DIANA: PRINCESS, ICON, MUM

TO the public, Diana played many roles from the “People’s Princess” to style icon and tireless charity champion. But to her sons she was simply a loving mum with a great sense of fun and adventure, or as Harry succinctly puts it: “A total kid, through and through”.

Had she lived, she would now be mischievous “Granny Diana” to William’s children, George and Charlotte.

In a documentary called Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997, Harry warmly recalls how much Diana valued the chance to escape the limelight and just spend time with her two boys.

“My mother cherished those moments of privacy and being able to be that mother rather than the Princess of Wales,” he said.

One of their favourite haunts was Thorpe Park resort in Surrey, where they and their mother giggled helplessly as they were famously drenched, careering down the Logger’s Leap water flume in 1993 ( inset).i )

Harry relishes those private moments of fun: “If that means taking us for a burger every now and then or sneaking us into the cinema, driving through the country lanes with the roof down, listening to Enya, I think it was – a blast from the past! – all of that was part of her being a mum. Our mother was a total kid through-and-through. All I can hear is her laugh in my head. And that sort of crazy laugh where there was just pure happiness on her face.”