DIANA UNSEEN
Wills and Harry open family album
PRINCESS Diana realised fully how the break-up of her marriage was impacting on her young Princes, William and Harry.
Her trusted butler Paul Burrell has revealed how she tried to shield the youngsters from the trauma of her separation from their father, Prince Charles.
And he has told how the two lads responded by assuring their mother that everything would work out fine.
As William and Harry have shared their intimate memories of their tragic mum in a documentary marking the 20th anniversary of her death, Burrell said: “She knew how difficult it was for the boys when she and Charles separated.
“She felt she had to overcompensate, so that’s why they would go to places like Thorpe Park, Alton Towers and Necker Island.
“It was upsetting for them to watch the fall-out of their parents’ marriage and whenever Diana got upset, they would push notes under her door saying, ‘It will be OK’.”
But in the ITV documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, the princes admit there were lonely times as they struggled with their parents’ separation in 1992 and divorce in 1996.
Harry, 32, says: “There was the point where our parents split and we never saw our mother enough or we never saw our father enough. There was a lot of travelling and a lot of fights on the back seat with my brother, which I would win. I don’t pretend we’re the only people to have to deal with that but it was an interesting way of growing up.”
Harry also admits he has still only cried twice over his mother’s death in a Paris car crash on August 31 in 1997.
He adds: “There’s a lot of grief that still needs to be let out.”
The “normality” that Paul Burrell reveals the Princess tried to bring has been depicted in new treasured photos from the Royal Family’s album released to highlight the happy childhood Diana gave her boys.
One of the never-beforeseen pictures shows a baby Harry nestling in his mother’s lap on the Royal Yacht Britannia.
But others reveal the way she would dress them in similar outfits.
Harry admits, in the 90-minute documentary, that it is “one thing I would love to ask her now, because I genuinely think that she got satisfaction out of dressing myself and William up in the most bizarre outfits, normally matching.Looking back at the photos, it just makes me laugh. I think, ‘How could you do that to us?’.”
One picture shows the pair dressed as police officers, another shows them on a