Bryony Gordon
Diana’s boys have rewritten the story of their mother
There was a moment during last night’s ITV documentary about Diana, Princess of Wales, when an HIV patient spoke about the woman who would become his friend during many unannounced drop-ins to the Aids clinic at which he was treated during the early Nineties, when the disease was still greatly feared and grossly misunderstood. “When she came in, it was like she was just Hello, hello, hello: a family photo shows the boys trying out a different role shining,” says Gerard Mcgrath. “That smile. It would just beam. I sound like a sycophant but that’s how it was. And I’m not a royal person, really. I’m a republican. But she was an exception.”
Listening to him, I felt I had heard his words before. Probably I had – how many people have spoken about how the late Princess of Wales would light up a room and melt the stoniest of republican hearts? Even Jeremy Corbyn would have been reduced to jelly in her presence. As her friend William Van Straubenzee said during the documentary: “People often ask if I was in love with Diana, to which I can only answer: of course I was! Anyone from any gender or orientation who knew of her was in love with her.”
A little later, as I reflected on my own tiny interactions with her sons, I realised where else I had heard these words. I had heard them coming out of my own mouth. Not in relation to Diana, whom I never met, but to Princes William and Harry, whom I was first introduced to a little over a year ago at the launch of Heads Together, their charity campaign that aims to change the conversation about mental health. I have had a handful of meetings with them since, most notably when I recorded my Daily Telegraph podcast with Prince Harry at Kensington Palace in March. Every time I have come away thinking how extraordinary these boys are – extraordinary in the sense of how very ordinary they are. No airs and graces. No curtsies expected. A cheekiness that makes you feel as if you are just hanging out with two normal blokes in their 30s – albeit two blokes who happen to come with protection officers and who live in a palace.
To wit: I remember meeting the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge last October on World Mental Health Day. That day, I had announced my intention, in this paper, to run the London Marathon for Heads Together. In the article I had described myself as “a slightly overweight mum with boobs the size of beach balls”. “Your piece this morning made me laugh,” said Prince William when we met. “Especially the bit about beach balls.” His lovely wife giggled beside him, while I attempted not to turn the colour of a beetroot.
A few months later, when I found myself in his relay team at the
Olympic Stadium during a Heads Together training day, we laughed when it became clear that I was lining up against Paula Radcliffe and Iwan Thomas, ensuring an almost certain defeat for Team William (his wife got Paula, while Harry had Iwan). “I have big hopes for you,” said the future King of England – hopes that would be dashed when I was left choking on the dust kicked up by the speedy Olympians.
A little later, during an interview that I was doing with an emotional TV presenter, Siân Williams (this would be the first marathon she had done since recovering from breast cancer), I beckoned over Prince Harry to give her a hug. He obliged, embracing us both, and got stuck into the conversation. That evening, I decided to ask his representatives at Kensington Palace if he would be the first guest on my podcast. To my surprise, he said yes, and so it was that I found myself gassing on a sofa with him about his mental health issues; his candour and easy-going nature leading me almost to forget that we were in a royal palace, and he was eighth in line to the throne.
When I saw him on the morning of the marathon, a week after the podcast came out, he seemed genuinely surprised by the response it had received. “That got a little bit bigger than either of us had expected,” he laughed.
It’s clear that both brothers have inherited their mother’s sense of humour, not to mention her ability to connect with people regardless of class or upbringing. We were talking about this the other day, some of us who ran the London Marathon in April: normal people, most of us affected in some way by mental illness, who had signed up to run the 26.2 miles and, weirdly, found ourselves on first name terms with these men who could be king. Everyone I have spoken to in the mental health community who has worked with the two princes is united in praise: for their passion for the cause, their depth of knowledge and their commitment to affecting change. “They’re just so normal,” is the phrase you will most commonly hear people saying after a meeting with the young royals, a sense of genuine surprise in their voice given the lack of normality present when they were growing up. The scene in the documentary where Diana confronts the paparazzi on a skiing trip in Austria, asking the photographers to respect her children, was enough to turn any woman into a lioness. Juxtaposed with the images of the boys walking behind her coffin, the word “Mummy” written simply on the front of the card that accompanied their floral tributes, the documentary left me in no doubt that Diana’s greatest legacy is her sons.
“She had the ability to change the mindset of millions upon millions of people,” said Prince Harry of his mother, in regards to her visit to Bosnia shortly before her death – a trip that would, ultimately, lead to the banning of landmines by the UN the following winter. Prince Harry met some of the men – back then young children who had lost limbs while playing – and remarked, poignantly, that they had seen his mother more recently than he had. But she would be undoubtedly proud of the work they have continued to do for landmine charities, not forgetting their commitments to helping the homeless and those with HIV.
It is their mental health campaign that will be their Diana moment, though – the thing that ultimately leads to changing the mindsets of millions upon millions of people. There are, of course, traditionalists who would rather the young princes did not emote, that they got on quietly with their royal duties without divulging their feelings. But while stiff upper lips may have been the order of the day back when the biggest killer of young men in the UK was the Nazis, both the Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry know that the same cannot be said now that it is suicide. Talking about their grief now is absolutely the right thing to do. This documentary, like the mental health work before it, is their public duty.
And in the process, they have rewritten some of the narrative about their mother, the one that portrayed her as the tearful, trapped princess. In this documentary, she is just Mum – Mum with the wicked and slightly embarrassing sense of humour; Mum who was always doling out huge hugs; Mum whose love they could feel from the other side of a room. “She made sure we had as normal a life as possible growing up,” said Prince Harry, before reminiscing about Diana sneaking them out for a burger, or forcing them to listen to Enya in the car.
The princes know better than most that there is no such thing as normal. It is a tribute to their mother that they so rarely let anyone in on that secret.