It is not easy to express a sense of loss, since the initial shock is often succeeded by a mixture of other feelings: disbelief, incomprehension, anger – and concern for all who remain.
‘We have all felt those emotions in these last few days. So what I say to you now, as your Queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart.
‘First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good times and bad, she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness.
‘I admired and respected her – for her energy and commitment to others, and especially for her devotion to her two boys.
‘This week at Balmoral, we have all been trying to help William and Harry come to terms with the devastating loss that they and the rest of us have suffered.
‘No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew her, will remember her.
‘I for one believe that there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death.’
The Queen’s words possibly prevented a revolution.
THE ENVELOPE
The country might have been angry at the Queen’s decision to keep her family in Scotland, but those days spent in the peace and solitude of the Highlands were a godsend to William and Harry. The boys were the priority and Balmoral was the most sensible place for them to be – far away from prying eyes and long lenses. It is the spiritual home of the Royal Family, where the boys had spent happy summers every year of their lives. It is the place where the Queen instinctively feels relaxed and at ease, where she adopts an informality that is not seen in any of her other residences. They love it there, and in that week when their entire world turned upside down, it offered balm to their broken hearts. The hundreds of acres of heather and wild, craggy moorland, lochs and rivers offered everything they needed; they could go for long walks – as William did for the first two days – he went for long, long walks alone. They could go fishing, stalking, riding, or go-karting; there were picnics and barbecues, when their grandparents did the cooking and everyone mucked in. They were surrounded by all the most important and familiar people in their lives. It was the best possible environment for them both. They could be kept busy or they could be given the space and time to talk, to reminisce, to ask questions and begin to take in the enormity of what had happened. And to prepare for their mother’s funeral and another traumatic day.
The funeral was another tinderbox. The Spencer family wanted a small, private funeral, with which the Queen was inclined to agree. The Prince of Wales wanted nothing less than a full royal funeral at Westminster Abbey. As they watched the public reaction intensify, the Spencers came round to his point of view but Charles Spencer wanted to be the only one who walked behind the cortège. The Prince disagreed; he also wanted to walk as a mark of respect to Diana who, after all, had been his wife for fifteen years; and he wanted the boys to walk with him if they so chose. He felt intuitively it was something they should do for their mother and that it would aid the grieving process. Downing Street, meanwhile, wanted a ‘People’s Funeral’ with the public marching behind the coffin.
There was a bitter exchange on the telephone between the Prince of Wales and Earl Spencer in which the Earl hung up on his ex-brother-in-law. Over dinner on the Friday night, when the whole Royal Family was together at Buckingham Palace, the Duke of Edinburgh settled the argument by saying he would walk too. In the end, the three men and two boys all walked together. William had the reassurance of being safely between his father and grandfather.
It was a long walk from St James’s Palace, where they joined the cortège, to Westminster Abbey, with ev
ery bite of the lip and tremble of the chin exposed to the word’s media and the millions of people who had flocked to the city to be there and witness the atmosphere of a unique day. Hundreds had aimlessly walked the streets all night or held candlelit vigils in the parks – even Diana’s mother had walked quietly among the mourners, her grief unimaginable. Some brought sleeping bags that were soaked through by torrential rain the afternoon before. No one minded. The sun shone brightly and the anger and slightly menacing atmosphere of the days before were gone. Emotions were still very raw but there was laughter as well as tears. United in their loss, strangers spoke to strangers, as they had seventeen years before when the Royal Wedding had united them in celebration.
They lined the route and filled the streets and the parks, where giant television screens had been erected. The mood was electrifying. People threw flowers as the cortège passed, some cried, some wailed. It was an ordeal that called for huge courage from William and Harry, and they did their mother – and their nation – proud. They walked slowly and steadily, struggling at times to hold back tears, but their composure never wavered, until they were inside the Abbey when at times the music, the poetry and the oratory were too much for them. But by then the cameras were off, forbidden to focus on the family. Both boys displayed a maturity beyond their years, which touched everyone who saw it.
It was an ordeal for their father too. He was desperately worried about whether they would cope with being on such very public view when the day was already going to be difficult enough. There was also the thought that he might be attacked or booed. He knew that many of the people weeping for Diana blamed him; but his fears were unfounded.
The funeral was immensely moving and a masterpiece of organisation, the British monarchy doing what it does best: the precision timing, the military professionalism, the ceremonial pageantry, but mixed with a refreshingly human touch so perfect for Diana – the combination that William winningly reproduced for his wedding day in the same place fourteen years later. Tony Blair read 1 Corinthians 13 and Elton John sang a specially rewritten version of ‘Candle in the Wind’.
The most heartbreaking element of the whole day, however, was the white envelope, propped into a bouquet of white freesias, that sat on the top of Diana’s coffin with the single handwritten word: MUMMY. Sandy had foreseen that the boys might want to write a note. ‘I remember ringing Tiggy. “The boys are going to put some flowers on their mother’s coffin?” “Of course.” “And they’re going to write a note aren’t they?” “Yes.” “Right, could you do me a favour? Please make sure that whatever they say is in an envelope.” “Okay. Why?” “Because one of the first things the cameras are going to do is zoom in on their words.”’
Their privacy was fortunately protected, but no one could protect them from Charles Spencer, their uncle, whose harsh and bitter words marred the day.
‘Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of selfless humanity …’ he said in his tribute. ‘Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic …
‘She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate, and I do this here, Diana, on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.
‘And beyond that, on behalf of your mother and my sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.’
It was a shocking kick in the teeth, on the day their mother was buried, to the people that William and Harry, now motherless, loved most: their father and their grandparents who were sitting just a few feet away from him in the Abbey.
There was gentle applause from a few of those sitting inside the Abbey, but he was loudly cheered by the thousands listening on the sound relay outside. And, I can only conclude, he was also cheered by the millions more watching the funeral service on their television sets at home. I was interviewed by ITN, at their temporary studio at Canada Gate, next to Buckingham Palace, where I had listened to the tribute, and was asked what I thought of it. I said I had every sympathy with the Earl, who was clearly distraught by the loss of his sister, but I thought it very inappropriate: this was neither the time nor the place to say the things he said. The switchboard at ITN was instantly jammed with angry callers and the producer was told to get me out of the studio right away.
What offended the Prince of Wales most was being forced to sit and be lectured about parental responsibility by a man who’d had a disastrous marriage of his own and who had brought his latest mistress to the funeral.
While Diana’s coffin was driven slowly to her ancestral home in Northampton, past thousands of spectators on the roadside, the Prince of Wales, William and Harry and the Spencers all made the journey in the Royal Train to the private burial service on an island in the middle of a lake. She had said she wanted to be interred in the family crypt at Great Brington, but it was deemed that the small churchyard in the village would be unable to cope with the number of visitors. There are some, however, who believe that her body was, in fact, quietly placed alongside her father’s and that of her beloved grandmother, Cynthia, at Great Brington.
Having denied Diana the cottage she asked for on the estate for fear of the media attention it would attract, it seems ironic that Charles Spencer should have turned Althorp into a Mecca, with the old stable block fashioned into a permanent exhibition called ‘Diana: A Celebration’, and for £30 for a family ticket, the world and his wife are welcome to visit.
In the aftermath of the funeral, Earl Spencer was feted for his speech and the Prince of Wales criticised for having forced his sons to walk behind the cortège. Sandy Henney very nearly came to blows with Stuart Higgins, editor of the Sun, over his refusal to believe it was the boys’ own choice. ‘When she died, the country may have lost a Princess but two young boys had lost their mum and I’ll never forget saying to Stuart, who I actually like a lot, “Who is anyone, to tell those boys what they should do? I’m sick of this, Our Princess has died.” Their MUM has died; they should choose where they walk. All this nonsense of the children being forced to protect Charles. Right up until the last minute when the boys decided to walk behind the coffin, there was a plan that if they couldn’t do it – entirely their choice – I would go, take them from the Prince’s apartment at St James’s, across to Clarence House and they would go to the funeral with their great-grandmother. It was their choice and it angered me because everyone was deciding what should happen to their mum.’
GETTING ON WITH THE DAY
Charles took William and Harry home to Highgrove after the funeral. No one could have better understood the pain they were going through than he, and he will have been able to draw on his own experience as they struggled to make sense of all that had happened in the last week. He had never lost a mother, obviously, but he had endured the loss of the man he called his ‘honorary grandfather’ and the memory of that dark time, and the feelings of loss that never go away, were all too familiar to him. Charles was not a child when it happened, but Lord Mountbatten’s murder was as sudden and violent as Diana’s and Charles had taken a long time to come to terms with it.
He was grateful that Tiggy was there to help keep their spirits up and to deal with all the last-minute back-to-school chores. She was a vital ingredient in the mix of sensitive and supportive people the boys had around them at that time; likewise their PPOs, who were one hundred per cent trustworthy, had known them all their lives and were like older brothers. And there were those from the Prince’s private office, particularly Sandy, who supported them professionally. The staff at Highgrove ensured that life carried on as normal, except that no newspapers were brought into
the house. Since Diana hadn’t lived at Highgrove for some years, her absence from it was not a constant reminder.
From the very start, both boys appeared to be in remarkable control. With school starting just a few days later, they were soon enveloped in their academic and sporting routines; the Barbers taking care of Harry at Ludgrove, and the remarkable Andrew Gailey keeping a close watch on William at Eton. The presence of his grandparents across the bridge was another crucial factor. He became particularly close to the Queen, but also to his grandfather, and their weekly conversations were a source of comfort and inspiration.
Another important person who came into their lives after their mother’s death was Mark Dyer, an ex-Welsh Guards officer, whom colleagues describe as a Captain Hurricane figure. He was taken on as a male Tiggy. He and Tiggy, who were old friends, were partners in crime and were as devoted to the boys as the boys were to them, but again it is Harry who has the closer bond. Mark had worked as an equerry to the Prince of Wales when the children were younger, and Charles had asked if he could come back to help them through this difficult period. ‘He was a rugby player, a good egg,’ says one of the Prince’s team. ‘He’s a very straightforward, hard-drinking, hard-living adventurer, and a great soldier. He was also somebody the Princes could relate to at that age; and they remembered him from their childhood when he’d shown them guns and tanks and things and taken them rock climbing. The press thought he was a bad influence but he did a bloody good job for them. He had huge integrity, and he was around when they needed advice that didn’t come from their father.’
