Call Me Diana

The Princess of Wales on Herself

Nigel Cawthorne

• Publisher: Gibson Square
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781783340972
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

'I no longer want to live someone else's idea of who and what I should be. I'm going to be me.''I just absolutely thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.'Diana Spencer's engagement to Prince Charles, announced in 1981, first cast the spotlight on the young girl who was to become one of the most intriguing and influential royals in modern history — despite deep and exasperated resistance in traditional royal circles, not least from some of her in-laws.Until her tragic death in 1997 at the age of 36, Diana frequently gave interviews and shared her thoughts with many people. In this fresh portrait of Diana on her own life, Nigel Cawthorne gathers her most salient words from the very first till the very last - some known, some forgotten. They show a remarkable woman whose struggles, passion and compassion, continue to inspire two decades later.

Being Royal

As a free spirit, Diana found herself stifled by the protocol at surrounded the Royal Family.

“From the first day I joined that family, nothing could be done naturally any more,” she complained.

Princess Diana famously said: “I wear my heart on my sleeve.” This was palpably true both in her private and public life, and it seems to be a trait common to newcomers to the Royal Family. During a multi-million dollar tour of America for Weightwatchers after her much-publicised divorce, Fergie, Duchess of York, said: “I’m a closet American – I wear my heart on my sleeve. I’m very open, where in Britain, it’s stiff upper lip and don’t speak about it.

“Only do what your heart tells you,” was another of Princess Diana’s much quoted maxims, though she admitted that it got her into trouble. Nevertheless, the heart was all important to her. She said: “I always knew I’d never be the next Queen. I’d like to be a queen of people’s hearts, in people’s hearts, but I don’t see myself being Queen of this country. I don’t think many people will want me to be Queen. Actually, when I say many people, I mean the establishment that I married into.”

Clearly Princess Diana succeeded in becoming the queen of people’s hearts and it gave her succour. Announcing her withdrawal from public life in December 1993, following her separation from Prince Charles, she told the audience: “Your kindness and affection have carried me through some of the most difficult periods, and always your love and affection have eased the journey. And for that I thanks you, from the bottom of my heart.”

But then: “Being a princess isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Diana was humble in the face of the public affection heaped on her.

“So many people supported me through my public life and I will never forget them,” she said. “I want to reassure all those people who have loved me and supported me throughout the last fifteen years that I’d never let them down. That is a priority to me…”

The reason was simple. She wanted to reassure the people, “the people that matter to me – the man on the street, because that’s what matters more than anything else.”

It was always the ordinary people who concerned Diana. “The people that I care about are the people out there on the street,” she said. “I can identify with them.”

“The greatest problem in the world today is intolerance,” said Princess Diana. “Everyone is so intolerant of each other.”

This was widely interpreted as Diana expressing her support for gay rights, after she had visited a gay bar with Freddie Mercury. However, Diana suffered more than her fair share of intolerance herself. Prince Philip intolerance of her was widely reported. When the story of her affair with James Hewitt came out, he would say to anyone who would care to listen: “Well, what do you expect?”

Jonathan Dimbleby’s The Prince of Wales: A Biography also pointed out Charles “tendency to grumble”, his short temper, his self-centredness, his intolerance, his vanity and his jealousy of his wife’s popularity.

“With the media attention came a lot of jealousy,” she said. “A great deal of complicated situations arose because of that.

On the occasion of Charles’s 50^th birthday party at Highgrove, Diana said: “Wouldn’t it be funny if I suddenly came out of the birthday cake?”

Becoming royal meant that Diana had to steer clear of politics. In 1995, she said: “I’m not a political animal, but I think the biggest disease this world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved.”

A year later, visiting a ward for landmine victims in a hospital in Angola, she said: “I am not a political figure. The fact is I am a humanitarian figure and always will be.” And she dismissed the sniping from MPs, saying: “I saw the row at Westminster as merely a distraction which meant things went off the rails for five minutes and went back on again. It’s not helpful things like that but it does happen when a campaign is entwined in a political issue. I understand that.”

A month after that, she said: “I am not a political figure, not do I want to be one; but I give with my heart.”

During an emotional speech at the National Geographic Society in London in June 1997, she said: “I am not a political figure. My interests are humanitarian.”

She repeated the sentiment in the Daily Mirror on 6 August, defending her visit to Angola: “Some people chose to interpret my visit as a political statement. But it was not.”

There was also petty disharmony in the royal marriage.

“Fashion is not my thing at all,” she said, “but if Prince Charles chose an outfit, I’d say: ‘Go with the other one!’”

This is an astonishing statement for a woman whose style and dress-sense was picked over and emulated by millions all around the world. For her years in public life, she was seen as a leader of fashion.

Charles gave as good as he got. Getting ready for a public engagement, he would say “Not that dress again”, undermining her confidence. Describing their relationship, Diana said: “It’s just so difficult. So complicated. He makes my life real, real torture.”

Nevertheless: “We struggled along. We did our engagements together. And in our private life it was obviously turbulent.”

Martin Bashir said that Jonathan Dimbleby’s biography of the Prince of Wales made him out to be a great thinking, a man with a tremendous range of interests.

“What did he think of your interests?” asked Bashir.

“Well, I don’t think I was allowed to have any. I think that I’ve always been the 18-year-old girl he got engaged to, so I don’t think I’ve been given any credit for growth. And, my goodness, I’ve had to grow.”

She complained that she was always the target of criticism.

“Anything good I ever did nobody ever said a thing, never said, ‘well done’, or ‘was it OK?’” she said. “But if I tripped up, which invariably I did, because I was new at the game, a ton of bricks came down on me.”

It was a perennial problem. “I was thrown into the deep end.… Nobody ever helped me at all. They’d be there to criticise me, but never there to say ‘Well done.’”

The split from Charles caused difficulties for the Royal Family.

“I was the separated wife of the Prince of Wales, I was a problem, fullstop,” she said. “Never happened before, what do we do with her?”

This was not entirely true. It had happened before. While Prince of Wales, the future George IV married Caroline of Brunswick-Lüneburg, though he was already secretly married to the widow Maria Fitzherbert. George and Caroline separated nine months later, after the birth of their only child, Princess Charlotte. Rumours circulated about her sex life. A committee of the Privy Council was set up to conduct the so-called “Delicate Investigation”. In 1805, it acquitted her of charges of having a son by another man.

After George ascended to throne, he tried to dissolve the marriage to prevent her becoming queen. A bill was put before parliament and witnesses were called who gave salacious details of her love life. These were lapped up by the public and Caroline became so popular that, although the bill was passed by the House of Lords, it was not put before the Commons as there was little prospect that they would pass it. Caroline joked that she had indeed committed adultery once – with the husband of Mrs Fitzherbert.

At the coronation, the doors of Westminster Abbey were slammed in her face. She died nineteen days later. Huge crowds turned out when her body was transported back to Brunswick, forcing the cortège to travel through Westminster and the City.

Diana might well have taken a leaf out of Caroline’s book. Asked whether she could be packed off somewhere quietly, ever mindful of her duty, Diana said of herself: “She won’t go quietly, that’s the problem. I’ll fight to the end, because I believe that I have a role to fulfil, and I’ve got two children to bring up.”

In December 1992, in the face of concerted pressure by the Royal Family, Diana agreed to a legal separation.

“We had struggled to keep it going, but obviously we’d both run out of steam,” she said. “My husband asked for the separation and I supported it.”

Her feelings on the occasion?

“Deep, deep, profound sadness.”

Diana said that 28 February 1996 – the day she agreed to an uncontested divorce – was “the saddest day of my life”. There followed haggling over what titles she could keep.

“I did not want this divorce, but I have agreed to it,” she said. “Now they are playing ping-pong with me.”

They had already played other games with her.

“It was, you know, if we are going to divorce, my husband would hold more cards than I would, it was very much a poker game, chess game.”

In the end, she was stripped of the honorific “Her Royal Highness”. According to the New York Times the queen had wanted her to keep it, but Charles insisted that she be stripped of it. It would mean that she was officially obliged to curtsey to him – and even to her own children.

“Don’t worry, Mummy,” William was reported saying. “I will give it back to you one day when I am king.”

Only five years earlier, she had told Good Housekeeping magazine: “I am never going to get divorced and that’s that. Whatever people may think and say, I am very happy, thank you very much.”

The failure of the royal marriage had damaged Charles’s regal prospects too.

“I know Charles will never be King and I will never be Queen,” Diana said. “William will take our place. I would hope that my husband would go off, go away with his lady and sort that out. Then leave me and the children to carry the Wales name through to the time that William ascends the throne.”

Diana was not alone in expecting the crown to skip a generation.

“All my hopes are on William now. I try to din it into him about the media – the dangers and how he must understand and handle it. It’s too late for the rest of the family. But William, I think, has it.”

She would be there to guide him on his way.

“I will help him to adapt to a changing world, to learn how to deal with and communicate with people. I am not against the Monarchy, why would I wish to destroy my children’s future?”

After all, she was all too well aware of the pitfalls.

“For me, it was terrifying. I hadn’t got a clue what I was meant to be doing. I don’t want William and Harry suffering in the way I did,” she said.

Following her separation, Diana was forced to cut back on her charity work. Announcing this, she still found time to thank her mother- and father-in-law.

“At the end of this year, when I have completed my diary of official engagements, I will be reducing the extent of the public life I have led so far,” she said. “I attach great importance to my charity work and intend to focus on a smaller range of areas in the future. Over the next few months I will be seeking a more suitable way of combining a meaningful public role with, hopefully, a more private life. My first priority will continue to be our children, William and Harry, who deserve as much love, care and attention as I am able to give, as well as an appreciation of the tradition into which they were born. I would also like to add that this decision has been reached with the full understanding of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, who have always shown me kindness and support.”

There was no mention of Charles. Privately, she told a friend: “My husband’s side have made my life hell for the last year.”

Even in her devastating interview on Panorama she put in a good word for her husband and the monarchy. Diana concluded by saying: “I don’t sit here with resentment: I sit here with sadness because a marriage hasn’t worked. I sit here with hope because there’s a future ahead, a future for my husband, a future for myself and a future for the monarchy.”

A month later came the official announcement that the Queen had written to them, advising them to divorce.

Looking back as a mother of two and a player on the world stage, Diana realised how ill-prepared she was for the pressures incumbent on her as a member of the Royal Family.

“At the age of nineteen, you always think you’re prepared for everything, and you think you have the knowledge of what’s coming ahead,” she said. “But although I was daunted at the prospect at the time, I felt I had the support of my husband-to-be.”

“I wasn’t daunted, and am not daunted by the responsibilities that that role creates. It was a challenge, it is a challenge.”

As for becoming Queen: “It was never at the forefront of my mind when I married my husband: it was a long way off that thought.”

Indeed she had had no real desire to become a princess. She was all too familiar with royal ways, having grown up on the Sandringham estate in a house rented from the Queen.

“I’ve known her since I was tiny, so meeting it was no big deal,” she said. “I kept thinking, ‘Look at the life they have, how awful.’”

Not only had Diana known the Queen since she was small, Scottish clergyman the Reverend Douglas Lister, former military chaplain to Earl Spencer, claimed that Di’s father had once wooed Elizabeth when she was heir to the throne, but the Royal Family reportedly quashed the affair as he was considered unsuitable.

“He came to see me because he needed someone to talk to,” said Lister. “He was in love with her and I think she had s...