Diana: Story of a Princess

by Tim Clayton

  Soon after 1 a.m. at the British embassy the duty officer was woken up by a call telling him that Princess Diana had been involved in an accident. Dodi was reported dead, and Diana badly injured. It was 2 a.m. before the ambassador, Sir Michael Jay, was informed. He passed the news to Robin Janvrin, the Queen’s deputy private secretary, at Balmoral. Janvrin woke up the Queen and Prince Charles. The Prince telephoned his deputy private secretary, Mark Bolland, in London and asked him ‘What’s going on?’ Bolland couldn’t shed much light. He’d been woken up by the News of the World and Stuart Higgins of the Sun, each giving conflicting reports of the accident. If anything, Ken Lennox was marginally better informed:

  Just before two o’clock, the photographer who had gone to the hospital in Paris said, ‘I think Diana’s dead. There’s a rumour here that she is dead – or so badly injured that she is dying – and I’ve just seen someone who I think is a British embassy guy fainting in the corridor of the hospital, and being picked up by two hospital staff and stuffed into a side room.’ I think what he’d seen was the duty man at the British embassy who had suddenly realised that it was his job to phone the Foreign Secretary and tell him that the Princess of Wales was dead. I thought, Oh my God, and by this time my chairman was standing behind me and the News of the World had been told and were just replating. I saw the editor of the News of the World in the corridor – he’d been out for dinner that night – with his bow tie hanging round his neck, with his executives in a corridor talking to them. And I said to the chairman, ‘I think Diana’s dead.’ And just then I got a call from ITN and they said, ‘Have you got anything on Diana?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think it’s fairly serious.’ And I knew the guy from the newsroom at ITN and he said, ‘They have got word that she’s dead coming from Paris.’ And I said, ‘Well, so have I.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll keep you informed, we’ll keep each other informed.’

  Then we watched the news coming up – it seemed to strike everybody connected with it. I had photographers too stunned to speak on the phone. I got a girl to come in and help me on the desk – she was useless, poor girl just cried for five hours. Couldn’t answer the phone. And that’s the effect.

  In Paris, press attaché Tim Livesey and ambassador Sir Michael Jay drove to the hospital. The White House called at three o’clock in the morning to find out the latest news. Between 2.30 and 4 a.m., Jay made a series of phone calls to Balmoral, the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, who was in Manila. At Balmoral, all the Royal Family except the boys were up, waiting for news.

  The first television news reports were confused. Some reported that Diana had escaped with relatively minor injuries, others said she had got up and walked away from the scene. There was even discussion on live TV as to how Diana would cope with Dodi’s death. Photographs taken at the scene showed the Mercedes in the tunnel and its occupants in the first minutes after the crash. The photo agency in Paris e-mailed the photographs to the US and British papers. Offers flooded in – $250,000 from the National Enquirer, £1 million from British newspapers.

  * * *

  Meresse now had a team working on the switchboard:

  It is very time consuming because you have people in tears on the phone, telling you their life story, who say: ‘No, it’s not possible, she can’t have had an accident, a princess doesn’t have accidents!’ You have to reassure people, you must try not to hang up on them, you have to reply to everyone, but everyone includes the head of state, foreign ambassadors who have close relations with Great Britain, you receive calls from all over the world, as soon as they all know your telephone number. So there are calls waiting, a blocked switchboard, an exploding telephone! There must have been three hundred calls a minute coming in.

  We knew that the chauffeur had died, that Dodi had also died, that the bodyguard was in a critical condition. So there was little hope. When the doctors who have spent two hours trying to resuscitate her, when they come up, one can sense that it’s all over. One can read it in their faces, their body language, their attitude; when one works in a hospital one can sense when a doctor has just suffered a failure. For a doctor, life is important and death is always experienced as a terrible failure.

  Adrenaline injections were given to keep Diana’s heart beating, and her heart was massaged by hand, but it would not beat unaided. At 4 a.m., the medical team told Chevènement that Diana was dead. They told him she’d suffered a second massive cardiac arrest when she arrived at the hospital. They’d tried to resuscitate her for two hours, but to no avail. With Sami Naïr watching, Chevènement took Jay aside and broke the news to him.

  It was at about four o’clock in the morning. The Chief of Police, Massoni, came back into the room, he came to have a coffee with us, and then went out again; and at that moment I saw him give a little sign to the Minister. The Minister went out, I went out behind him; he said to the Minister, ‘She is dead.’

  So the Minister staggered at the shock, then he recovered himself, came back in and said to the ambassador, she is dead, and he presented all his condolences. And the ambassador began to weep.

  The ambassador asked when he could see the body. We told him that he couldn’t see the body until it had been removed from the resuscitation room, because no one is allowed in the resuscitation room. So the Chief of Police, Massoni, asked if the body could be brought up to the room on the second floor where she would await transfer to the morgue.

  At about half past four a table was put in the room and she was put on it. The Minister asked me and the Chief of Police to prepare a press release for him. We were very sad, but we were also very angry with the photographers, because we understood that the car had been pursued by the photographers. We were saying, ‘These paparazzi! It’s a terrible thing to destroy the lives of people like that.’

  At 4.15 a.m. the Queen’s private secretary, Diana’s brother-in-law Robert Fellowes, rang the hospital and spoke to an embassy official, who broke the news. Thierry Meresse realised that there were no decent clothes for the Princess.

  She was about the same size as the ambassador’s wife. So she suggested she donate one of her black dresses and a pair of shoes to go with it.

  It was necessary to allow certain journalists to come into a section of the hospital which was cordoned off behind barriers so that they could carry on their job of filming the departures and arrivals of famous people and the imminent arrival of Prince Charles. But at that actual moment the paparazzi are being accused of having killed her. So everyone who has a camera is accused of being guilty. Among the press, there are a few baying onlookers, a bit excited, who want to fight it out. There are insults flying.

  I notice there are a few overexcited people who need calming down. I try to argue with them, to make them understand that there are no paparazzi here, to calm them down. I have to go and explain to every person who appears to be a bit worked up, who wants to let rip, that we are waiting for the Prince of Wales and that I am counting on them to give a dignified welcome to a man who has just lost his wife, who is coming to collect her body.

  People took note of what I said, and when the Jaguar arrived, all that could be heard was the screech of the tyres on the tarmac, there was total silence for the arrival of Prince Charles.

  I was moved by his humanity and by how responsive he was, by the way in which he spoke very correct French, and one really felt that he was shattered by what was happening. His entire attitude from start to finish was one of concern for the Princess of Wales, over details; nobody could find her second earring and he kept saying: ‘No, she can’t go without her second earring!’ Details like that. One could feel he was truly, truly distraught.

  When he went into the room alone he was calm and collected. It was another man who emerged from the room, a man utterly shattered by what was happening. Very human, totally unlike all the images one might have of him of a very formal person, all uptight, austere and reserved. You could sense the same reserve, but at the same time immense pain and great humanity.<
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  The Accident and Emergency wing has a roof on which helicopters can land. So we suggested to the Prince of Wales that they leave by helicopter, to avoid the crowds. And he said: ‘No, she arrived by car so she will leave by car. There are people who love her waiting outside.’

  19

  Funeral

  * * *

  Suddenly there were people who loved Diana everywhere.

  Earl Spencer stood outside his house and accused the media of ‘having blood on their hands’. Jean-Louis Macault was reluctant to leave his home: ‘I thought, This is the end. It’s a disaster. I don’t think that I can go on doing this kind of work. As soon as we went past, people would say: “Ah-ha, paparazzi, murderers!” We hid ourselves away, we were almost ashamed of being photographers. People were extremely nasty, very, very nasty.’

  What had felt like fair comment on Saturday night had turned into a hideous embarrassment by Sunday. In the days before the crash many newspaper writers had been critical of Diana. Despite frantic efforts to recall and reprint, a series of negative articles reached the grieving public. ‘Any publicity is good publicity’ and ‘She seems to relish her role as a martyr, God help her if she ever finds happiness – it would make her miserable,’ said the Sunday Express. And the News of the World’s ‘exclusive’ read: ‘Troubled Prince William will today demand that his mother Princess Diana dump her playboy lover.’

  In America that week’s National Enquirer was already on the news-stands blaring out ‘DI GOES SEX MAD’. Whether or not hounds with cameras had literally pursued her to her death, evidence of the hunt was writ large in headlines like this. And so by Monday the press was on the defensive. The Mirror played the xenophobia card, pointing out that Diana’s pursuers had been French. The Sun simply begged, ‘Don’t blame the press.’ On Tuesday the Paris police announced the results of Henri Paul’s first blood tests: France Soir proclaimed ‘Le Chauffeur de Lady Di était Ivre’ – ‘Lady Di’s Driver was Drunk’. The sound of exhaled breath was audible in newsrooms all over the world. Now the media pounced on Al Fayed, alleging he had allowed Diana to be driven by a drunk, and Prince Charles, for forcing her into the arms of such untrustworthy guardians. Meanwhile Diana was bleached virgin white.

  Private Eye summed up:

  The Late Princess Diana: An Apology. In recent weeks (not to mention the last ten years) we at the Daily Gnome, in common with all other newspapers, may have inadvertently conveyed the impression that the late Princess of Wales was in some way a neurotic, irresponsible and manipulative troublemaker who had repeatedly meddled in political matters that did not concern her and personally embarrassed Her Majesty The Queen by her Mediterranean love-romps . . . We now realise as of Sunday morning that the Princess of Hearts was in fact the most saintly woman who has ever lived, who, with her charitable activities, brought hope and succour to hundreds and millions of people all over the world. We would like to express our sincere and deepest hypocrisy to all our readers on this tragic day and hope and pray that they will carry on buying our paper notwithstanding.

  But if the public was ready to blame the press, the press had a question in return: just who exactly had been buying all these terrible newspapers in the first place? Private Eye’s cover, which brought the magazine a record number of complaints, read ‘Media to Blame’. The picture under the headline showed a crowd assembled outside Buckingham Palace, and in speech bubbles mourners said to each other, ‘The papers are a disgrace.’ ‘Yes. I couldn’t get one anywhere.’ ‘Borrow mine, it’s got a picture of the car.’

  * * *

  BBC newsreader Martyn Lewis wept on air as he read the death announcement. On 31 August and for days afterwards there was simply no other news. Other events passed entirely without comment as TV stations in Britain, Europe and North and South America devoted hour after hour to Diana tributes and Diana analysis. It began immediately, while Annick Cojean was still in shock in front of her hotel room TV in Washington.

  I was glued to my TV, I zap from channel to channel for two hours, till two, three o’clock in the morning, and then at that moment the world’s press landed on my telephone! I don’t know how they got my phone number. I got fifty calls, I have the list, 3.01, 3.02, 3.04, and after that they came to fetch me, CNN, NBC cable, and then regular NBC, and then CBS and CNN’s car came, and then TFI called me and I’d talked so much that I said, ‘No, I don’t want to talk any more, I want to sleep for two hours,’ and the correspondent said, ‘But it’s for French TV, you’re going to be live, it’s very important, it will have a lot of impact!’ And I said, ‘Impact, I don’t give a damn about impact, I’ve had enough, that’s all I have to say.’

  * * *

  The Prince of Wales was acutely aware of the depth of public sympathy for Diana and concerned for the feelings of their children. Quite apart from that, independent witnesses who saw Charles in Paris and on his return say he was genuinely distraught and personally determined to treat his wife’s death with as much respect as he could. But he found that even his determination to go immediately to Paris was opposed, as television newsreader Jon Snow was informed by a man from Charles’s entourage:

  The row was over the most microscopic and ludicrous things like whether Queen’s Flight planes should be laid on for Charles to go to Paris. Should he go to Paris at all since this was not a royal personage?

  I was told by two sources, one inside the royal circle, one ministerial, that an almost immediate breakdown occurred within hours of the discovery of Diana’s death. The Queen did not want the body anywhere near a royal palace, anywhere near a royal chapel. She wanted her left at an undertaker’s in the Fulham Road. Charles, driven by the boys, wanted a proper royal send-off and all the protocol to kick in. The whole thing deteriorated into the most appalling slanging match, which at one point found Charles shouting at Sir Robert Fellowes, Diana’s own brother-in-law, the Queen’s secretary, ‘Why don’t you just go and impale yourself on your own flagstaff?’ Extraordinary phrase. And another royal official saying, ‘Would you rather, ma’am, that she be taken away in a Harrods van?’

  The tension continued the whole week, but was expressed very clearly on the flight-deck of the plane that Charles did eventually take to Paris. It was a place which effectively became his office because, denied royal protocol, he now had to find some way of getting all the things which protocol would normally have provided. And therefore an open line was established on the flight-deck with Number Ten, and such minute details as the flowers that were to be put on the coffin had to be called up.

  A Cabinet minister confirmed to Snow that:

  Charles had been unable to call on the royal protocol in any form. Normally, if a royal person dies, all sorts of things kick in immediately: how the body is to be carried, where it is to land, what kind of a coffin, the provision of flowers, a guard of honour, flags, all the rest of it comes out of the woodwork. There is a formula for doing it.

  He had no alternative but to call on the government and see what they could do. And I think Number Ten, conscious of the public reaction, already realised that they would have to do whatever could be done.

  On the Queen’s instruction, Robert Fellowes had arranged for Diana’s body to rest in Fulham mortuary, commonly used by the royal coroner. At Charles’s insistence, plans were quickly changed and Diana’s body was taken instead to the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. From Northolt to central London, knots of people, heads bowed, watched the hearse go by. That Sunday the Royal Family went to church as usual at Balmoral, where no mention was made of the death either by them or their preacher, and so it was left to Tony Blair to give voice to the swelling public mourning. He grabbed the opportunity with both hands, speaking emotionally to television cameras outside his own local church in County Durham. His voice cracked, his eyes were wide with sincerity and repressed tears, his fingers reached out as if trying to grasp the desolation that he sought to share with the nation. Alastair Campbell, Blair’s press spokesman, had beefed up the
Prime Minister’s original draft, inserting one of Anthony Holden’s old phrases: ‘the People’s Princess’. That set the tone for the week. No doubt Blair felt sad, but he and Campbell also appreciated that it was politic for him to be seen to be sad. The Queen and Prince Philip did not appear to have worked this out for themselves.

  Margaret Jay was in a television studio when the Prime Minister made his statement. As the one member of the Cabinet who knew Diana well, she had spent all morning recording TV and radio interviews. She’d also been among the first to be consulted about what Blair should say:

  People have looked back and slightly sneered at what the Prime Minister said on that occasion, but in fact it was very much capturing the mood – the mood of people feeling that this was somebody very valuable who had been lost; who had a particular connection with people. That she was, at one level, an amazing star, an amazing celebrity, and yet she was somebody with whom lots of people, who were watching what the Prime Minister said on the occasion, felt they had a personal connection, because they’d once shaken her hand, or they’d once been in a crowd and given her a flower.

  I think as events emerged, it was very important that he said something on that day, because the whole atmosphere became so intense and so confused and there were so many thousands of people involved that the fact that the Prime Minister had said this very appropriate thing did give it a framework.

  * * *

  It was Annick Cojean’s umpteenth interview of the day: ‘On the panel, Annick Cojean, who was a friend of the Princess’s.’

  And I said: ‘No, no, I wasn’t a friend, I interviewed her once in the context of a series of articles.’ And nobody wanted to hear the rest! The controversy about landmines, the controversy about the Major government or the Blair government, nobody gave a damn, it was no longer an issue. Everything was about how she had been. Did she smile? Was she in love? Did she get on well with you? How was she dressed, was she warm? I realised how everything that touched her was controversial, important, exciting, it put the most sensible of people into unheard-of states, there was a sort of hysteria, and one has no idea of it until one has experienced it first hand in the way that I did for those few hours.