MAKING HER PROUD
Emotional William and Harry reveal how they’re still guided by their mum’s memory: ‘We’re constantly talking about Granny Diana’
Squirming in her mother’s arms to be put down, Princess Charlotte was clearly not a happy camper at a Hamburg airport on July 21. After five busy days touring Poland and Germany, the littlest royal, her brother, Prince George, and their parents, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, were flying home to London, but first took a close-up tour of a couple of helicopters. There, Charlotte— who until then had been a pro, shaking hands and even curtseying—cracked it, stomping her feet (in tiny Mary Janes) and collapsing onto the tarmac. Expertly, her mother put her squat-and-chat skills into action, then scooped up Charlotte and consoled her before the family boarded their private plane. The mini-tantrum didn’t score a mention in the Kensington Palace twitter account: “Goodbye Germany! Thank you to everyone who made the visit so special!”
The little family arrived home in
time for George’s 4th birthday the next day, with his proud parents releasing a toothy photo of the third in line to the British throne to mark the special occasion (see p. 27). While the small prince’s celebration capped off a spotlit week for the family—an evening reception at Berlin’s last original dance hall, a boat race, Kate having a go at conducting a symphony orchestra—the Cambridges took it in their stride, proving again how natural they are as parents. “There’s wonderful highs and there’s wonderful lows,”
William, 35, told news show Talk Vietnam in November. “I’m very lucky in the support I have from Catherine. She is an amazing mother and a fantastic wife.”
Regarding women in the family, William, 35, had the bar set high early by his mother, Princess Diana, who died at age 36 on Aug. 31, 1997, in a Paris car crash. Ahead of the 20th anniversary of her shock death, he and his brother, Prince Harry, 32, shared poignant unseen photos from their personal collections and opened up candidly about their late mother in a new documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy (airs on July 30, 7 PM, on Seven; see p. 76)). Said William, “This is a tribute from her sons to her.”
George and Charlotte, 2, never met her, but the memory of Diana is still a big part of daily life in the Cambridges’ household, with William “constantly talking about Granny Diana” with his children, he said in the documentary. “We’ve got more photos up round the house now of her and we talk about her a bit and stuff. It’s hard because obviously Catherine didn’t know her, so she cannot really provide that—that level of detail,” he added. “So I do regularly, [when] putting George or Charlotte to bed, talk about her and just try to remind them that there are two grandmothers. And so it’s important they know who she was and that she existed.”
But William jokingly conceded
Diana might have taken a little too well to having grandchildren. “She’d be a nightmare grandmother. She’d love the children to bits, but she’d be an absolute nightmare,” he said. “She’d come and go and she’d come in probably at bath time, cause an amazing amount of scene, bubbles everywhere, bathwater all over the place and—and then leave.”
Still, the late princess’s “fun” and hands-on mothering style has influenced the way her elder child raises his own son and daughter, despite the confines of the palace lifestyle. “I want to make as much time and effort with Charlotte and George as I can, because really these early years, particularly, are crucial for children, having seen what she did for us.”
The princes were approached more than a year ago by producers, who asked them to share their private memories as well as the global impact she had. “William and Harry realised there is a new, younger generation who didn’t know about their mum,” said producer Ashley Gething, and while William found speaking about his mother “quite a healing process,” he added that the decision was a one-off: “We felt it was the right time. We won’t speak as publicly and openly about her again.” Harry praised the film as “brilliant,” saying, “I nearly cried several times watching it back.”
In the documentary, the brothers lavished praise on how Diana would “smother” them with love, and how her death was “utterly devastating” and left them struggling to speak to each other about their grief. Calling her “the best mother ever,” they shared stories about her parenting style—including Harry remembering the sound of her laughter and how “naughty” she could be by sneaking him lollies at boarding school: “One motto she told me was, ‘It’s OK to be naughty as long as you don’t get caught.’ ”
Harry also reflected on his mother’s apparent delight in dressing up her boys in traditional outfits. “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,” Harry said. “It was weird shorts and, you know, like little sort of shiny shoes with the odd clip on. Looking back at the photos it just makes me laugh.” Having said that, conceded the prince: “I sure as hell am going to dress my kids up the same way.”
Diana’s lighter side also showed when she set up a surprise for William that involved a home visit by famous supermodels Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell. The trio were “waiting at the top of the stairs” for
“We won’t speak as openly about her again” —William and Harry
him when William came home from school when he was “12 or 13” and “had posters of them on his wall,” he said: “I went bright red and didn’t quite know what to say and sort of fumbled. I think I pretty much fell down the stairs on the way up. I was completely and utterly sort of awestruck.” The memory has “lived with me forever,” said William, “about her loving and embarrassing and—being the sort of joker.”
The boys last saw their mother about four weeks before she died; with Harry aged 12 and William 15, they holidayed in the South of France with her before heading to the Queen’s Scottish retreat, Balmoral, with their father, Prince Charles. Their parents’ divorce, plus Diana’s charity work and romance with Dodi Fayed, meant they were “bounced” between households, said Harry: “There was a lot of travelling and a lot of fights on the backseat with my brother, which I would win. It was an interesting way of growing up.”
On the day she died Diana phoned her sons, but they were in a “desperate rush,” said William, to get back to playing with their cousins Peter and Zara Phillips. The call lasted just five minutes. “I can’t really remember what I said but I regret how short the phone call was,” said Harry. “If I’d known that that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother, the things that I would ... the things that I would have said to her.” Added William, “If I’d known what was going to happen I wouldn’t have been so blasé about it. But that phone call sticks in my mind, quite heavily.”
In another private revelation, Harry revealed he has only cried tears of grief twice since: at Diana’s graveside at the Spencer family home, Althorp, on Sept. 6, 1997, and since then “maybe, maybe once. So there’s, you know, there’s a lot of grief that still needs to be let out.”
Perhaps, but the boys, now men, have stayed true to the upbringing provided by their mother, building lives that reflect her strongest values— William as a dedicated family man, Harry as a humanitarian. Diana was a very early and public campaigner for HIV and AIDS treatment and awareness, and her younger son is keeping her activism alive. Harry took an HIV test with Rihanna in Barbados in December to help break the stigma of getting tested, and in March visited the Leicestershire Aids Support Service, 26 years after his mother did the same.
Diana had “that incredible ability—which [Harry] kind of inherited—to make people feel at ease and make them feel that everything’s gonna be all right,” said singer Sir Elton John, 70, in the documentary. “She could walk into a room of people and make them feel as if everything was great.”
That power, said William, has extended beyond the grave for him. He revealed on the film how he felt Diana’s presence on the day he married Kate Middleton in 2011. “I did really feel that she was there,” he said. “There were times when you look to someone or something for strength and I very much felt she was there for me.”
Harry imagines what the flesh-and-blood version would be doing now. “There’s not a day that William and I don’t wish that she was still around,” he said, “and we wonder what kind of a mother she would be now, and what kind of a public role she would have. And what a difference she would be making.”
“There’s a lot of grief that still needs to be let out” —Prince Harry