THE YOUNG DIANA
Lady Diana Spencer was born on 1 July 1961, the fourth child of Viscount Althorp and his wife, Frances. Her parents’ troubled marriage ended when Diana was seven after her mother reportedly left her father for Australian wallpaper heir Peter Shand Kydd.
Following a bitter custody battle, Diana, her brother, Charles, and sisters, Sarah and Jane, carried on living with their father, first at Park House, Sandringham, then at the Spencer family seat at Althorp, Northamptonshire. Diana was homeschooled until she was nine and then went off to boarding school at West Heath, Kent. But she left when she was 16 after failing her O-levels, and went on to attend a finishing school in Rougemont, Switzerland. She later worked as a nursery teacher’s assistant at a kindergarten in Pimlico, London.