Diana_Her True Story_In Her Own Words_25th Anniversary Edition

by Andrew Morton

  [On reincarnation] I’ve had various rooms around the world where I feel I’ve been before. One just feels ‘Goodness, oh!’ But I don’t go and talk to anyone about it. I’m just aware that it’s déjà vu; it’s very strong.

  I have an awful lot of dreams about things, if someone’s troubled. I knew Adrian wasn’t very well this weekend, and I couldn’t get through. But something told me something was wrong, and he had a very, very bad weekend. Instinct. I’ll walk into a room and straight into them.

  I recall sitting in a Land Rover with my policeman and watching [Prince Charles’s] horse [Alibar] coming along and rearing its head back. I said: ‘That horse is going to have a heart attack and die.’ And it did. It had a heart attack then and there.

  I’ve known her [Debbie Frank, her astrologer] for about three years. She’s very sweet. She does astrology and counselling. She doesn’t advise, she just tells me from her angle and, with astrology, I listen to it but I don’t believe it totally. It’s a direction and a suggestion rather than it’s definitely going to happen. She’s been sweet, particularly when I was going through a rough patch two years ago. She just said you’ve got to hang on because things will get brighter but she never forced me with information at all.

  [On a visit to her clairvoyant] My grandmother came in first, very strong, then my uncle and then Barry [Mannakee, her former police protection officer]. I hesitated about asking her questions about Barry because – well, I don’t know – I just hesitated, but I’ve always had a question mark about his death and I’ve been given an answer and that’s the end of that.

  THE PRINCESS AND THE PEOPLE

  I hope they know that I love children and little people but I suppose it comes across. I’m just demented [about my own children] and it’s mutual. There’s terrific understanding.

  Top of the Pops, Coronation Street, all the soap operas. You name it, I’ve watched it. The reason why I watch them so much now is not so much out of interest but if I go out and about, whether it be to Birmingham, Liverpool or Dorset, I can always pick up on a TV programme and you are on the same level. That I decided for myself. It works so well. Everybody watches it and I say: ‘Did you see so and so? Wasn’t it funny when this happened or that happened?’ and you are immediately on the same level. You are not the princess and they the general public – it’s the same level.

  [On her work life] I still like to do what I call my ‘Awaydays’ once a week. I do Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester so no one can say to me she never goes out of London. It would be much more convenient to stay put. It’s a real effort to go away but it’s worth it. I’d change a few things in that I would go around hospices, Aids, cancer. I’d do that full time. I don’t find it exhausting.

  [On how the public relate to Diana] Well, from a female’s point of view, all the ladies ever want to do is see what colour I’m in and what I’m wearing and how the boys are. From a male point of view, I don’t know. When I first started the job there used to be just a certain age group – my age group – and now there’s everything from two-year-olds to ninety-five-year-olds. It’s very interesting to see the thirty-five-year-olds to forty-five-year-olds because that’s not a particular area I relate to very well. [I relate better to] the very old. I suppose also the thirty-year-olds, now I’m [that age] myself. But I couldn’t understand why they were always hanging around me. I always used to think people just looked at my clothes and I was desperate for the other side to come out and be dealt with and didn’t know how to do it.

  I’d change the Queen’s broadcast for Christmas – top of the list. It makes me cringe so much

  I’d change the Queen’s broadcast for Christmas – top of the list. It makes me cringe so much, that; it upsets me to such a degree, there’s no relating. What else would I change? I’d have garden parties for all the handicapped and wheelchairs – which we did just before we got married – people who’ve never seen Buckingham Palace let alone been on the grass. But they are not allowed too many wheelchairs because it ruins the grass.

  The size of the crowds – if that doesn’t make me seem like a pop star; people thanking me for bringing happiness in their lives; little sentences that put together make a very wonderful, very special day. Thank you for coming; thank you for making the effort; thank you for being you and all those things, never used to believe. Now I’m more comfortable receiving that sort of information whether or not it’s true. I can now digest that sort of thing whereas I used to throw it back. No one has ever said to me: ‘Well done.’ Because I had a smile on my face everybody thought I was having a wonderful time. That’s what they chose to think – it made them happier thinking that.

  PRINCES WILLIAM AND HARRY

  Harry was supposed to be a girl. [Charles] was absolutely amazed and he adores him. But I know we had two boys for a reason. We were the only people in the family to have two boys. The rest of the family had a boy and a girl and we were the first to change and I know fate played a hand there – Harry’s a ‘backup’ in the nicest possible way. William is going to be in his position much earlier than people think now.

  When Beatrice or Eugenie are running around I’ll say to Charles: ‘There you are, you missed that one.’ ‘What do you mean?’ And I’ll say: ‘Well, you could have had a daughter.’ ‘No, we’d have had a third boy.’ And I’d say: ‘No, not necessarily.’ And sometimes we get the albums out, of the boys, and he’ll tell me: ‘Oh, you were so good with them in the nursery, you were marvellous.’

  I want to bring them up with security, not to anticipate things, because they will be disappointed. That’s made my own life so much easier. I hug my children to death. I get into bed with them at night, hug them and say: ‘Who loves them most in the whole world?’ and they always say: ‘Mummy’. I always feed them love and affection – it’s so important.

  [Preparing Prince William] I am altering it for him but in a subtle way; people aren’t aware of it but I am. I would never rattle their cage, the monarchy, because when I think the mother-in-law has been doing it for 40 years who am I to come along and change it just like that? But through William learning what I do, and his father to a certain extent, he has got an insight into what’s coming his way. He’s not hidden upstairs with the governess.

  I’ve chosen all the schools so far, and there was never any argument. It was just Charles wanted them to be governessed here and I said no, they’ve got to go out if they’re going to survive when they’re adults.

  [On William being treated differently because he’s the future monarch] He’s appallingly embarrassed by the whole thing. He’s very uncomfortable about that.

  THE FUTURE

  I think I’m going to cut a very different path from everyone else. I’m going to break away from this set-up and go and help the man on the street. I hate saying ‘man on the street’ – it sounds so condescending. I don’t know yet but I’m being pushed more and more that way. I don’t like the glamorous occasions any more – I feel uncomfortable with them. I would much rather be doing something with sick people – I’m more comfortable there.

  I have been positive about the future for some time but obviously there’s endless question marks, especially when my space is crowded around me – oh, then I see my friends having a good time and I never …

  I always felt so different – I felt I was in the wrong shell. I knew my life was going to be a winding road.

  I don’t like the glamorous occasions any more – I feel uncomfortable with them. I would much rather be doing something with sick people.

  What I do now since I’ve learned to be assertive, I let a silence follow while I’m ticking away and then I say I’d like to think about that, I’ll give you an answer later on in the day; that’s if I’m not sure, but if I am sure, a gut instinct tells me I’m sure, I say: ‘No thank you’ and nobody comes back at me.

  If I was able to write my own script I’d say that I would hope that my husband would go off, go away with his lady and sort that out and leave me and
the children to carry the Wales name through to the time William ascends the throne. And I’d be behind them all the way and I can do this job so much better on my own; I don’t feel trapped.

  I would love to go to the opera – that would be a great treat – or ballet or a film. I like it as normal as possible. Walking along the pavement gives me a tremendous thrill.

  I’m not bitter about that but it would be quite nice to go and do things like a weekend in Paris, but it’s not for me at the moment. But I know one day if I play the rules of life – the game of life – I will be able to have those things I’ve always pined for and they will be that much more special because I will be that much older and I’ll be able to appreciate them that much more.

  I don’t want my friends to be hurt and think I’ve dropped them but I haven’t got time to sit and gossip, I’ve got things to do and time is precious.

  Last August a friend said to me that I’m going to marry somebody who’s foreign, or who has got a lot of foreign blood in them.

  I love the countryside and I live in London because I’m all secure, but I see myself one day living abroad. I don’t know why I think that and I think of either Italy or France, which is rather unnerving; not yet. Last August a friend said to me that I’m going to marry somebody who’s foreign, or who has got a lot of foreign blood in them. I thought it was always interesting. I do know I’m going to remarry or live with someone.

  DIANA: HER TRUE STORY

  1

  ‘I Was Supposed To Be a Boy’

  It was a memory indelibly engraved upon her soul. Diana Spencer sat quietly at the bottom of the cold stone stairs at her Norfolk home, clutching the wrought-iron banisters while all around her there was a determined bustle. She could hear her father loading suitcases into the boot of a car, then Frances, her mother, crunching across the gravel forecourt, the clunk of the car door being shut and the sound of a car engine revving and then slowly fading as her mother drove through the gates of Park House and out of her life. Diana was six years old. A quarter of a century later, it was a moment she could still picture in her mind’s eye and she could still summon up the painful feelings of rejection, breach of trust and isolation that the break-up of her parents’ marriage signified to her.

  It may have happened differently but that was the picture Diana carried with her. There were many other snapshots of her childhood which crowded her memory. Her mother’s tears, her father’s lonely silences, the numerous nannies she resented, the endless shuttling between parents, the sound of her brother Charles sobbing himself to sleep, the feelings of guilt that she hadn’t been born a boy and the firmly fixed idea that somehow she was a ‘nuisance’ to have around. She craved cuddles and kisses; she was given a catalogue from Hamleys toyshop. It was a childhood where she wanted for nothing materially but everything emotionally. ‘She comes from a privileged background but she had a childhood that was very hard,’ said her astrologer Felix Lyle.

  The Honourable Diana Spencer was born late on the afternoon of 1 July 1961, the third daughter of Viscount Althorp, then aged 37, and Viscountess Althorp, 12 years his junior. She weighed 7lb 12oz and while her father expressed his delight at a ‘perfect physical specimen’ there was no hiding the sense of anticlimax, if not downright disappointment, in the family that the new arrival was not the longed-for male heir who would carry on the Spencer name. Such was the anticipation of a boy that the couple hadn’t considered any girls’ names. A week later they settled on ‘Diana Frances’, after a Spencer ancestress and the baby’s mother.

  While Viscount Althorp, the late Earl Spencer, may have been proud of his new daughter – Diana was very much the apple of his eye – his remarks about her health could have been chosen more diplomatically. Just 18 months previously Diana’s mother had given birth to John, a baby so badly deformed and sickly that he survived for only ten hours. It was a harrowing time for the couple and there was much pressure from older members of the family to see ‘what was wrong with the mother’. They wanted to know why she kept producing girls. Lady Althorp, the late Frances Shand Kydd, then still only 23, was sent to various Harley Street clinics in London for intimate tests. For Diana’s mother, fiercely proud, combative and tough-minded, it was a humiliating and unjust experience, all the more so in retrospect as nowadays it is known that the sex of the baby is determined by the man. As her son Charles, the present Earl Spencer, observed: ‘It was a dreadful time for my parents and probably the root of their divorce because I don’t think they ever got over it.’

  While she was too young to understand, Diana certainly caught the pitch of the family’s frustration, and, believing that she was ‘a nuisance’, she accepted a corresponding load of guilt – and failure for disappointing her parents and family, feelings she learned later to accept and recognize.

  Three years after Diana’s birth the longed-for son arrived. Unlike Diana, who was christened in Sandringham church and had well-to-do commoners for godparents, baby brother Charles was christened in style at Westminster Abbey with the Queen as principal godparent. The infant was heir to a rapidly diminishing but still substantial fortune accumulated in the 15th century when the Spencers were among the wealthiest sheep traders in Europe. With their fortune they collected an earldom from Charles I, built Althorp House in Northamptonshire, acquired a coat of arms and motto – ‘God defend the right’ – and amassed a fine collection of art, antiques, books and objets d’art.

  For the next three centuries Spencers were at home in the palaces of Kensington, Buckingham and Westminster as they occupied various offices of State and Court. If a Spencer never quite reached the commanding heights, they certainly walked confidently along the corridors of power. Spencers became Knights of the Garter, Privy Councillors, ambassadors and a First Lord of the Admiralty, while the third Earl Spencer was considered as a possible Prime Minister. They were linked by blood to Charles II, the Dukes of Marlborough, Devonshire and Abercorn and, through a quirk of history, to seven American presidents, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, and to the actor Humphrey Bogart and, it is said, the gangster Al Capone.

  The Spencer qualities of quiet public service, the values of noblesse oblige were well expressed in their service to the Sovereign. Generations of Spencer men and women have fulfilled the functions of Lord Chamberlain, equerry, lady-in-waiting and other positions at Court. Diana’s paternal grandmother, Countess Spencer, was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, while her maternal grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, was one of her Women of the Bedchamber for nearly 30 years. Diana’s father served as equerry to both King George VI and the present Queen.

  However, it was the family of Diana’s mother, the Fermoys, with their roots in Ireland and connections in the United States, who were responsible for the acquisition of Park House, her childhood home in Norfolk. As a mark of friendship with his second son, the Duke of York (later George VI), King George V granted Diana’s grandfather, Maurice, the 4th Baron Fermoy, the lease of Park House, a spacious property originally built to accommodate the overflow of guests and staff from nearby Sandringham House.

  The Fermoys certainly made a mark on the area. Maurice Fermoy became the Conservative Member of Parliament for King’s Lynn, while his Scottish wife, who gave up a promising career as a concert pianist to marry, founded the King’s Lynn Festival for Arts and Music which, since its inception in 1951, has attracted world-renowned musicians such as Sir John Barbirolli and Yehudi Menuhin.

  For the young Diana Spencer, this long noble heritage was not so much impressive as terrifying. She never relished visits to the ancestral home of Althorp. There were too many creepy corners and badly lit corridors peopled with portraits of long-dead ancestors whose eyes followed her unnervingly. As her brother recalled: ‘It was like an old man’s club with masses of clocks ticking away. For an impressionable child it was a nightmarish place. We never looked forward to going there.’

  This sense of foreboding was hardly helped by the bad-tempered relation
ship which existed between her gruff grandfather Jack, the 7th Earl, and his son Johnnie Althorp. For many years they were barely on grunting, let alone speaking terms. Abrupt to the point of rudeness yet fiercely protective of Althorp, Diana’s grandfather earned the nickname of ‘the curator earl’ because he knew the history of every picture and piece of furniture in his stately home. He was so proud of his domain that he often followed visitors around with a duster and once, in the library, snatched a cigar from out of Winston Churchill’s mouth. Beneath this irascible veneer was a man of cultivation and taste, whose priorities contrasted sharply with his son’s laissez-faire approach to life and amiable enjoyment of the traditional outdoor pursuits of an English country gentleman.

  While Diana was in awe of her grandfather, she adored her grandmother, Countess Spencer. ‘She was sweet, wonderful and very special. Divine really,’ said the Princess. The Countess was known locally for her frequent visits to the sick and the infirm and was never at a loss for a generous word or gesture. While Diana inherited her mother’s sparky, strong-willed nature she was also blessed with her paternal grandmother’s qualities of thoughtfulness and compassion.

  In contrast to the eerie splendours of Althorp, Diana’s rambling ten-bedroomed home, Park House, was positively cosy, notwithstanding the staff cottages, extensive garages, outdoor swimming pool, tennis court and cricket pitch in the grounds, as well as the six full-time staff who included a cook, a butler and a governess.

  Screened from the road by trees and shrubs, the house is substantial but its dirty, sand-brick exterior makes it appear rather bleak and lonely. In spite of its forbidding appearance, the Spencer children loved the rambling pile. When they moved to Althorp in 1975 on the death of their grandfather, the 7th Earl, Charles said goodbye to every room. The house was later turned into a Cheshire Home holiday hotel for the disabled; during visits to Sandringham Diana would occasionally visit it.