30 YEARS AGO…

It was 1992 and everyone was talking about Diana: Her true Story . Written by journalist Andrew Morton from tapes secretly recorded with the late Princess, the book changed the way we viewed our Royal Family. Never before had we heard a senior royal talk in such an unfiltered way about life inside the palace.

It became an overnight bestseller that earned the writer more than

£1m – but many questioned the authenticity of the content. It wasn’t until after Diana’s death in 1997 that Morton revealed her involvement and that he had tapes to prove it.

Morton said Diana contacted him via a mutual friend to offer an interview, then she made the tapes with the friend. Transcripts have revealed a deeply unhappy young woman with eating disorders which, she said, began after Charles told her she was ‘a bit tubby’.

The book caused a huge scandal, with Morton cast as a villain. It was condemned by the then Archbishop of Canterbury and one MP suggested the author should be thrown into the

Tower of London. The chairman of the Press Complaints Commission accused the media of ‘dabbling in the stuff of other people’s souls’.

On 9 December 1992, Prime Minister John Major announced that Charles and Diana were to separate and, in 1994, Charles broke royal protocol by admitting to journalist Jonathan Dimbleby that he had indeed had an affair with Camilla.

‘Did you try to be faithful and honourable to your wife when you took on the vow of marriage,’ asked Dimbleby.

‘Yes, until it became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried,’ said Charles.

The following year, during her BBC Panorama interview with Martin Bashir, Diana spoke about her husband’s infidelity. But she also admitted her own affair with Captain James Hewitt, saying,

‘Yes, I adored him. Yes, I was in love with him. But I was very let down.’

On 28 August 1996, Diana and Charles officially divorced. On 31 August 1997, the Princess of Wales tragically died following a car crash in Paris. Charles married Camilla on 9 April 2005.