William and Harry: our agony over last phone call with mum
THE PRINCES’ ASTONISHING SOUL-BARING INTERVIEW
PRINCES William and Harry have bared their souls in the most candid and emotional interview they have ever given about their mother.
Among their revelations, the brothers describe how they are haunted by the final phone call Princess Diana made to them from Paris, hours before her death.
The boys cut the conversation short because they were busy playing with their cousins – something that has caused them heartache to this day. ‘I have to deal with that for the rest of my life,’ Harry now says of the fateful decision .
He adds that: ‘This is the first time the two of us have ever spoken about her as a mother. [It was] arguably probably a little bit too raw until this point. It’s still raw.’
The result is the most revealing royal interview since 1995, when Diana admitted to having an affair.
William says he thinks of his mother every day and even felt her presence at his wedding. Touchingly, Harry admits that he can ‘still feel the hugs she used to give us’, and misses that embrace.
They paint a portrait of a devoted mother; a caring, passionate woman who had ‘the ability to change the mindset of millions’.
Yet they also celebrate her impish streak, with Harry saying ‘she was a total kid through-and-through’ and never happier than when she was with her children driving ‘through country lanes with the roof down’.
Above all, it is their painfully frank recollection of what turned out to be their last conversation with Diana that will hold millions in thrall when their interviews are broadcast on ITV tomorrow night.
The two Princes says they will never escape the deep regret they feel at hastily ending her call from Paris because they were playing in the Scottish Highlands with Peter and Zara Phillips.
At the time – August 30, 1997 – William, then 15, and Harry, 12, were at Balmoral, while Diana was in France with her close friend Dodi Al Fayed, the son of the tycoon who then owned Harrods, Mohamed Al Fayed. Having not seen each other for nearly a month, Diana and her sons were looking forward to a reunion in London the following day. William describes the truncated five-minute phone call as his ‘very last memory’ of his mother.
Appearing solemn and occasionally casting his gaze downwards, he says: ‘I think Harry and I were in a desperate rush to say “goodbye”, “see you later”, and “we’re going to go off”... If I’d known what would happen I wouldn’t have been so blasé about it. But that phone call sticks in my mind quite heavily.’
Asked if he recalled what his mother said to him, he replies wistfully with a half-smile: ‘I do, I do,’ but doesn’t elaborate.
When the boys awoke the next day, Prince Charles told them the shattering news of Diana’s death in a car accident overnight. She was 36, a year older than William is now.
The phone call is fixed in the mind of Harry, too, and he lays bare his heartache with almost harrowing candour. He recalls William speaking to Diana first then shouting: ‘Harry! Harry! Mummy’s on the phone.’ Harry says: ‘Right my turn, off I go, pick up the phone, and it was her speaking from Paris.’
His memories of what came next are fragmentary. ‘But I do remember regretting... for the rest of my life how short the phone call was.
‘And if I’d known that was the last time I’d speak to my mother, the things I would have said to her... Looking back on it now it is incredibly hard. I have to deal with that for the rest of my life. Not knowing that was the last time I was going to speak to my mum, and how differently that conversation would have panned out if I’d had even the slightest inkling that her life was going to be taken that night.’
In 1995, Diana plunged the Monarchy into crisis with her Panorama interview in which she revealed she had been unfaithful with Army officer James Hewitt.
With what some regarded as unflinching honesty but others saw as cynicism, the Princess spoke of almost every aspect of her life. In
WILLIAM ON DIANA I give thanks I got to know her for the 15 years that I did