by Tim Clayton
Walter Bagehot had declared that ‘a princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind’. The Windsors were the national emblem family, and this wedding gave many, perhaps most, of their subjects a moment of vicarious joy during a summer of unemployment and inner-city rioting. There were street parties and special newspaper editions and hundreds of different souvenirs. Six thousand people queued on the first day of an exhibition to see a selection of the couple’s wedding gifts.
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After two nights at Broadlands, the Prince and new Princess flew to Gibraltar to board the royal yacht for the honeymoon proper. Departure from the contested peninsula was taken by the Spanish government as a calculated insult, but the people of Gibraltar turned out in force, showering the royal couple with confetti as they drove down to the harbour.
The royal couple and a handful of courtiers were the only passengers on the 5,700-ton HMS Britannia, alongside 277 sailors in pristine white uniforms. The only female company for Diana was her dresser, Evelyn Dagley. Real privacy remained difficult. To dine alone was to be serenaded by a Royal Marine band two dozen strong. Precedent dictated that royal guests were expected to dine in black tie with the ship’s twenty-one officers.
Versions of the voyage differ. Charles’s valet, Stephen Barry, said that the couple spent a lot of time alone as the ship sailed down the coast of Italy, across to Ithaca and via Cephalonia, Kythira and Santorini towards Crete and then Cairo. Diana recalled that being a princess on honeymoon with a prince was not what she had imagined. She thought that Charles was avoiding her.
It quickly became clear that the royal party would have to fall in with the customs of the royal yacht. One afternoon Diana and Charles were having coffee and discussing the upcoming visit to Egypt. The Flight Officer approached and said to Prince Charles, ‘Church as usual, around nine a.m. tomorrow, sir?’ Diana’s face fell. Honeymoons and early church services evidently did not go together in her mind. The Prince looked troubled for a second but said, ‘Yes.’ Some of the officers, who shared their memories with us, realised that the Princess did not appear to enjoy the regular formal dinners and one suggested that the couple should be allowed more evenings alone. To this suggestion the Admiral said, ‘This is how it’s done on the Queen’s ship.’
Once more Diana was face to face with the tedium of the royal machine. Although Charles thought much of it was irksome too, he had long ago found his own way of ignoring it all. Those accompanying him thought that he did not know whether to break the rules to please his wife or try to coax Diana into coming to terms with the necessary facts of royal life. After all, as he had warned her at the moment of his proposal, she would have to learn to live a very odd kind of life.
This was the first time that Charles and Diana had been in each other’s company for more than a few hours, and Diana was beginning to discover new and unexpected sides to her husband’s character.
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Charles’s recent ancestors had been proudly philistine. His great-grandfather, King George V, when visiting an exhibition of famous Impressionist artists, called over to his queen: ‘Oh, look here, May, this one will really make you laugh.’ His grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, was utterly bemused when T.S. Eliot came to read The Waste Land at Buckingham Palace. But Charles read serious literature, tried his hand at painting, and took a keen interest in architecture and art history. Having been the first Windsor to suffer school, he insisted on going to university, taking a place to read archaeology and anthropology at Trinity College, Cambridge. Anthropology introduced Charles to the writings of Laurens van der Post, who became a mentor during the 1970s. He now hoped to share these enthusiasms with his young wife. But Charles’s attempts to read Laurens van der Post aloud to Diana, and his attempts at intellectual discussion, triggered her inferiority complex and she left him to it. A witness told us:
He did a lot of reading and painting. She got bored and wandered down to the mess decks. She was eating ice cream, surrounded by lots of sailors. Along comes the Admiral: ‘No, no, this has got to stop!’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because they all walk around naked.’ She was doing something innocent but there was gossip and disapproval.
Being told off by people she did not want on her honeymoon, and having to share Charles with naval officers, did not please Diana. But at other times witnesses recall that she and Charles looked as though they were besotted with each other.
Diana’s spontaneity was a permanent threat to protocol. One afternoon Charles appeared disappointed with her after she embarrassed him in front of the crew:
It was terribly difficult for Prince Charles. They’d gone on an excursion and landed on a deserted beach. Next thing I know the Princess is careering across the beach, pissed out of her mind – she’d discovered Pimms. She had seaweed all over her. The poor old Prince is standing around, talking about the navy. She was hustled back to base. He was very gloomy. As they climb up the steps, she tips a bucket of water over him. He gets very angry, and looks like a hurt spaniel. You can see why – he’s the heir to the throne.
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Towards the end of the voyage the Camilla question re-emerged. Photographs of her fell from Charles’s diary as they compared engagements. A few days later Diana spotted that Charles was wearing a pair of cuff links decorated with entwined Cs. She rightly divined that these were a gift from Camilla. In the face of what he considered to be his wife’s unreasonable anger, Charles refused to change them.
Diana told the stories about the photos and the cuff links many times. Writers sympathetic to Charles have never denied them. Penny Junor repeats both stories but tries to explain Charles’s point of view:
Diana screamed and shouted and burst into tears. The Prince – though perfectly capable of losing his temper and shouting at the people who work for him and even throwing ornaments – had never experienced anyone shouting at him before . . . and was completely nonplussed.
Jonathan Dimbleby – Charles’s authorised biographer – mentions neither story. Instead he sums up the problems on the cruise:
. . . the Prince was perplexed by her sudden shifts of mood, which he ascribed to the transient pressures of adapting to her new and exacting role as his consort.
One reason for Diana’s moodiness was her bulimia. In 1991 she told Andrew Morton that on board Britannia she was bingeing on anything she could find and making herself sick immediately afterwards. ‘The bulimia was appalling, absolutely appalling. It was rife, four times a day on the yacht. Very tired. So of course, that slightly got the mood swings going.’
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From Egypt the newlyweds flew to Lossiemouth and drove to Balmoral for the next and longest stage of the honeymoon, a month living on Charles’s favourite royal estate. Here the holiday was shared with Diana’s new in-laws and a collection of Charles’s old friends.
Charles had his books and his fishing rod and he relaxed immediately into his time-honoured Balmoral routine. Over drinks and dinner, Diana had another taste of the rules of royal precedence, and later said she was infuriated when Charles offered his mother and grandmother drinks before her. By the rules, the Queen and her mother were the senior ladies present. She felt that as his new wife she should come first. At a press conference by the Brig o’Dee, the Princess, dressed in tartan and looking tanned and relaxed, said she could ‘thoroughly recommend married life’, but in reality things were already strained. Charles’s long walks up the hills did not fit into Diana’s image of a honeymoon:
His idea of enjoyment would be to sit on top of the highest hill at Balmoral. It is beautiful up there. I completely understand; he would read Laurens van der Post or Jung to me, and bear in mind I hadn’t a clue about psychic powers or anything . . . So anyway we read those and I did my tapestry and he was blissfully happy . . .
After a few weeks Diana announced that she wanted to go to London, telling Charles that Balmoral was wet and boring. Charles reminded her that a year ago she had said it was her fa
vourite place on earth. He pointed out that the court was now at Balmoral and that was where they had to be, it went with the job. She tried again, and when that didn’t work she complained, ‘If you loved me you’d put me first.’
I remember crying my eyes out. . . At night I dreamt of Camilla the whole time . . . Everybody saw I was getting thinner and thinner . . . Didn’t trust him, thought every five minutes he was ringing her up . . . It rained and rained and rained . . .
Diana had been obliged to conform to the rules of royal behaviour on the royal yacht. Now she was presented with family life the Windsor way, and she did not like what she saw. For their part, Diana’s new relatives were concerned that she did not deliver the politely neutral performance expected of her. According to one witness, the Queen was alarmed at the evident signs that Diana was unhappy with her lot. An early dinner guest told us about the uneasy atmosphere around the Balmoral dinner table:
At dinner one night the Queen cornered me and said, ‘I don’t know what we can do. Look at her, sitting at the table glowering at us! The only time she bucks up is when Charles speaks to her.’ I said to her, ‘Perhaps if you look around the table – they’re all so much older than her.’ . . . She said, ‘I don’t care. She’ll just have to buck up.’
‘It was all done with the best intentions,’ we were told by a courtier. ‘It was all to do with duty. It got off to a bad start. She had nobody to talk to.’
In public Diana did buck up. The couple made a second public appearance for the Highland Games at Braemar in early September, and she still looked healthy, happy and not noticeably thinner. But behind the scenes the jolly girl in green wellies who, a year before, had endeared herself to Charles and his friends with her love of the countryside now made it clear that she wanted no part of it. She took every opportunity to complain about Balmoral – the incessant rain, the muddy barbecues, the ugly furniture, the antique bathrooms. Longing to have her husband to herself, Diana was cross and bored while Charles was hurt and embarrassed by her ill-concealed resentment, and disappointed that she no longer wanted to share the pursuits he enjoyed.
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Partly because she was so histrionic about it, Diana’s unhappiness was soon the property of the ever-resourceful press. A courtier told us that ‘brown envelopes of ten-pound notes were being waved at junior members of staff. The Sun had a huge number of leaks.’
In late September the first stories of Diana’s rows with Charles and dislike of Balmoral were printed in the Sun and the News of the World. It was said that she went off on her own for walks to escape the ‘stuffed shirt’ atmosphere of royal functions, and that she was ‘deeply unsettled’. She was reluctant to go on shooting parties and left royal dinners early. Ironically, her bad press was compounded when the League against Cruel Sports accused the Princess of being present at the disembowelling of a stag. This was awkwardly and ambiguously denied by the Palace, who were no doubt trying to tell the world that she was willing to go stalking with Charles and his friends but did not butcher deer. Diana must at this point have begun to wonder who in her entourage was leaking damaging stories to the press. By coincidence, if his own account can be believed, Stephen Barry resigned.
Charles asked his secretary, Michael Colborne, to travel up from London to look after Diana on a day he was due to go out stalking deer. From nine in the morning to four in the afternoon, Colborne sat with Diana as she poured out her anger about her absent husband, his family, the boredom, Balmoral. Colborne saw Diana kick furniture and then lapse into long brooding silences. Sandwiches came and were left untouched. At one point Colborne timed a gap in their conversation at almost an hour as they sat on either side of a drawing room listening to the clock ticking and the rain spilling down a broken gutter pipe. Charles was feeling the strain too. Later that day, after another shouting match with his wife, he lost his temper with Colborne over a trivial misunderstanding about the carpet in his new Range Rover, and yelled at his friend for over an hour.
In October Charles persuaded Diana that she needed professional help and they left Balmoral for London. On the train on the way back, the Prince had a five-hour conversation with Colborne. Charles was baffled and despondent, unable to grasp what had gone wrong or how to cope. To the doctors Diana said that she needed time to adapt. She did not admit to bulimia, nor did she accept that she might be seriously ill. They prescribed Valium, which she rejected, believing they only wanted to remove her as a problem by sedating her. Charles, who disapproved of drugs, was appalled. She later commented bitterly that all the officials and their doctors were interested in was being able to ‘go to bed at night and sleep, knowing the Princess of Wales wasn’t going to stab anyone’.
Amid the turmoil, Diana discovered she was pregnant. At court, everyone was relieved, hoping that her sickness, her changing moods and her spells of depression might be due to the pregnancy. For a while the news was not relayed to the general public.
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On 27 October the Prince and Princess of Wales set out on their first joint venture, a short tour of their own principality. Anne Beckwith-Smith was appointed as a lady-in-waiting to look after Diana and provide some support and female companionship. The visit again brought home the occupational hazards of royal life. There were threats from Welsh nationalists to contend with, and the visit was preceded by a huge security operation, made more serious when an incendiary device was found at Pontypridd. There were some anti-English and anti-royal banners on display, some chanting, some stink bombs and a successful attack on the royal car with an aerosol can, but these were swamped by a wave of popular interest in the Royal Family, or rather in the new Princess.
The tour began at the Deeside Leisure Centre and moved on to Caernarfon Castle on an austere, windy day. The Princess wore the red and green of Wales. Jayne Fincher studied her through the camera lens:
The first thing that struck us was how ill she looked. She looked dreadful. She’d gone from this lovely tanned, healthy, robust girl to looking really quite tired and thin and pale.
But Diana immediately endeared herself to the crowds with her lack of reserve. She had learned enough Welsh to say ‘Diolch yn fawr’ in response to gifts. She liked to touch people: she embraced a child with spina bifida, was kissed by a seven-year-old. It came naturally to her. She liked to smile. She made people want to smile back, and ever since the Darenth Park visits she had been able to talk to strangers without conveying condescension. Jayne Fincher was impressed:
Instead of just sort of doing a very gentle regal handshake she’d go out of her way to really reach into the crowd and touch people. She was a very touchy person and that became apparent very quickly because she was touching everybody. I think she quickly worked out that this is the best way to deal with it . . . If you see the Queen doing a walkabout it’s very dignified and quite formal. She’ll walk down the edge of a barrier and she’ll take some flowers very gently and elegantly, and maybe occasionally she might shake a hand. But they normally don’t shake hands. And normally the royal ladies would always have these long white gloves on. Diana didn’t wear gloves. It was completely different.
Judy Wade, an Australian, was covering the tour for the Sun.
We were used for so many years to royal ladies swanning through jobs and being rather aloof, and they certainly didn’t swap chit-chat with people. Their conversation extended to ‘Aren’t the flowers lovely?’ and ‘Have you been waiting long?’ But Diana was much more personal, and she would get down, bend down and talk to small children, and make sure they weren’t getting crushed in the crowd, and – she was just so different, so much closer to the people. It was brilliant for us – it provided good stories every single day.
According to one of those who shared the royal car with her in Wales, Diana frequently broke down in tears and was sick between engagements. At one time she protested to her husband that she could not face another crowd. But she did. The second day began with a service at St David’s Cathedral. Diana’s head dr
ooped when she could not join Charles in his lusty rendition of ‘Land of My Fathers’ in Welsh. She was evidently desperate not to let him down in any way. Then, as she walked among crowds at Carmarthen, the rain came down in torrents. The royal couple carried on, thanking those they met for waiting to see them in such hideous weather. Jayne Fincher kept snapping away.
She had all these outfits that she turned up in and it just rained non-stop and all the feathers were all bedraggled over her face and all her new coats were all soaking and it was really tough going for her. When you’re not feeling well the last thing you want to do is walk down Carmarthen High Street in a thunderstorm with your new John Boyd hat all ruined.
On the third day Diana looked more cheerful. Pressed against the railings lining Brecon High Street, Valerie Harris and her daughter Beverley had been waiting all morning. ‘It was very cold but people didn’t seem to notice the cold because they were so excited by Diana coming. And then we heard all the cheering from downtown.’ Mayor Gwanwyn Evans was walking with the royal couple.
Prince Charles indicated to me that they would each take a side of the road and at a certain stage he would take the initiative and he would decide to go over. And every time this happened you had this huge ‘Oaoah’ from the people that she was leaving. And all the time people keep calling, ‘Di, Di . . .’
‘Di, Di, over here please, Di, Di.’ The sound echoed through the town. After a while she did double back and swap sides, to the biggest cheer of the day. Charles was beaming at her pleasure and her popularity as his arms filled up with the flowers that were being pressed upon him to pass to his wife. ‘Yes, of course, of course, I know, she is lovely, isn’t she? Thank you so much for coming, and in this foul weather too . . .’
