THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF ANOTHER SON

Charles and Diana were working hard on their troubled marriage when they found out they were expecting their second child. And as the months of pregnancy went by, things were going well.

“We were very, very close in the six weeks before Harry was born – the closest we’ve ever, ever been and ever will be,” Diana told biographer Andrew Morton. She knew she was having another boy but didn’t tell her husband because she didn’t want to spoil things.

“Charles always wanted a girl,” she said. “He wanted two children, and he wanted a girl. I knew I was having a boy because I saw on the scan and I didn’t tell him.”

She was hoping the arrival of another healthy baby boy would make him forget his preference – but Charles was desperately disappointed when Harry arrived on 15 September 1984.

“His first comment was, ‘God, it’s a boy’,” Diana said. “Second comment, ‘And he’s even got red hair’.”

Charles would later say he was joking, but at Harry’s christening he expressed regret to his mother-in-law, Frances Shand Kydd. “We were so disappointed – we thought it would be a girl,” he said. And that was that, Diana said.

“As suddenly as Harry was born, it just went bang, our marriage – the whole thing went down the drain.”