‘Someone must have greased the brakes’ – what the Queen said when she heard about Diana’s crash
HAD Diana been troublesome and difficult in life, she proved a force beyond control after her death. The Royal Family were at Balmoral, 20 years ago, when they received initial reports that Diana and her latest lover, Dodi Al- Fayed, had been injured in a car crash in Paris.
The Queen’s first comment was: ‘ Someone must have greased the brakes.’
It was an extraordinary thing for her to say, but she was probably referring to rumours that one of Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed’s many enemies had sworn to get him. It was a short leap to assume that this was why his son and Diana had been targeted.
The Queen, however, neither repeated nor offered any explanation for her comment, and her staff chose to see it as an indication of just how shaken she was.
Nor was she the only one. The whole royal apparatus was thrown into disorder by the news of Diana’s death, as calls grew ever louder for the Queen to return to London.
For a while, she and Philip despaired as t hey s aw everything they’d worked for come close to being destroyed. When they did come back, she did a walkabout outside Buckingham Palace and was distressed by some people’s animosity.
‘What do they want me to do?’ she asked. No one could remember ever seeing her so agitated, so unsure of herself.
The Queen was more her usual self by the time she went on t elevision t hat evening t o deliver her valedictory to Diana. As she walked off the makeshift set, she asked: ‘Was that contrite enough?’
It was not a question. It was a joke, but delivered without a trace of humour.
There was yet more upheaval in Westminster Abbey, when Diana’s brother gave his address, saying in barely coded t e r ms that he considered the Royal Family unfit to bring up his nephews. Both the Queen and Philip were appalled.
But for the Queen the funeral was a genuinely sorrowful occasion.
Alone in her family, she’d always found it possible to sympathise with Diana’s problems — and s he’d a l ways r et a i ned s ome affection for her troublesome daughter-in-law.