Diana_Her True Story_In Her Own Words_25th Anniversary Edition

by Andrew Morton

  Having been given the opportunity to write the story of the best-loved woman in the world I was obviously anxious to know that I had fairly and accurately interpreted her sentiments and her words. To my great relief she approved; on one occasion Diana was so moved by the poignancy of her own story that she confessed to weeping tears of sorrow.

  She made a number of alterations, of fact and emphasis, but only one of any significance, a change which gives an insight into her respect for the Queen. During the interviews she had said that when she threw herself down the stairs at Sandringham while pregnant with Prince William, the Queen was the first on the scene. On the manuscript, Diana altered the text and inserted the Queen Mother’s name, presumably out of deference to the Sovereign.

  Other hurdles remained. While a number of Diana’s close friends went on the record in order to underpin the authenticity of the text, the Princess accepted that the book needed a direct link with her own family in order to give it further legitimacy. After some discussion she agreed to supply the Spencer family photograph albums, which contained numerous delightful portraits of the growing Diana, many taken by her late father, Earl Spencer.

  Shortly before he died, the Princess sent her father a short note explaining why she had co-operated in a book about her life.

  I would like to ask you a special favour.

  In particular I would like you to keep that as a secret between us. Please will you do that.

  An author who has done me a particular favour is now writing a book on me as Diana, rather than PoW [Princess of Wales]. I trust him completely – and have every reason to do so. He has felt for a long time that the System has rather overshadowed my own life and would like to do a fuller book on me as a person.

  It is a chance for my own self to surface a little rather than be lost in the system. I rather see it as a lifebelt against being drowned and it is terribly important to me – and this was brought home to me when I was showing the boys the albums – to remember these things which are me.

  She then went on to ask her father to supply the family albums for the book and, hey presto, a few days later several large, red, gold-embossed family albums made their way to the South London offices of my publisher. A number of photographs were selected and duplicated, and the albums returned. The Princess herself helped to identify many of the people who appeared in the photographs with her, a process she greatly enjoyed as it brought back many happy memories, particularly of her teenage years.

  She appreciated, too, that, in order to make the book truly distinctive, we had to have a previously unpublished jacket picture. As it was out of the question that she could attend a photo shoot, she personally chose and supplied the winsome Patrick Demarchelier cover photograph, which was one she kept in her study desk at Kensington Palace. This shot, and those of her and her children, which were used inside, were her particular favourites. We have chosen a hitherto unseen Demarchelier shot for the cover of this anniversary edition of Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words.

  These were quiet interludes as the storm clouds gathered. The book was due to be published on 16 June 1992 and, as that date approached, the tension at Kensington Palace became palpable. Her newly appointed private secretary, Patrick Jephson, described the atmosphere as ‘like watching a slowly spreading pool of blood seeping from under a locked door’. In January 1992 she was warned that Buckingham Palace was aware of her co-operation with the book, even though at that stage they did not know its contents. Nonetheless she remained steadfast in her involvement with the venture. She knew that there was a cataclysm in the offing but had no doubts that she would survive it.

  Diana made a number of alterations to the original manuscript in her own hand.

  In a letter to James Colthurst some six months before the book’s publication she wrote:

  ‘Obviously we are preparing for the volcano to erupt and I do feel better equipped to cope with whatever comes our way! Thank you for your belief in me and for taking the trouble to understand this mind – it’s such a relief not to be on my own any more and that it’s okay to be me.’

  The volcano erupted on 7 June 1992 when the first extract appeared in the Sunday Times under the banner headline: ‘Diana driven to five suicide bids by “uncaring” Charles’. Underneath was the sub-heading: ‘Marriage collapse led to illness; Princess says she will not be Queen.’

  It is hard now, when the narrative of her unhappy life is conventional wisdom, as illustrated by the fact that Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles have been happily married for 12 years, to convey the shock, disgust and astonishment that greeted the first instalment. Criticism was severe and unrelenting. The Archbishop of Canterbury warned about the damage to the boys, one Member of Parliament suggested I be imprisoned in the Tower of London, while the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Lord McGregor, accused the media of ‘dabbling their fingers in the stuff of other people’s souls’.

  In the ensuing furore the book was condemned and banned by numerous major bookstores and supermarkets, in the process becoming Britain’s most banned book of the 1990s. It is one of the ironies of this whole affair that a biography written and produced with the complete and enthusiastic co-operation of the subject should be piously boycotted on the suspicion that it was a false rendering of Diana’s life.

  As for the subject herself, she was relieved that at last her account was out, but desperately anxious that her cover story would hold water. She had to be able to deny involvement when she was put in the dock by the Palace.

  It was a part she played with aplomb. The author and TV star Clive James fondly recalled asking her over lunch whether she was behind the book. He wrote: ‘At least once, however, she lied to me outright. “I really had nothing to do with that Andrew Morton book,” she said. “But after my friends talked to him I had to stand by them.” She looked me straight in the eye when she said this, so I could see how plausible she could be when she was telling a whopper.’

  Certainly the first few days after the initial serialization tested Diana’s resolve to the limit. Soon, though, she began to receive the kind of support that always meant so much to her, from her public. While the public’s image of Diana underwent an astonishing transformation when her story was told, I don’t think she ever truly thought through the consequences of her actions. When she was later asked that question, her response was hesitant: ‘I don’t know. Maybe people have a better understanding, maybe there’s a lot of women out there who suffer on the same level but in a different environment who are unable to stand up for themselves because their self-esteem is cut in two.’ Once again her instinct about the response was unerring. Thousands of women, many from America, expressed how, through reading about her life, they had discovered and explored something in their own lives. Letters came flooding in. Many came from people who had suffered with eating disorders and accepted their lot in silence. For me, one of the most touching instances came from a young bulimic woman in Perth in Western Australia, who could neither read nor write well but vowed to improve her education and her life, having been inspired by Diana’s personal courage. It was an extraordinary response – and it meant so much to her.

  Over the years there have been numerous suggestions that she regretted her part in the book, that it gave a sour snapshot at a difficult moment in her life. The truth is that she had put what she called ‘the dark ages’ of her life behind her and was anxious to move on to a more fulfilling future. As her friend film-maker Lord Puttnam recalled: ‘She owned what she had done. She knew what she was doing and took a calculated risk even though she was scared shitless. But I never heard one word of regret, I promise you.’

  In the months following that momentous event, the book not only altered the way the public viewed the monarchy and forced the Prince and Princess of Wales finally to address the ruins of their marriage, it also brought the one thing Diana had dreamed of – hope; the chance of fulfilment, of freedom and of a future where she was free at last to be a pe
rson in her own right.

  In the last five years, and particularly the last few months, of her life, the world witnessed the flowering of Diana’s humanitarian spirit, qualities which, I am sure, would have remained buried if she had not had the courage and determination to tell her public about the reality of her life. Diana achieved that aim, and the public’s verdict can be gauged by the mountain of flowers outside Kensington Palace and elsewhere, and the outpouring of grief which convulsed not just her own country but the rest of the world when she died prematurely in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997.

  She may now be gone, but her words are with us forever. The story contained in the pages of Diana: Her True Story came from her lips. There were no camera lights, rehearsals, second takes or glib sound bites. Her words came from the heart, outlining in graphic and, at times, agonizing detail the sorrow and loneliness felt by a woman admired and adored around the world. When I wrote Diana: Her True Story her testimony was used sotto voce throughout the text – in short, direct quotation or through third parties. One of the abiding sadnesses of her short life was that she never truly had the chance, as her brother said, to ‘sing openly’. Following her death I was finally able to include a transcript of her unvarnished words in a new edition of the book. However, even then the limitations of the technology prevented us from being able to include as much as we would have liked. On one occasion, for instance, Colthurst had used the cover story of treating the Princess’s painful shoulder to conduct an interview; unfortunately, the machine he was using came so close to the microphone that the noise interfered with the audio. Today, thanks to advances in modern technology, we’ve been able to extract her words and I can now share a more comprehensive account of her historic and truly unique interviews.

  As you'll see, this volume is divided into three parts: the first is an edited transcript of the interviews Diana gave which formed the basis for the initial publication of Diana: Her True Story; the second is the biography itself; and the final part is an account of the aftermath, from the book’s publication in 1992 to the present day.

  If Diana had enjoyed a full life she would probably have written her own memoirs at some point. Sadly, that is no longer possible. The testimony which follows is her life story as she wanted to tell it. Her words are now all we have of her, her testament, the nearest we will now ever get to her autobiography. No one can deny her that.

  Diana, Princess of Wales

  In Her Own Words

  Publisher’s note: The following words are selected and edited from extensive taped interviews given by Diana, Princess of Wales in 1991–2 to Andrew Morton for publication in

  Diana: Her True Story.

  CHILDHOOD

  [My first memory] is really the smell of the inside of my pram. It was plastic and the smell of the hood. I was born at home, not in hospital.

  The biggest disruption was when Mummy decided to leg it. That’s the vivid memory we have – the four of us. We all have our own interpretations of what should have happened and what did happen. People took sides. Various people didn’t speak to each other. For my brother and I it was a very wishy-washy and painful experience.

  Charles [her brother] said to me the other day that he hadn’t realized how much the divorce had affected him until he got married and started having a life of his own. But my other sisters – their growing up was done out of our sight. We saw them at holidays. I don’t remember it being a big thing.

  I idolized my eldest sister and I used to do all her washing when she came back from school. I packed her suitcase, ran her bath, made her bed – the whole lot. I did it all and I thought it was wonderful. I soon learned that doing that wasn’t such a good idea. I always looked after my brother really. My two sisters were very independent.

  We had so many changes of nannies, because Daddy was a very attractive divorcee and he was good bait for somebody. We tend to think they came for that rather than for looking after my brother and I. If we didn’t like them we used to stick pins in their chair and throw their clothes out of the window. We always thought they were a threat because they tried to take mother’s position. They were all very young and rather pretty. They were chosen by my father. It was terribly disruptive to come back from school one day to find a new nanny.

  I always felt very different from everyone else, very detached. I knew I was going somewhere different but had no idea where.

  I always felt very different from everyone else, very detached. I knew I was going somewhere different but had no idea where. I said to my father when I was aged 13, ‘I know I’m going to marry someone in the public eye’, thinking more of being an ambassador’s wife – not the top one, very much so. It was a very unhappy childhood. Parents were busy sorting themselves out. Always seeing our mum crying. Daddy never spoke to us about it. We could never ask questions. Too many changes over nannies, very unstable, the whole thing. Generally unhappy and being very detached from everybody else.

  At the age of 14 I just remember thinking that I wasn’t very good at anything, that I was hopeless because my brother was always the one getting exams at school and I was the dropout. I couldn’t understand why I was perhaps a nuisance to have around which, in later years, I’ve perceived as being part of the [whole question of the] son, the child who died before me was a son and both [parents] were crazy to have a son and heir and there comes a third daughter. What a bore, we’re going to have to try again. I’ve recognized that now. I’ve been aware of it and now I recognize it and that’s fine. I accept it.

  I adored animals, guinea pigs and all that. I had a mass of rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters. Hamsters breed faster than most; I never got them sexed. They all had names, but I can’t remember the first one. We just had endless animals. [When they died] the goldfish got flushed down the loo. [The rabbits were always buried] under a tree. They went off in a Clarks shoebox.

  In my bed I’d have 20 stuffed animals and there would be a midget’s space for me, and they would have to be in my bed every night.

  They were all adored. They’ve got a Diana Spencer nametag on them from prep school – D. Spencer.

  That was my family. I hated the dark and had an obsession about the dark, always had to have a light outside my door until I was at least ten. I used to hear my brother crying in his bed down at the other end of the house, crying for my mother and he was unhappy too, and my father right down the other end of the house and it was always very difficult. I never could pluck up courage to get out of bed. I remember it to this day.

  I remember seeing my father slap my mother across the face. I was hiding behind the door and Mummy was crying. I remember Mummy crying an awful lot and every Saturday when we went up for weekends, every Saturday night, standard procedure, she would start crying. On Saturday we would both see her crying. ‘What’s the matter, Mummy?’ ‘Oh, I don’t want you to leave tomorrow’, which for a nine-year-old was devastating, you know. I remember the most agonizing decision I ever had to make. I was a bridesmaid to my first cousin and to go to the rehearsal I had to be smart and wear a dress and my mother gave me a green dress and my father had given me a white dress and they were both so smart, the dresses, and I can’t remember to this day which one I got in but I remember being totally traumatized by it because it would show favouritism.

  I remember seeing my father slap my mother across the face.

  I remember there being a great discussion that a judge was going to come to me at Riddlesworth [Diana’s preparatory school] and say who would I prefer to live with. The judge never turned up and then suddenly my stepfather [the late Peter Shand Kydd] arrived on the scene. Charles and I, my brother and I, went up to London and I said to Mummy, ‘Where is he? Where is your new husband?’ ‘He’s at the ticket barrier’, and there was this very good-looking, handsome man and we were longing to love him and we accepted him and he was great to us, spoiled us rotten. It was very nice being spoiled because [my] individual parents weren’t attuned to that. [Peter] stood back [from
the problems]. He was a bit of a manic – or is – a bit of a manic-depressive. His own worst enemy. So, when he had bad moods we just kept out the way. If he lost his temper, he lost his temper. It was never a problem.

  Basically, we couldn’t wait to be independent, Charles and I, in order to spread our wings and do our own thing. We had become horribly different at school because we had divorced parents and nobody else did at that time, but by the time we finished our five years at prep school everybody was. I was always different. I always had this thing inside me that I was different. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t even talk about it but in my mind it was there.

  The divorce helped me to relate to anyone else who is upset in their family life, whether it be stepfather syndrome or mother or whatever, I understand it. Been there, done it.

  I always got on very well with everybody. Whether it be the gardener, or the local police or whoever, I always went over to talk to them. My father always said: ‘Treat everybody as an individual and never throw your weight around.’

  My father used to sit us down every Christmas and birthday and we had to write our thank-you letters within 24 hours. And now if I don’t, I get into a panic. If I come back from a dinner party or somewhere that needs a letter, at midnight I’ll sit down and write it there and not wait until next morning because it would wrestle with my conscience. And William now does it – it’s great. It’s nice if other people appreciate it at the other end.

  We were always shunted over to Sandringham [the Queen’s Norfolk residence] for holidays. Used to go and see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the film. We hated it so much. I hated going over there. The atmosphere was always very strange when we went there and I used to kick and fight anyone who tried to make us go over there and Daddy was most insistent because it was rude. I said I didn’t want to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the third year running. Holidays were always very grim because, say we had a four-week holiday. Two weeks Mummy and two weeks Daddy and the trauma of going from one house to another and each individual parent trying to make it up in their area with material things rather than the actual tactile stuff, which is what we both craved for but neither of us ever got. When I say neither of us my other two sisters were busy at prep school and were sort of out of the house whereas my brother and I were very much stuck together.