Final months of doomed Diana
BEGINNING a series of Diana documentaries, this first one starts with that still shocking news report everyone will remember hearing.
The princess had died in a car crash in a Paris underpass on August 31, 1997, along with boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed.
And this emotive film scrolls back in time a few months from the tragedy to tell the story of Diana’s last summer.
Free from the constraints of royal duty, a more confident princess had emerged.
From selling off her royal gowns in a charity auction for more than £3.5million, to throwing herself into humanitarian work and meeting Mother Teresa, Diana began to find fulfilment.
Broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen says: “She was a woman who had everything. She had beauty, she had money, she had power, she
had influence. Anybody in the world she wanted to meet, they wanted to meet her.”
But throughout that summer, everything became eclipsed by her complicated love life.
From her relationship with heart surgeon Hazmat Khan, to her new love Dodi, insights come from biographers and people who knew Diana.
As she spent time with Dodi and gave up her royal security team, this film analyses these fateful decisions.
Commentary comes from butler Paul Burrell, bodyguard Ken Wharfe, private secretary Patrick Jephson and favourite driver and bodyguard Colin Tebbutt.
Everything builds towards the night in Paris and her shocking death. “She shouldn’t have been there alone,” says Burrell.
And Alistair Campbell remembers Tony Blair telling him: “This is going to produce grief on a scale we’ve never seen.”