The day Diana died: where were you?
On the 20th anniversary of the untimely death of Diana, Princess of Wales, those who knew her recall how they heard the news
Sir Martyn Lewis, former BBC broadcaster
My daughters were shaking my shoulder: “Dad, wake up, it’s the BBC on the phone – they say it’s important.” I went from a deep sleep to bolt upright. It was late; the BBC had never called in the small hours of the morning before.
“Get into Television Centre as fast as you can. The Princess of Wales has been injured in a car crash; a taxi is on its way.”
Ten minutes later I was in the normally bustling newsroom, now more like the Marie Celeste – there was just a handful of people and one senior producer.
Facts were thin on the ground – the car crash, Diana injured, no more. We went on air quickly with the first newsflash on BBC One, and then, strangely in retrospect, waited half an hour for a film to finish before repeating the newsflash on BBC Two; at that stage there was no suggestion the crash was fatal. “Come back in for a special programme later in the morning,” said the producer, “but go home now and get some sleep.”
My head had been on the pillow for 40 minutes when the phone rang again: “She’s died; we’re going on air as soon as possible.”
If you had told me well in advance that I’d be broadcasting live for six and-a-half-hours with virtually no script on one of the biggest news stories of the television age, nerves would unquestionably have taken over. But there was no time for that.
I put on one of the sombre grey suits and black ties held in a locked dressing room cupboard for just such an occasion; I tried to recall the lessons from the regular rehearsals for what the BBC calls a “Category One” death; I remembered a delightful conversation some years earlier sitting beside a beautiful, fun lady at a hospice fundraising dinner, and then, with a profound sense of disbelief, walked into the news studio to share with an incredulous country the unfolding story of her untimely death.
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former press secretary
I was in bed, and woken by a pager message: “Car crash in Paris. Dodi killed. Di hurt. This is not a joke.”’ I decided not to wake [my wife] Fiona, and went to my office above our bedroom. I spoke to the No10 duty clerk and the duty private secretary, and then Tony Blair. At this stage we were told she was alive, but it really didn’t sound good. Then we got the message that she was dead.
I had got to know her a bit, and really liked her, so I felt sad. But I also knew this was not merely going to be an enormous global shock, but also one in which we would have a lot to do, and TB would have to articulate for the country. So the first few hours were flat-out work. By the time it got light, and the family were up, and I told them what had happened, that was when it really hit me. I remember sitting with my three year-old daughter Grace watching the news in our kitchen, and crying.
Alexandra Shulman, former editor of Vogue
I had just returned to London from holiday with my now exhusband Paul, and two-year-old son and we were camping in my sister’s house for the weekend as ours was having work done. It was an unfamiliar place to be sleeping and I remember feeling disorientated by being there and it being a very warm night.
I remember Paul joining me late and waking me to say the Princess of Wales had been in an accident in Paris. At that point it didn’t seem very serious and I went back to sleep.
A couple of hours later the phone rang. It was the BBC and they asked if I could give them a comment on the Princess of Wales. I was half asleep and asked them why? “Oh. I’m very sorry,” the caller said. “Don’t you know? I’m afraid she has died in a car accident.” I was too shocked to give them their comment. Overhead there was the roaring of news helicopters circling the nearby Buckingham Palace.
It was a horrible day. The August Bank Holiday Monday, for me, always has a melancholy about it. The end of summer. But this was the end of something else. I took Sam in his pushchair to Kensington Gardens where crowds gathered, and cried.
A Frenchman passed me a note that said: ‘I apologise on behalf of the French people’
Andrew Morton, Diana, Princess of Wales’s biographer
I was in Edinburgh at the time, staying with friends while we attended the arts festival. My friend Trevor Walls woke me up at around 7.30am and told me the astonishing news that Diana had died. I barely had time to absorb it, as I was racing to catch a plane back to London.
During the one-hour flight, a Frenchman recognised me and passed me a scribbled note which read: “I would like to apologise on behalf of the French people.”
At the time it was the paparazzi, not a drunk driver, who were seen as the main culprit.
When I got to my office the fax machine had run out of paper; the answer machine was full from the myriad requests for interviews. But it was that scribbled note that brought home the enormity of the tragedy.
Bryony Gordon, Telegraph columnist
I was 17, and having had the entire summer holidays to do my A-level coursework, I was now cramming it all in to the last weekend (little has changed). I was pulling an all-nighter – Red Bull, coffee, cheeky cigarettes out my bedroom window – and listening to terrible pop songs on Capital FM, when there was a newsflash that Diana had been in a car crash. It was the early hours of the morning – I remember thinking I should wake my mother up but after switching to Radio 4 and hearing she was OK, I decided to call it a night.
A few hours later I was watching the Cartoon Network with my brother when there was a newsflash to announce that Diana had died. Those were the days, pre-rolling news, when breaking news really was breaking news. My school wasn’t far from Kensington Palace and, when we started back, a couple of us popped up during a break to lay flowers. The Princes were there, shell-shocked, thanking wellwishers. I remember thinking how lucky we were, getting to go back to school and normality – aware that, for William and Harry, such hopes had long evaporated.
Matt Pritchett, Telegraph cartoonist
On that Sunday, I got up with our two young children and turned on the television to find that, instead of the cartoons I had hoped to plant them in front of, Bill Deedes was there looking very sombre. I thought: “Why is Bill Deedes on TV at the crack of dawn on a Sunday?” Then it dawned on me.
Like everyone else I sat and watched the news for hours that day, and on Monday morning went into work not knowing exactly what I would be doing. I couldn’t think how on earth I was going to come up with a cartoon that would be remotely appropriate; I think I walked back into the office as it was announced Mother Teresa had died.
Charles Moore, the then editor, told me to take the week off. They knew already that there would be nothing in the paper but Diana for days. It was the first time I had ever been stood down. I have been at The
Telegraph for 29 years, and it has only happened once, since: 9/11.
Danäe Brook, Diana’s first interviewer
I heard the news of the crash while I was in the air, flying back from interviewing Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma. A group of air hostesses huddled together: “Alma Tunnel… terrible crash… Diana was in the back of the car… both of them injured… being chased by motorbikes.” As the news spread among the passengers, pictures of roaring motor bikes sprang to mind, press packs racing a frightened girl in a red Mini round the streets of Earl’s Court 17 years earlier.
I first met Diana when she was 19 years old and we lived in the same mansion block. In that hope-filled summer of 1980, when she emerged as Prince Charles’s new girlfriend, she called me down to her flat after being hounded day and night. “I feel awful about how bloody awful it is for everyone here,” she said, in what became her first ever print interview. I remember the scorching blue of her eyes, how when she talked about Charles she blushed continuously. Privately, she thought she was “second best” to her older sister Sarah. Overwhelmed, she said: “The media’s so excited, the whole thing’s got out of control.”
But she married her prince, she rode in her glass carriage, broke hearts and had two beautiful children. None of us could have predicted how out of control her fame and its consequences would become, nor how badly her fairytale would end.
Jonathan Dimbleby, Prince Charles’s authorised biographer
I remember with terrible clarity the moment that I heard. My phone woke me at about 4.30am. I thought at first that something terrible had happened to a family member. When I was told the bare facts, I was horrified. I spent the rest of that day and some days afterwards being interviewed by the press. I hated it but felt I had no choice; some commentators had suggested that the Prince of Wales was partially responsible for her death. Even more callously, it was said that he was a cold father and would not be able to comfort his children. This was not only unspeakably cruel, but I knew from first-hand experience that it was totally false. I felt I knew exactly how he would be feeling – devastated. I also knew that his children would turn to him and he to them. So I felt shock at Diana’s death and dismay that it could be used so disgracefully. I had no choice but to say so – again and again.
Monica Ali, author of Untold Story,a novel inspired by Diana
I was at home in south London. My reaction was the common one: shock and sadness. I, like everyone else my age, grew up with the boring royals in the background. Then I watched the Diana fairytale-turned-nightmare unfold, and ultimately explode. I was drawn to her evident disregard for the stuffy old order and her willingness to cross all sorts of boundaries, including racial ones. She had a relationship with a Pakistani doctor, Hasnat Khan, whom she wanted to marry, even landing a surprise visit on his family in Lahore. And of course there was the relationship with Dodi Fayed, which occasioned some thinly veiled racist commentary, too.
When she died, you could see that she fascinated people of all backgrounds. You saw it reflected in the diversity of the crowds outside Kensington Palace – male and female, young and old, gay and straight, every class, colour and creed. That was something that marked her out – that kind of breadth of appeal.
‘None of us could have predicted … how badly her fairytale would end’