WILLS: I TELL CHILDREN ABOUT GRANNY DIANA
Prince says she would have ‘loved Charlotte and George to bits’
‘She prepared us well for life’
FOR Diana, nothing was too much trouble for the boys she adored, from exotic holidays to elaborate treats.
Her reasoning was simple: So much of their lives was infused with the rituals of their role as ‘heir and spare’ to the throne that she was determined to provide an outlet to them.
This might mean setting up an impromptu go-kart track round Prince Charles’s precious flower-beds at Highgrove, or letting William and Harry jump fully clothed into the swimming pool along with their bodyguards.
But for William nothing quite summed up her magical sense of mischief like the day in September 1996 when he came home from school to find the most glamorous and famous women in the world, supermodels Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford, at the top of the stairs at Kensington Palace.
For the blushing young teenager, it was the fulfilment of every schoolboy’s fantasy.
The encounter with the models, whose pictures he had pinned up on the wall of his study at Eton, remains a powerful memory for the prince and proof of the sense of mischief of the mother who arranged it all.
How very different from his father’s upbringing. By the time he was 14, the most exciting thing Prince Charles got up to was swigging a cherry brandy in a pub during term-time at Gordonstoun. Recounting how he reacted in front of the supermodels, William says: ‘I pretty much fell down the stairs on the way up.’
The fact is that, like so many devoted mothers, Diana lived much of her life through her children.
Harry understands that devotion and sacrifice very clearly. It was mixed, too, with her own sense of the importance that childhood was a time of innocence and joy. For Harry remarks: ‘Our mother was a total kid through and through.’ She possessed a ‘ crazy laugh [which] was just pure happiness.’
Above all, she led her life on the principle of the importance of hav- ing a free spirit. That is something she has bestowed on her sons. ‘She was one of the naughtiest parents,’ Harry says. Greetings cards, the smuttier the better, were another Diana favourite.
‘She was a massive card writer,’ says William. ‘She loved the rudest cards you could imagine. Usually she found something very embarrassing, a very funny card and then wrote very nice stuff inside.
‘But I dared not open it in case the teachers or anyone else in the class had seen it.’ It was all part of her determination as a mother that they enjoyed as normal a life as possible.
But there was, according to William, another purpose beyond the pleasure-seeking moments.
‘She understood there was a real life outside of Palace walls and she wanted us to see it from a very young age,’ he tells the documentary, recalling visits to The Passage, a centre for the homeless in Westminster when he was only 12.
What is so remarkable about the film is the profound impact the princess has in influencing their lives to this day.
In one of the plaintive parts of the documentary, both princes speak of their mother’s presence in their lives long after her death.
William says his mother’s spirit is constantly at his side. ‘There are not many days that go by I don’t think of her.
‘I have a smile every now and again when someone says something, and I think, “that’s exactly what she would have said”, or, “she would have enjoyed that comment.”
‘So they always live with you, people you lose, like that. And my mother lives with me every day. I give thanks that I was lucky enough to be her son and I got to know her for the 15 years that I did.
‘She gave us the right tools and has prepared us well for life in the best way she could, not, obviously, knowing what was going to happen.’ Until this year, many feared Diana had been airbrushed from the royal story, an inconvenient reminder of unhappier times.
But since the beginning of 2017 both princes have spoken out about her continuing impact on their lives. They have commissioned a statue and in their different ways they tell how they dealt with the loss. Quite why it has taken two decades to do it is not clear but the boys hint at a possible explanation when they talk about how they coped with their grief. William says he knew his mother would not want him to be upset. ‘I kept myself busy which is good and bad but allows you to …get through that initial shock.’
This period lasted between five and seven years by which time William was 22 and meeting Kate Middleton at St Andrews University.
Harry grew up thinking that ‘not having a mum was normal’, adding: ‘The ten years I was in the Army I just sort of dug my head in the sand and it was just white noise.’ Now, William says he is instilling those memories of his mother in his own children. Indeed, it is fascinating that the prince uses the phrase ‘Granny Diana’ more than once.
Her first grandchild, Prince George, wasn’t born until more than 16 years after her death. William says he talks often to his own children, George and Charlotte, about ‘Granny Diana’ who, he says, would have ‘loved them to bits’.
‘I think constantly about Granny Diana,’ he says. ‘So we’ve got more photos up around the house now… it’s hard because Catherine didn’t know her, so cannot provide that level of detail.’
So at bedtime for George and Charlotte, he likes to talk to them about Diana.
William says the most important message he takes from his mother is the importance of a child’s first few years.
‘I want to make as much time and effort with George and Charlotte as I can because I realise these early years particularly are crucial for children, having seen, you know, what she did for us.’
Granny Diana would definitely be very proud.