She began to send scented candles rather than letters of thanks to those who supplied goods and services in case her well-meaning notes fell into the wrong hands. Again, before she went skiing in Austria in 1992 with her children and her friends Catherine Soames and David Linley, she agonized over inviting Major David Waterhouse. She had comforted him at his mother’s funeral in January and felt a holiday would help ease the loss he felt over her death. However, Diana, who had been seen regularly in his company, worried that the wrong interpretation would be placed on his presence and his own life would come under undue scrutiny as a result. So she did not invite him. Although her children gave her immense joy, she also knew that they were her passport to the outside world. She could take them to the theatre, cinema and parks without exciting adverse comment from the media. There were drawbacks, however. When she took Prince Harry and a party of friends to see Jason Donovan in the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the Princess had to lurk outside the gentlemen’s lavatory during the interval waiting for her charges.
She had to conduct her social life with caution. While her husband had been able to conduct his private life unnoticed for years, Diana was keenly and resentfully aware that every time she was seen with an unattached male, however innocently, it made headline news, as when she spent the weekend at the country home of Philip Dunne’s parents. There was no respite. She had to cancel a lunch date with her friend Terence Stamp because she was made aware that his apartment in the Albany was being ‘staked out’ by newspaper photographers.
Diana’s enemies within were the courtiers who watched and judged her every move. If Diana was the current star of the Windsor roadshow then senior courtiers were the producers who hovered in the background waiting to criticize her every slip. When she spent three days with her mother in Italy she was driven everywhere by Antonio Pezzo, a handsome member of the family who were her hosts. As she said goodbye she impulsively kissed him on the cheek. She was carpeted for that gesture just as she was ticked off for praising the way the Prime Minister, John Major, behaved during the Gulf crisis. It was a human reaction to his difficult position as a novice Prime Minister but the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, felt it sufficiently political to be worthy of unfavourable comment.
The smallest breach of royal behaviour was deserving of complaint. After a film première, the Princess attended a party where she enjoyed a long conversation with Liza Minnelli. The following morning it was pointed out to her that it was not done to attend these occasions. The party had one happy result, however. She enjoyed the rapport with the Hollywood star who talked at length about her difficult life and told her simply that when she felt down she thought of Diana and that helped her endure. It was a touching and very honest conversation between two women who had suffered much in life and which formed the basis of their long-distance friendship.
It was little wonder then that the Princess, trusting by nature, trusted very few in the royal organization. She opened much of her own mail when she returned from her morning swim at Buckingham Palace so that she could see at first hand what the general public were thinking. It meant that she did not have to rely on the cautious filter of her staff. There were several satisfying results of this policy. A letter from a father whose son was dying of Aids particularly touched her. Before he died, the young man’s last request was to meet the Princess of Wales. His father wrote to Diana in June 1991 but with little hope of success. After reading his plea, Diana personally arranged for his son to attend an Aids hostel in London run by the Lighthouse Trust which she was scheduled to visit. Her thoughtful gesture made his dying wish come true. If the letter had been processed in the usual way the family would probably have received a sympathetic but non-committal reply from a lady-in-waiting.
Such was her lack of confidence in these traditional royal helpmates, whose duties were to accompany her on public engagements and undertake administrative tasks, that they were gradually being phased out. She took to employing her elder sister Sarah in this capacity – she accompanied the Princess to Budapest in Hungary on an official visit in March 1992 – or would go on what she called her ‘Awaydays’ on her own. As one friend remarked: ‘She had these terrific run-ins with her ladies-in-waiting, particularly Anne Beckwith-Smith (her one-time private secretary). She felt they were holding her back, being too protective and too “in” with the system.’
Instead she preferred to consult those who were tangential to the system. From time to time she telephoned Major-General Sir Christopher Airey at his Devon home for advice. Airey, who had been abruptly dismissed as Prince Charles’s private secretary in 1991, was sufficiently aware of the machinations within the system to guide her sensibly. For a time Jimmy Savile helped smooth her public image while Terence Stamp gave her general guidance on her speech-making. She also relied on a coterie of unofficial counsellors, who preferred to remain anonymous, to sound out ideas and problems. They polished her speeches, advised on ticklish staff problems and gave fair warning of possible publicity difficulties.
She was attracted to outsiders precisely because she felt so alienated from the royal system. As James Gilbey said: ‘She gets on much better with them than the men in grey because they [the men in grey] are tied up with preserving a system which she feels is outdated. There is a natural built-in confrontation there. They are trying to uphold something and she is trying to get out.’ Her astrologer Felix Lyle observed: ‘She has a soaring spirit and optimism which is easily defeated. Dominated by those with strong character, she does not yet have enough self-confidence to take on the system.’
It was a view endorsed by another friend who said: ‘The whole royal business terrified her. They gave her no confidence or support.’ As her confidence developed she came to believe that she could not achieve her true potential within the existing royal restraints. She told friends: ‘Inside the system I was treated very differently, as though I was an oddball. I felt I wasn’t good enough. Now, thank God, I think it’s okay to be different.’
Diana led a confusing double life where she was celebrated by the public but watched in doubtful and often jealous silence by her husband and the rest of his family. The world judged that she had dusted off the dowdy image of the House of Windsor but within the royal family, reared on values of control, distance and formality, she was seen as an outsider and as a problem. She was tactile, emotional, gently irreverent and spontaneous. For a white-gloved, stiff-upper-lip institution with a large ‘Do not touch’ sign hanging from its crown, the Princess of Wales was a threat. Experience had taught her not to trust or confide in members of the royal family. She realized that blood ties matter most. As a result she kept a deliberate distance from her in-laws, skirting round issues, avoiding confrontations and locking herself away in her ivory tower. It was a double-edged sword as she failed to build any bridges, so essential in a closed world infected by family and office politics. She had few allies within the royal family. ‘I don’t rattle their cages and they don’t rattle mine,’ she said.
So although she loved Scotland and had been brought up in Norfolk, she found the atmosphere at Balmoral and Sandringham totally draining of her spirit and vitality. It was during these family holidays that her bulimia was at its worst and when she would try any ploy to escape for a few days. Diana lived the reality behind the public impression of unshakeable unity the monarchy exudes. She knew that in private the contemporary Court was not so very different from previous reigns with its squabbling, feuds and infighting.
At the time, the heart of the royal family was the tightly knit and implacable troika of the Queen Mother and her daughters, the Queen and Princess Margaret. As author Douglas Keay perceptively observed in his profile of the Queen: ‘Cross one and you cross them all.’ Diana’s relations with these three central characters were uneven. She had much time for Princess Margaret, a neighbour at Kensington Palace, whom she acknowledged as giving her the most help in acclimatizing herself to the rarefied royal world.
‘I’ve always adored Margo,’ she said. ‘I love her to bits and she’s been wonderful to me from day one.’
Her relations with the Queen Mother were much less cordial. Diana saw her London home, Clarence House, as the fount of all negative comment about herself and her mother. She kept a distrustful distance from this matriarchal figure, describing social occasions hosted by the Queen Mother as stiff and overly formal. It was, after all, Diana’s grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, the Queen Mother’s lady-in-waiting, who testified in court about her daughter’s unsuitability to look after her four children. Her view of Frances Shand Kydd was accepted by the judge and the hostility and bitterness within the divided Spencer family remained for a long time. At the same time the Queen Mother, unfavourably predisposed to Diana and her mother, exercised an enormous influence over the Prince of Wales. It was a mutual adoration society from which Diana was effectively excluded. ‘The Queen Mother drives a wedge between Diana and the others,’ noted a friend. ‘As a result she makes every excuse to avoid her.’
Diana’s relationship with the Queen was much friendlier. However, it was governed by the fact that she was married to her eldest son and the future monarch. In the early days Diana was quite simply terrified of her mother-in-law. She kept to the formal obsequies – dropping a deep curtsy each time they met – but otherwise kept her distance. During their infrequent and rather brittle tête-à-têtes about the Waleses’ floundering marriage the Queen indicated that Diana’s persistent bulimia was a cause, not a symptom, of their difficulties.
The Sovereign also implied that the instability in their marriage was an overriding consideration in any musings she may have had about abdication. Naturally this did not please Prince Charles who refused to speak to his mother for several days following her 1991 Christmas broadcast when she spoke of her intention to serve the nation and the Commonwealth for ‘some years to come’. For a man who holds his mother in total awe that silence was a measure of his anger. Once again he blamed the Princess of Wales. As he stalked along the corridors at Sandringham the Prince complained to anyone who would listen about the state of his marriage. Diana pointed out to him that he had already abdicated his regal responsibilities by allowing his brothers, Princes Andrew and Edward, to take over as counsellors of state, the official ‘stand-ins’ for the Sovereign when she is abroad on official business. If the Prince showed such indifference to these nominal constitutional duties, she asked sweetly, why should his mother give him the job?
Certainly the early 1990s saw the Queen and her daughter-in-law develop a more relaxed and cordial relationship. At a garden party in 1991 the Princess felt confident enough to essay a little joke about the Queen’s black hat. She complimented her on the choice, remarking how it would come in useful for funerals. In a more serious vein they held confidential discussions about her eldest son’s state of mind. At times the Queen found the direction of his life unfocused and his behaviour odd and erratic. It did not escape her notice that he was as unhappy with his lot as was his wife.
While Diana found the monarchy as then organized a crumbling institution, she had a deep respect for the manner in which the Queen had conducted herself during her reign. Indeed, much as she would like to have left her husband, Diana emphasized to the Queen: ‘I will never let you down.’ Before she attended a garden party on a stifling July afternoon in 1991, a friend offered Diana a fan to take with her. She refused saying: ‘I can’t do that. My mother-in-law is going to be standing there with her handbag, gloves, stockings and shoes.’ It was a sentiment expressed in admiring tones for the Sovereign’s complete self-control in every circumstance, however trying.
At the same time the Princess had to adjust to other cross-currents within the family. While Diana enjoyed an amicable association with Prince Philip, whom she regarded as a loner, she realized that her husband was intimidated by his father. She accepted that his relationship with his eldest son was ‘tricky, very tricky’. Charles longed to be patted on the back by his father while Prince Philip would have liked his son to consult him more frequently and at least recognize his contribution to public debate. It rankled with Prince Philip, for instance, that he started the public discussion about the environment but it was Prince Charles who won the audience.
As with her father-in-law, Diana enjoyed a distant but perfectly friendly relationship with her royal sister-in-law, the Princess Royal. Diana appreciated at first hand the difficulties a royal woman faced within the organization and had nothing but admiration for her independence and endeavours, particularly on behalf of the Save the Children Fund of which she is president. While their children often played together, Diana would never have thought of confiding in the Princess or of telephoning her for lunch. She was pleased to see her when they met at family occasions but that was as far as it went. The media made a fuss at the time of Prince Harry’s christening when Diana’s decision not to choose Anne as a godparent was seen as a sign of their rancorous relations. The Princess was not asked simply because she was already an aunt to the boys and her role as godparent would merely duplicate matters. As with all the royal family, there was always a divide between the two Princesses. Diana is an outsider by birth and inclination; Anne was born into the system. From time to time the Princess Royal did show where her loyalties ultimately lay. A confrontation at Balmoral in 1991 revealed the isolation of the two commoners, the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York.
That confrontation on a warm August evening, as the family enjoyed a barbecue in the grounds of Balmoral castle, brought to the surface the nascent tensions and conflicts within their ranks. There was concern about an incident when Diana and Fergie had raced each other around the private roads in the Queen Mother’s Daimler and a four-wheel-drive estate vehicle. The argument became much more personal, focusing primarily on the Duchess of York. It resulted in her stalking off. Diana explained on Fergie’s behalf that it was very difficult to marry into the royal family and that the Duchess was finding it harder the longer she stayed within their confines. She impressed upon the Queen the need to give the Duchess greater leeway, emphasizing that she was at the end of her tether. This was confirmed shortly afterwards by Fergie who told friends that 1991 was the last time she would visit Balmoral. She was as good as her word. Eight months later the separation between the Duke and Duchess was announced.
It was a vivid contrast with the Duchess of York’s first holiday at the Queen’s summer retreat five years earlier when she had so impressed the royal family with her enthusiasm and vigour. Over the years Diana had watched, often sympathetically, her sister-in-law being battered by the media and overwhelmed by the royal system which had gradually ground down her spirit. At times the floundering behaviour of the Duchess of York resembled not so much life imitating art but life imitating satire. As her clothes, her mothering instincts and her ill-chosen friends came in for caustic criticism, the Duchess turned to an assorted group of clairvoyants, tarot card readers, astrologers and other soothsayers to help her find a path through the royal maze. She was introduced to some by her friend Steve Wyatt, the adopted son of a Texan oil billionaire, but many she discovered for herself. Her frequent visits to Madame Vasso, a spiritualist who healed troubled minds and bodies by seating them under a blue plastic pyramid, were typical of the influences upon this increasingly restless and unhappy individual.
There were days when the Duchess had her fortune read and her astrological transits analysed every few hours. She tried to live her life by their predictions, her volatile spirit clinging to every scrap of solace in their musings. While Diana, like many members of the royal family, was interested and intrigued by the ‘New Age’ approach to life, she was not ruled by every prophecy.
The Duchess, however, was held in their thrall, earnestly discussing their conclusions with her friends. The result was that the Duchess played Iago to Diana’s Othello. She was an insistent voice in her ear, whispering, beseeching and imploring, predicting disaster and doom for the royal family while urgi
ng Diana to escape from the royal institution. It was no exaggeration to state that barely a week passed without the Duchess of York discussing the latest portents with her sister-in-law and her close friends and advisers. In May 1991, when the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales came under renewed scrutiny, Fergie’s ‘spooks’ – as her friends describe them – predicted that Prince Andrew would soon become King and she the Queen.
While the Duke was excited by the prospect, his wife became increasingly disillusioned with her role. For a woman used to catching planes like others hail taxis, the claustrophobia of the royal world was more than she could bear. In August her soothsayers forecast a problem involving a royal car; in September they said an imminent royal birth would create a crisis. Specific dates were mentioned but even when they passed without incident, the Duchess kept faith in her oracles. By November there was talk of a death in the family and as Diana prepared to spend Christmas at Sandringham with the royal family, she was warned by the Duchess that there would be a row between herself and Prince Charles. He would try to walk out but the Queen would stop him.
Interspersed with these dire portents was the almost daily drip, drip, drip of pleading, reason and wish-fulfilment as the Duchess beseeched the Princess to join her and leave the royal family. Her invitation must have been an attractive prospect for a woman in an impossible position, but Diana had come to trust her own judgement.
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