‘This is the first time we’ve ever spoken about her as a mother and her legacy. It’s still raw...’
THE Princes express deep admiration for their mother’s charity work, highlighting her campaigns to ban and clear landmines, and on behalf of AIDS sufferers and the homeless.
‘She put her name and her image and her passion and energy into something she genuinely believed in,’ says Harry. ‘And she knew by doing that it was going to have a ripple effect across the whole world.’
William adds: ‘I think she wanted to make a difference.’
As they leaf through family snapshots, Harry says: ‘This is the first time that the two of us have ever spoken about her as a mother. [It was] arguably, probably a little bit too raw up until this point. It’s still raw.’
A month ago, Harry says he found on his mother’s desk a ‘whole series of letters’ relating to her landmine work. Poignantly, some were dated August 31, the day she died.
Earlier this year Harry urged the world to continue his mother’s mission to rid the world of landmines in a deeply emotional speech about her final weeks of charity work. And in the film, he says: ‘She knew exactly what needed to be done. She was writing letters to certain people to say, right, this is what needs to happen in order for this whole sort of tidal wave to change.
‘And it’s only recently that I’ve actually understood the effect that she was having in those areas and on an international scale as well.’
William recalls how, when he was 12, the Princes were taken to The Passage, a charity for the homeless in central London. He says: ‘I just enjoyed meeting these people who clearly had had a very tough time. My interest in homelessness has come from that one encounter.’ Since then, William, who is patron of charity Centrepoint, has campaigned for the homeless, and slept rough for a night in 2009.
Harry observes, as he looks at pictures of Diana visiting AIDS clinics: ‘The reality was doom and gloom, yet everybody in that photo is smiling. My mother was a role model, someone who put her passion behind something she genuinely believed in. Good for her and – and thank God for her.’