Princes regret quick final call
LONDON • The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry have spoken of their enduring regret over their last conversation with their mother, disclosing they had been desperate to rush off the telephone and get back to playing instead.
The Duke and Prince, who were 15 and 12 when Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash, said they had been busy at Balmoral when she called them.
The short phone call would be their last conversation, a moment the Duke said still weighs on his mind “quite, quite heavily,” while Prince Harry admitted he would regret it for the rest of his life.
The brothers spoke for a television documentary in which they detail their warm memories of their fun-loving mother. In their most extensive and revealing television interview to date, the Duke and Prince speak fondly of their childhood, in the hope of introducing the real Diana to a new generation.
The Duke recalled that final conversation in August 1997, when his mother was in Paris and he and his brother were at Balmoral with their father, the Prince of Wales, and the wider Royal family.
“At the time Harry and I were running around minding our own business, you know, playing with our cousins and having a very good time,” he said.
Prince Harry continued: “As a kid I never enjoyed speaking to my parents on the phone. And we spent far too much time speaking on the phone rather than speaking to each other, because of just the way the situation (the divorce) was.”
The Duke said: “And I think Harry and I were just in a desperate rush to say goodbye … if I’d known, obviously, what was going to happen I wouldn’t have been so blasé about it and everything else. But that phone call sticks in my mind quite, quite heavily.”
He said that he did recall what she had said to him, but chose not to disclose it.
Prince Harry, who in April told The Daily Telegraph he had sought counselling over Diana’s death, said: “I can’t really, necessarily, remember what I said, but all I do remember is probably, you know, regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was.
“And if I’d known that that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother, the things I would have said to her…”