Night Diana disappeared ...to go for a spin in the Crown Prince’s sports car
SURROUNDED by strangers in an unfamiliar setting, on permanent display in front of a travelling media circus, a royal tour is the worst place to endure a personal crisis, as the Prince and Princess of Wales discovered on their 1992 visits to India and South Korea, the last tours they would make together. It has now entered public mythology that the Princess made her famous solo trip to the Taj Mahal as some sort of cry for help, a signal to the world that her marriage was in crisis. In fact, it was standard practice for the couple to pursue different programmes on a non-ceremonial day. The Taj Mahal had long been in the diary for the Princess. Lynda Chalker, then the Foreign Office Minister for Overseas Development, was accompanying the Prince that day. She sensed that he knew what was coming but was determined to stick to the official schedule. ‘The Princess went off and sat in front of the Taj Mahal,’ says Baroness Chalker. ‘I was with the Prince in the back of the old white Rolls-Royce touring health projects that day and he was quite nervous, I think. But he was remarkable — mind over matter.’ The Baroness recalls that there was a certain atmosphere later on, back at the High Commission, after the media impact of the Princess’s visit to the Taj Mahal became apparent. The Princess, she says, was ‘quite silent’ while, as the minister in attendance, she found herself intervening between the Prince and the diplomats. ‘The High Commissioner wanted to give him some advice and I thought it inappropriate,’ says the Baroness, herself a former diplomat. ‘In that world you have to make a very subtle judgment.’ The Korea tour was the last straw for the Waleses. In December 1992, Prime Minister John Major told Parliament that the couple were separating. To their credit, both sides had adopted Churchill’s old maxim of ‘KBO’ (‘keep b*****ing on’), continuing to represent the Queen and their various charities all over the globe and taking some solace from the impact their work might have on others. The year after their separation, the Princess made her first solo overseas visit to Nepal, one of the poorest countries on Earth. Only Diana could have attracted a media entourage three times larger than the number of international phone lines out of Nepal. Even Vogue magazine despatched a team, complete with red ‘Vogue’ baseball caps, in the (vain) hope that the Princess would look at their lens before anyone else’s. She was accompanied by her sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lynda Chalker. The minister was as fond of the Princess, as she was of the Prince. Yet Baroness Chalker found her patience tested one night as she and her husband were asleep in a house neighbouring that of the British Ambassador. ‘Suddenly I heard banging on the front door. It was the Ambassador in a frantic state. He was saying: “Do you know where Her Royal Highness is?” I said: “Have you asked her sister?”’ The Ambassador had tried that and the Baroness could not help any further. ‘I just said: “Well, ask the police!” ‘It was not my job to keep her under lock and key.’ There was an awkward atmosphere at breakfast the following morning when the story unfolded. As Lady Chalker recalls, the Princess was ‘a bit sheepish’ as she explained where she had been. ‘She went off with the Crown Prince,’ she says. ‘They had gone for a spin in his sports car. He had got the police to close off all the roads and they went through the centre of Kathmandu. ‘I think my husband asked her if she put her seatbelt on at some point. She said the car didn’t have seatbelts.’