The day Diana eavesdropped on Charles in the bath as he told Camilla on the phone: I’ll always love you
Shocking even now, the bombshell 1992 book in which the Princess revealed her sham marriage
SETTING out in excruciating detail how her marriage to Prince Charles was fatally fractured, Princess Diana’s heartfelt testimony to
Royal writer ANDREW MORTON was a publishing sensation in 1992. Now, on the 25th anniversary of her death, we’re reprinting extracts of Diana: Her True Story – with the first part in yesterday’s Daily Mail.
DIANA was just 16 and home for the weekend from boarding school when she met Prince Charles for the first time, in November 1977. He was 29 and going out with her elder sister Sarah, 22, who had invited him to a shooting party at the Spencer family home, Althorp House in Northamptonshire.
I’VE known the Queen since I was tiny so [mixing with Royalty] was no big deal. No interest in Andrew and Edward – never thought about Andrew. I kept thinking: ‘Look at the life they have – how awful.’ I remember Charles coming to Althorp to stay, and the first impact was ‘God, what a sad man’. My sister Sarah, his girlfriend, was all over him like a bad rash, and I thought: ‘God, he must really hate that.’ I kept out of the way.
I remember being a fat, podgy, no make-up, unsmart lady but I made a lot of noise and he liked that. And he came up to me after dinner and we had a big dance, and he said: ‘Will you show me the [picture] gallery?’
And I was just about to show him the gallery and Sarah comes up and tells me to push off. I said: ‘At least, let me tell you where the switches are to the gallery because you won’t know where they are,’ and I disappeared.
And he was charm himself. And when I stood next to him the next day, a 16-year-old, for someone like that to show you any attention – I was just so sort of amazed. ‘Why would anyone like him be interested in me?’ And it was interest.
That was it for about two years. Saw him off and on with Sarah [whose relationship with Charles ended after nine months]. When he had his 30th birthday dance [at which The Three Degrees performed, in November 1978 at Buckingham Palace], I was asked, too.
Then I was asked to stay at the de Passes’ [friends of Prince Philip] in July 1980 by Philip de Pass, the son.
‘Would you like to come and stay for a couple of nights down at Petworth [West Sussex], because we’ve got the Prince of Wales staying? You’re a young blood – you might amuse him.’ So I said ‘OK’. Charles came in. He was all over me again and it was very strange. I thought: ‘Well, this isn’t very cool.’ I thought men were supposed not to be so obvious; I thought this was very odd.
The first night, we sat down on a hay bale at the barbecue at this house and he’d just finished with Anna Wallace [daughter of a Scottish landowner, with whom he had a stormy, six-month relationship].
I said: ‘You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at Lord Mountbatten’s funeral. [Charles’s beloved great-uncle had been killed in County Sligo, Ireland, the year before, in August 1979, by an IRA bomb.]
‘It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. My heart bled for you when I watched. I thought, “It’s wrong, you’re lonely – you should be with somebody to look after you.” ’
The next minute, he leapt on me practically, and I thought this was very strange, too, and I wasn’t quite sure how to cope with all this. Frigid wasn’t the word. Big F, when it comes to that. We talked about lots of things, and anyway that was it. He said: ‘You must come to London with me tomorrow. I’ve got to work at Buckingham Palace – you must come to work with me.’
I thought this was too much. I said: ‘No, I can’t.’ I thought: ‘How will I explain my presence at Buckingham Palace when I’m supposed to be staying with Philip [de Pass]?’
Then two weeks later, he asked me to Cowes on Britannia [the Royal Yacht], and he had lots of older friends there and I was very intimidated. But they were all over me like a bad rash. I felt very strange about the whole thing. Then I went to stay with my sister Jane at Balmoral [for the weekend of the Braemar Games in early September] where Robert [Fellowes, sister Jane’s husband] was assistant private secretary to the Queen.
I was s **** ing bricks. I was terrified because I had never stayed
at Balmoral and I wanted to get it right. The anticipation was worse than actually being there. You’re all right once you get in through the front door. I had a normal single bed! I’m just telling you. Mr and Mrs Parker Bowles were there. I was the youngest by a long way. Charles used to ring me up and say: ‘Would you like to come for a walk, come for a barbecue?’ So I said: ‘Yes, please.’ I thought this was all wonderful.
Our relationship sort of built up from there [the Braemar Games weekend]. Then the press seized upon it. Then that became simply unbearable in our [South Kensington] flat, but my three girls [flatmates] were wonderful – star performers, loyalty beyond belief.
The feeling in Sandringham was: I wish Prince Charles would hurry up and get on with it. The Queen was fed up. Charles wrote to me from Klosters [the Swiss ski resort] and then he rang me up and said: ‘I’ve got something very important to ask you.’
An instinct in a female tells you what it is. I sat up all night with my girls, saying: ‘Christ, what am I going to do?’
By that time, I’d realised there was somebody else around. I’d been staying at Bolehyde [Manor, home of Camilla and her husband Andrew] with the Parker Bowleses an awful lot, and I couldn’t understand why she kept saying to me: ‘Don’t push him into doing this, don’t do that.’
She knew so much about what he was doing privately and about what we were doing privately… like if we were going to stay at Broadlands [the Mountbatten family seat in Hampshire].
I couldn’t understand it. Eventually, I worked it all out and found the proof of the pudding.
Anyway, next day I went to Windsor and I arrived about five o’clock and he sat me down and said: ‘I’ve missed you so much.’
But there was never anything tactile about him. It was extraordinary, but I didn’t have anything to go by because I had never had a boyfriend. I’d always kept them away, thought they were all trouble – and I couldn’t handle it emotionally. I was very screwed up, I thought.
Anyway, so he said ‘Will you marry me?’ and I laughed. I remember thinking ‘This is a joke’, and I said ‘Yeah, OK’, and laughed.
He was deadly serious. He said: ‘You do realise that one day you will be Queen.’
And a voice said to me inside: ‘You won’t be Queen, but you’ll have a tough role.’
I thought ‘OK’, so I said: ‘Yes.’ I said: ‘I love you so much, I love you so much.’
He said: ‘Whatever love means.’ He said it then.
And so he ran upstairs and rang his mother. He always had a sort of besotted look about him, looking back at it but it wasn’t the genuine sort. He couldn’t understand [me] because his immaturity was quite big in that department.
I came back to the flat and sat on my bed. ‘Girls, guess what?’
They said: ‘He asked you. What did you say?’
‘Yes, please.’
They screamed and howled and we went for a drive around London with our secret.
Once they were engaged, Diana was allowed to call Prince Charles by his first name; until then she had called him ‘Sir’. This was considered normal by his circle at the time – indeed, her elder sister Sarah had also called him ‘Sir’ when she’d gone out with him.
I rang my parents the next morning. Daddy was thrilled: ‘How wonderful.’ And Mummy was thrilled.
I then went away two days later to Australia for three weeks to sort of
‘The next minute he leapt on me. It was strange. I wasn’t sure how to cope’
settle down and to organise lists and things with my mother. That was a complete disaster because I pined for him, but he never rang me up.
I thought that was very strange, and whenever I rang him, he was out and he never rang me back. I thought: ‘OK’ – I was just being generous – ‘he is being very busy, this, that and the other.’
I come back from Australia, someone knocks on my door – someone from his office with a bunch of flowers, and I knew that they hadn’t come from Charles because there was no note. It was just somebody being very tactful in the office.
Then it all started to build up, sort of like the press were being unbearable, following my every move. I understood they had a job, but people did not understand they had binoculars on me the whole time. They hired the opposite flat in Old Brompton Road, which looked into my bedroom.
I had to get out once to go to stay with [Charles] at Broadlands. So we took my sheets off the bed [using them as a screen] and I got out of the kitchen window, which is on the side street, with a suitcase.
I was constantly polite, constantly civil. I was never rude. I never shouted. But I cried like a baby to the four walls. I just couldn’t cope with it. I cried because I got no support from Charles and no support from the Palace press office. They just said: ‘You’re on your own.’ Charles wasn’t at all supportive. Whenever he rang me up, he said: ‘Poor Camilla Parker Bowles. I’ve had her on the
telephone tonight and she says there’s lots of press at Bolehyde. She’s having a very rough time.’
I asked him: ‘How many press are out there?’
He said: ‘At least four.’
I thought ‘My God, there’s 34 here!’ and I never told him. I never complained about the press to him because I didn’t think it was my position to do so.
I was able to recognise an inner determination to survive. Anyway, thank God, [the engagement] got announced and before I knew what happened, I was in Clarence House. Nobody there to welcome me. It was like going into a hotel.
I remember being woken in the morning by a very sweet, elderly lady who brought in all the papers about the engagement and put them on my bed.
I’d left my flat for the last time and suddenly I had a policeman. And my policeman the night before the engagement said to me: ‘I just want you to know that this is your last night of freedom ever, in the rest of your life, so make the most of it.’ It was like a sword went in my heart.
THE CAMILLA THING
I’D MET her very early on. I was introduced to the circle but I was a threat. I was a very young girl, but I was a threat.
When I arrived at Clarence House, there was a letter on my bed from Camilla, dated two days previously,
‘I remember the first time I made myself sick. I was so thrilled’
saying: ‘Such exciting news about the engagement. Do let’s have lunch soon when the Prince of Wales goes to Australia and New Zealand. He’s going to be away for three weeks. I’d love to see the ring. Lots of love, Camilla.’
And that was: ‘Wow!’ So I organised lunch. Bearing in mind that I was so immature, I didn’t know about jealousy or depressions or anything like that.
I had such a wonderful existence being a kindergarten teacher – you didn’t suffer from anything like that. You got tired but that was it. There was no one around to give you grief.
So we had lunch. Very tricky indeed.
She said: ‘You are not going to hunt, are you?’
I said: ‘On what?’
She said: ‘Horse. You are not going to hunt when you go and live at Highgrove, are you?’
I said: ‘No.’
She said: ‘I just wanted to know.’ And I thought as far as she was concerned, that was her communication route. Still too immature to understand all the messages coming my way.
After a few days, Diana moved from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace. It was a place of ‘dead energy’, she said, and she felt lonely there. She regularly wandered down to the kitchens to chat to the staff and on one occasion, barefoot and in jeans, buttered toast for an astonished footman.
I couldn’t believe how cold everyone was; how I thought one thing but actually another thing was going on. The lies and the deceit! The first thing that hit me was my future husband sending Camilla Parker Bowles flowers when she had meningitis: ‘To Gladys from Fred’ [their nicknames for each other].
I never dealt with that side of things. I just said to him: ‘You must always be honest with me.’
I was the only one here [when planning the wedding] because Charles had pushed off to Australia and New Zealand on tour and you may recall the picture of me sobbing in a red coat when he went off in the aeroplane.
It had nothing to do with him going. The most awful thing had happened before he went.
I was in his study talking to him, when the telephone rang. It was Camilla, just before he was going [away] for five weeks.
I thought: ‘Shall I be nice [and let him talk to her in private] or shall I just sit here?’ So I thought I’d be nice, so I left them to it. It just broke my heart, that.
We always had discussions about Camilla, though. I once heard him on the telephone in his bath on his hand-held set, saying: ‘Whatever happens, I will always love you.’
I told him afterwards that I had listened at the door, and we had a filthy row.
Somebody in his office told me that my husband had had a bracelet made for her, which she wears to this day. It’s a gold chain bracelet with a blue enamel disc. It’s got ‘G and F’ entwined in it, ‘Gladys’ and ‘Fred’.
I walked into this man’s office one day and said: ‘Oh, what’s in that parcel?’
He said: ‘Oh, you shouldn’t look at that.’
I said: ‘Well, I’m going to look at it.’
I opened it, and there was the bracelet, and I said: ‘I know where this is going.’ I was devastated. This was about two weeks before we got married.
So rage, rage, rage! ‘Why can’t you be honest with me?’ But, no, Charles cut me absolutely dead.
He’d found the virgin, the sacrificial lamb and in a way he was obsessed with me. But it was hot and cold, hot and cold. You never knew what mood it was going to be – up and down, up and down.
He took the bracelet, lunchtime on Monday. We got married on the Wednesday.
I went to his policeman and said ‘John, where’s Prince Charles?’ and he said: ‘Oh, he’s gone out for lunch.’
So I went upstairs, had lunch with my sisters who were there, and said: ‘I can’t marry him. I can’t do this. This is absolutely unbelievable.’
They were wonderful and said: ‘Well, bad luck, Duch [her childhood nickname], your face is on the tea towels so you’re too late to chicken out.’
The bulimia had started the week after we got engaged.
My husband put his hand on my waistline and said ‘Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?’ and that triggered off something in me. And the Camilla thing. I was desperate, desperate.
I remember the first time I made myself sick. I was so thrilled because I thought this was the release of tension. The first time I was measured for my wedding dress, I was 29 inches around the waist. The day I got married, I was 23½ inches.
I had shrunk into nothing from February to July. I had shrunk to nothing.
Two days before the wedding we went to St Paul’s for our last rehearsal, and that’s when the camera lights were on full and I got a sense of what the day was going to be.
And I sobbed my eyes out. I absolutely collapsed and it was because of all sorts of things. The Camilla thing rearing its head the whole way through our engagement.