Legacy of a princess
three of us in this marriage” – for the Queen to write to Charles and Diana, after consulting the Prime Minister and Archbishop of Canterbury, to request they divorce. Finally Diana was free.
In the years between the book and her death, Andrew saw Diana blossom: “She was moving forwards, she’d sold her dresses at auction, she’d raised money for Aids charities, she’d done that tour to Angola (to visit a minefield) with the Red Cross, and Bosnia.
“She looked sleek and in control of herself. That’s what the book did – it gave her some control of a life that had been out of control for a long time. You could really see this emergence of quite a sophisticated, glamorous, thoughtful humanitarian on the world stage.
“I said, ‘You no longer want to be the Princess of Wales, you want to be the Princess for the world’, and she liked that, she used that phrase a lot.”
All that potential was cut short in August 1997, when a drunk Henri Paul, deputy head of security at the Ritz in Paris, got behind the wheel of a Mercedes to take Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed, son of Harrods owner Mohamed, back to his apartment – and lost control of the car in Pont de l’Alma tunnel.
“She would be alive today if she’d been wearing a seat belt, she would have ended up with some broken ribs,” says Andrew simply.
As to her legacy, the writer says Diana has changed the royal family: “It’s a lot more inclusive. You can see that with the living legacy of William and Harry, and the fact they take on quite difficult issues like mental health.
“They’re admitting themselves that they’ve had difficulties coming to terms with the death of their mother. People always think, ‘Oh, a stiff upper lip’, but there’s a trembling lower lip. So it’s alright to grieve, it’s alright to feel upset, it’s alright to feel depressed.”
Andrew believes Diana, would have been proud of how William has helped the Duchess of Cambridge settle in to her new role.
“She would have been thrilled that William was in a proper family, that was supportive, loving, ambitious, and that Kate has taken to the job pretty well and without too many missteps. And she would have been really proud of the way that William has steadied and supported her during what must be tense moments.
“To go from somebody who is not photographed to somebody who is... it’s like theatre.
“The job of a royal watcher was always to try and define the royal actors with the grease paint off. Prince William always makes it clear that he is an actor on stage for a while, then he goes off.”
The fully revised Diana: Her Ture Story – In Her Own Words by Andrew Morton (Michael O’Mara Books) is priced £20.