Why Diana’s still Queen of Hearts
I’VE been surrounding myself with all things British this past week. Getting all sentimental about the Union Jack, chips and chops, stouts and ales, the Thames and all those Cockney and posh accents.
Reason I’m actually having a bit of a giraffe about the old days is a new photographic exhibition I’m curating at my Elephant and Castle pub. It’s commemorating the life and times of the greatest royal of modern times — Diana, the Princess of Wales, who exited this vale of tears 20 years ago next month.
Diana: Her Life in Pictures is a fundraiser with the brilliant Cotton On Foundation and I’m hoping it will again raise plenty of sorely-needed cash for its local and global giving strategy.
Getting the images together has brought back so many memories of Diana, of working with her and alongside her in what was an absolute media circus up to and well beyond her untimely departure in 1997.
The exhibition is focusing on the wild life and times of the Queen of Hearts, the woman who broke the mould for the royals. It’s about the loving mother who was used and abused, the desperate and discarded wife who played the media like a violin, and the force she was for peace and humanitarian aid.
But I have much more personal memories of Diana, too.
After all, my job as a Daily Mail snapper was tracking her daily as she went to the gym, took kids to school, went about her royal duties, flitted in and out of shops and restaurants. I can assure you that for several years I saw more of the Princess of Wales than Princes Charles did.
I was a regular at the gates of Kensington Palace, at Beauchamp Place in Knightsbridge, at Daphne’s, Scalini, San Lorenzo and O Fado restaurants — favourite haunts of hers — keeping an our eye for her.
Thing was, unlike what many people might think, Diana often wanted to be photographed. She would even have her driver slow so people could catch up.
Diana could work the media to her advantage too, very easily. She would often pop up somewhere, looking radiant, when Charles was at some official function elsewhere. She’d steal the limelight and totally upstage him in the papers the next day.
Diana liked to control the situation. In Wales one time, she walked up to me, smiled sweetly and said: “Make sure you get it in focus, Mr Lyons.” She gave me a funny, flirtatious giggle. One of those rock and roll moments in life that you cherish; it left me feeling like a lovestruck kid.
She knew me and she knew about my growing team of guys, too, as BIG Pictures expanded.
I lived opposite the gates of her palace and one particular incident with Diana was remarkable. I came out of my flat about 7am and was confronted by her leaping out of her car: “Why are you taking terrible pictures of me?” she demanded.
I was gobsmacked — I was being doorstopped by a princess. But the next thing she said was stunning:
“Why are you chasing me, and not my husband and that woman?”
This was still early days, though, and despite this overt reference to Charles and Camilla, there had been no convincing tips or even rumours to that date. And Diana, lovely as she was, wasn’t always taken seriously.
That really was one that slipped through my fingers. Could have made me a fortune.
As it was, I told Diana I thought the shots I had taken of her were really nice. She wasn’t having any of it, though. Forget that and start tailing Charles, she insisted.
Diana was strong and knew her power, and she did a great amount of good for the world. She carried herself with dignity, she was compassionate and her former bodyguard, Ken Wharf — a great mate of mine — always said she was a loving, caring mum and happiest when she was with her two young princes, William and Harry.
Down the years, I’ve had some tremendous photos of Diana: William’s first day at school; Di spanking the young prince when he was acting up; young Harry’s birthday party; Diana sprinting home to win a footrace; Diana and the Queen Mother; cavorting on yachts in St Tropez; in a remarkable little black dress after the Charles and Camilla affair emerged.
Of course, there was the classic shot I got of Charles looking skywards the fateful day he split from Diana — the picture won me a Press Photographer of the Year gong.
No matter what you might think of Diana — Princess of the People, loving mother, victim, manipulator, unfaithful, a Mother Teresa — the fact is simple: she was a remarkable and beautiful woman who the world is still mourning 20 years later.
Come see the photographs I have compiled for the Diana: Her Life in Pictures exhibition. I’m sure she’d approve of the Cotton On Foundation it’s championing.
And I reckon she’d approve of the pictures too.