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In the early hours of a warm summer's morning on Sunday the 31st of August 1997, in the
world's most romantic city, Paris, Diana, the Princess of Wales, tragically died in
a horrific car crash. She was 36 years old. Her family mourned, a nation wept. It seemed
at the heart of the world, stopped.
Born at Parkhouse Sandringham on July 1st 1961, Diana Francis Spencer was the third
daughter of one of Britain's most historic families. Her birth is reported to have been
greeted with disappointment by her father who had longed for a boy. Her parents divorced
when she was only six. It was a lonely childhood and one she later vowed her own children would
never endure. The Spencer household was not a happy one and Di's childhood memories were
often tearful. She would sit at the foot of the stairs with her two elder sisters, their
hands cupped over their ears as their parents argued and eventually she saw her mother walk
from the front door of the Spencer home forever. The family witnessed an acrimonious divorce
and later Earl Spencer's remarriage to his second wife, Raine. The children adored their
father but hated their new stepmother and that lasted until very recent times. Having
two parents at war does have a very traumatic effect on a child and Diana was a particularly
sensitive little girl and I think it was an effect that would last with her through adult
life because even though when parents split up they take great pains to say to a child
well mummy daddy still love you, the child still feels rejected and unloved and they
somehow blame themselves for why their parents are on with them. And of course Diana and
her brother and other two sisters were bounced between one parent and another and maybe this
kind of very insecure childhood stayed with Diana through all her life and had a very
very long lasting effect and it probably does explain an awful lot of Diana's continued
feeling to want to be loved by people and to give a lot of love because it was I think
a throwback to his awful sad childhood. Diana went to boarding school in West Heath in Kent.
She was not an academic girl but excelled at sports. After a spell at a Swiss finishing
school at 17 she came back to London to look for work. Diana was obviously a lovely girl
but she wasn't to be fair really equipped for any kind of high powered career when she
sort of left her very nanny and jobs and she left home. So I suppose because of her upbringing
the natural path to follow was working with children. Because of her own upsets and trauma
Diana had a very big insight into the mind of the child. She'd be the first one to pick
out a child who looked lonely or unhappy. She'd be the first one to take a child's
hand and indeed children would follow her. She was at one time called the Pied Piper
and children would naturally go towards Diana. I think an interesting story is the fact that
when she went to a friend's sports day all the little girls won prizes except this one
particular child and Diana noticed it and went over and she created her own little ribbon
and gave it to the little girl. And I think that's a very sort of telling insight into
Diana's mind that working with children, her love with children and the love that later
came out with her own son it was just inevitable I think. For all of us with a rather grand
social background Diana was never a debutant. Maybe it's because her mother wasn't around
to push her forward and do the grand coming out. So Diana led a very ordinary life when
she was a young girl and a teenager. She moved to London, she shared a flat with a few good
friends which is what all young girls like to do. She was in fact very much a Sloan but
she was never sort of like above herself. She'd help out with ironing with friends and
in fact there's a story where she'd sort of do boyfriends ironings and washing for them.
So she stayed a very ordinary girl and she did the ordinary things like shopping in Knightsbridge
and things like that. But of course one has to remember that she did come from quite a
good background and as the events were later to tell this would actually sort of lead to
her jumping over the garden fence and mixing with the little boy who was one day to become
her husband. The Spencer and Windsor families had always been very close. Earl Spencer had
been equary to the Queen's father George VI and for their early years the Spencer's
had lived on the Queen's sound ring of estate so it was not unusual for the Queen to pop
in for a cup of tea. Neither was it unusual when they moved to Alcrope Hall in Northamptonshire
for Prince Charles to drop by. In fact he dropped by for a pheasant shoot but bagging
peasants wasn't everything that was on his mind. Press rumours started to spread about
the growing relationship between Charles and the young Diana Spencer. It was a full year
before Charles and Diana met again. By now the rather awkward chubby little girl had
moved to London and had become an attractive young woman. She was 17, she was not on the
debutante circuit, she shunned the London high life but was nevertheless known to Charles
from his childhood days. He sought her out again. He had her and her family invited to
the Queen's Balmoral estates in Scotland for a house party. The invitations continued but
from that moment onwards the invitations were to Diana alone, not to the entire family and
that's how the romance flourished. In 1980 Charles travelled to Zimbabwe for the independent
ceremony and subsequent celebrations. Camilla Shand, now Parker Bould, travelled as his
official escort. Charles returned to woo the young Diana Spencer. Their romance became
common knowledge that summer until their engagement was announced in February 1981 with Diana
sporting a beautiful 28,000 pound diamond and sapphire engagement ring. It was not a
normal courtship by any modern standards. On the one hand Prince Charles was under pressure
to find a bride, from his parents particularly because they were anxious to see him married.
He'd been told it was time to settle down and start having children. When Prince Charles
decided he was going to marry Diana, the person who gave him her unqualified support and in
a way permission was Camilla. Even way back when Charles and Diana had just got engaged
and the marriage was announced and the wedding presents started to come in, Princess Diana
was absolutely devastated to find a package in Charles' private courts which she thought
was a wedding present to them both. When she opened it she found out in fact it was a present
from Camilla, a private present, a personal present from Camilla to Charles and I think
then she perhaps got an inkling that she'd offered to get to a very difficult battle
that there was one woman who would always be in the shadow of their marriage. They were
married in July 1981 and to begin with they were clearly happy. True, Charles may not
have been the most conventional of romantic husbands but the newlyweds were obviously
in love and it was only gradually to become clear that Charles would be upstaged by his
beautiful wife. Diana became pregnant almost immediately. Prince William was born in June
the next year and it wasn't too long after the birth of William that commentators noticed
that Diana was looking painfully thin. Charles' lack of rapport with his young wife became
increasingly apparent. In 1982 Charles arrived for the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Royal
Albert Hall alone saying his wife was not well. Yet five minutes later Diana arrived.
Things went from bad to worse with claims of suicide attempts. Many things went wrong
in the marriage. First of all he fell out of love with her or as he'd never been in
love with her, love evaporated. They didn't like each other. It was quite clear they didn't
like each other. There was no affection, there was no, they weren't tactile, there was no
more touching, there were no more affectionate pats on the bottom from him to her and they
would arrive places at places and split and their backs toward each other and they, he
of course felt this very strongly because he knew that she was upstaging him all the
time. The birth of their second child Prince Harry in 1984 kept up the pretence that all
was well. In public they mastered the art of putting on a united front but behind the
facade things continued to deteriorate. Diana felt the stranger in her own home. In 1986
on a tour of Canada, proof positive emerged that the marriage was effectively over. In
Vancouver attending the Expo World Fair the Princess clearly suffering from the effects
of her bulimia fainted in public. Charles didn't rush to her side. He told her to pull
herself together and to make herself presentable for that evening's festivities. Charles' utter
frustration with his sham marriage came about five years into it. At that time he'd given
up the one love of his life, Camilla. He'd stayed with Diana for those five years. After
those five years he went back to Camilla and she became his comfort, his shoulder to cry
on. I think it's significant that when ever Princess Diana visited Highgrove after an
absence when Charles had been there she would walk straight over to the telephone and press
the redial button. At the end of the line was the Parker Bell's household on every occasion.
The abiding images of royalty in the late 80s are frivolous ones. On the ski slopes,
at Ascot, at work and at play the youngsters could be seen to be having a good time. But
behind those frivolous images the reality was very different. Diana has blamed the friendship
of Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles for contributing to her unhappiness but many royal watchers
think that is not entirely fair. Diana herself was soon to reach a turning point in her life
on a skiing trip with Charles to Closters. After a photo call she decided not to continue
skiing, a decision which may have saved her life. Within hours a close friend was dead
and another critically injured. Diana was friends with the wife. It was much more of
a personal involvement of Charles and Diana. She was of course broken up by the tragedy
because she saw a friend of hers who was pregnant losing her husband. On that very same holiday
Catherine Soames had run off with another man who had been married four times. So there
were other ramifications of the Closters holidays which I've never gone into which gave Diana
also food for thought and for a feeling that perhaps life was very unfair. By the end of
the 1980s Charles and Diana were virtually living separate lives. It was only a matter
of time before something dramatic occurred. What was remarkable was the nature of the
event and how it came to the attention of the public. The effects were staggering and
contributed to the crisis that was already facing the House of Windsor. The Princess
of Wales was spending the New Year holiday in 1989-1990 at Sandringham with the children,
her husband and the rest of the senior royals. And she did what it appeared was her habits
of an evening. She got on the phone. The Downinggate tapes, I believe, in fact I am certain, were
the work of a very deep and sinister Dirty Tricks department. Nothing will ever persuade
me that these tapes came out by accident. I believe the people who did reveal them didn't
really know what it was all about. In 1990 the rift between Charles and Diana was highlighted
when he fell off a horse playing polo. The Princess was in London when the news reached
her that he had broken his arm in two places. Diana was in a quandary. She knew she should
rush to his side, but it is reported she couldn't be bothered. They were now openly unhappy
together and they chose to spend most of their time apart. The time Charles had his polo
accident, Diana had had time to take stock of the marriage and she'd gone through a very,
very bad period with Charles. The royal family weren't very much help to Prince Charles in
his time of agony and the breakdown of his marriage. His father certainly might have
taken some enjoyment from it. His mother was unable to help simply because Charles never
asked her. I primarily blame Charles for not entering the marriage in a modern, acceptable
way and not giving his Princess the full scope that she should have had in the early years
and reaching a stage where she became not just a competitor but then an adversary and
really it was his fault. Charles is so staid, such a young old fogey set in his ways, that
Diana found herself totally reliant on her own devices, on her own friends. She couldn't
hold a serious conversation with Charles or his friends. They're all intellectuals. The
Business Butler Morton book is fascinating because I don't believe that Andrew, whom
I know well, ever set out to write that book. I think he set out with the dream of writing
a different kind of book and suddenly all this material was given to him by acquiescence
of those that have now been named as sources and certainly they would never have done so
without the Princess's tacit approval. Did Diana really attempt suicide? Did she try
to kill herself four or five times as sometimes been claimed? I think not. The royal family,
the firm, were in a total state of shock. In all its history, it had never had to cope
with the public humiliation it was enduring through the clever press manipulation by Diana.
It was time to do a deal. After their separation announcement, Charles and Diana had hoped
that the pressure on them would ease. It did not. And the most explosive bombshell to hit
the royal family was yet to come. His name was James Hewitt. Hewitt had been introduced
to Diana at a dinner party in 1985 and sometime shortly after that they became lovers. The
affair was only fully revealed in the autumn of 1994 when a book was written about Hewitt,
largely discredited and certainly disbelieved by Diana's close friends and supporters.
But it was true. Diana had had a love affair with James Hewitt. James, who shortly afterwards
became known as the Cad Hewitt and she was forced to confess that in an hour long television
special in 1995 and this is what she said. The interviewer asked her, did your relationship
go beyond a close friendship? Diana, yes it did, yes. Were you unfaithful? And Diana said
of Hewitt, yes I adored him, yes I was in love with him, but I was very let down. And
indeed she was. James Hewitt, the soldier who thought he was brought in as a family
riding instructor, soon came to believe that he could aspire to become the Prince Charming
to an emotionally unawakened sleeping princess. I think if you look at James Hewitt, she's
what us British would call sort of chinless wonder, very much an army whim for the man.
There's no doubting he loved her and Diana loved him. I don't think it was actually
her sort of intellectual relationship, it was a physical one. She was a very lonely
woman looking for something. But I think James Hewitt obviously is another one who betrayed
her trust. He liaised with Anna Pasmack to write the book Princess in Love, which although
it came across as a romantic novel. And everybody sneered at it at the time saying, what a lot
of rubbish, how could this have happened, how could wonderful Diana solid herself. But of
course it was proved right a couple of years later when in fact when Diana said yes we
had the affair and in more entries with James Hewitt it did become clear that a lot of this
fictional book as it was, was in fact true. She did in fact lead him by the hand and take
him to bed, which I think was sort of quite remarkable. And I think it probably shows
another side to Diana as well. Diana's frank confession on television of an adulterous
affair with James Hewitt and her further criticisms of the House of Windsor in the same interview
was seen by many royal observers as a declaration of war by her on the whole royal family. It
was therefore no surprise when the Queen, who was in despair of the unprecedented damage
being done to the monarchy, soon after ordered the divorce of Charles and Diana. For months
speculation was right about the nature of the settlement, but whatever was agreed was
clearly a decision fought to a bitter conclusion between just the two key players. Diana had
agreed to a divorce. The British public were pleased to learn that Diana had fought for
and won a £17 million divorce settlement for Charles, but they were horrified that
she'd had to suffer the humiliation of being stripped of her title, Her Royal Highness.
From now on Diana was to be known simply as Diana, Princess of Wales, and public sympathy
and love flowed out for her in that difficult time. At last she felt free and appeared determined
to create a new life for herself. This was like a new beginning, a new dawn for Diana.
She strove to establish herself as an international stateswoman, an ambassador for Britain she
called it, a queen of people's hearts. She got precious little help from the palace and
even less from the royal courtiers. As Diana's brother was to be very pointedly
saved at her funeral, Diana needed no royal title to read her magic. She became a rather
self-appointed ambassador for Britain, but I think looking back that was such the wisest
choice she could have made. People still loved her and I think she was loved more than anywhere
else in America. People still paid thousands of dollars just to not only sit by her side
but attend the very same function that Diana was attending. I'm not talking about small
informal gatherings where they had the chance to speak to her, but vast, vast gatherings
where people just wanted to be in her presence so that it was an amazing aura she had. I
think one could understand why perhaps Diana was seriously thinking about settling in America
because she was faultless there. People didn't criticise her. They loved her for what she
was. She was completely blameless and I think you can understand her wanting to be in an
environment where they thought perhaps this is the girl for us, we love her, so you can
only continue to weave her magic for us. Diana was also determined to fill her life
with her charity work. It seemed to be her release, a way of filling her life. She decided
to give her love, for it must have seemed that receiving it was forever going to elude
her. Diana threw herself wholeheartedly into her charity work, sometimes publicly, but
more often in private, often secretly, often at night. She would visit hospitals and hold
the hands of dying cancer patients. She'd visit hospices. She even took her sons, William
and Harry, to a hostel for the homeless one night, secretly without permission. From the
moment that she cuddled an AIDS victim and the moment that she held and left his hand,
Diana became very much a leading light in charity work. She was like a breath of fresh
air really because the Royal Family up until that point had never really been involved
in tactile. They never actually cuddled people who were sick. They might go visit them but
never sat on their bedside. And I think this was quite a new dimension. This is probably
why people took Diana to their hearts and why she was called Queen of Hearts. She'd
touched people both physically and mentally. And of course, the charities she moved onto
in later life, like A Higher Profile with AIDS, The Red Cross, The Bosnian Landmine.
She didn't just talk about going to see these people. She didn't talk about raising money.
She went there and she spoke to them. She tried to get into her mind about how it felt
to be hurt or sick and suffering. And I think, although people talk about it being wrong
to colonise Diana after her death, I think for those that she actually did speak to and
get into the minds of and feel their suffering, it's going to be very difficult to say, well,
perhaps she wasn't a saint.
Diana's own unhappy childhood and in part the formality of her upbringing influenced
her in how she wanted to raise her own two sons. She was determined not to let them fall
under the stuffy spell of the royal family, the senior courtiers. And she wept often when
she had to allow them to go and spend holidays at the formal HQ of the royal family, Buckingham
Palace, or even in the wet and damp, dismal old Valmoral Scotland.
I think there are two very crucial reasons why Diana brought her boys up in the way that
she did. Firstly, and I think one has to remember that no matter what other role a woman has
in life, being a mother is the most instinctive role you can have. And I think bearing in
mind her own childhood where she felt rejected and unloved, the priority was to make those
boys feel loved every step of the way, even when she wasn't always around, when her and
her husband split, she wanted them to always feel loved, she wanted to cuddle them, she
wanted them to know she was always there for them. And of course she also wanted to knock
some of the stuffiness out of the royal family. She was very aware that the boys, particularly
William, had a very, very important role to fulfil, which is obviously to one day be King
of England. But she didn't want them to be brought up in this stuffy environment. She
wanted them to go to McDonald's, she wanted them to laugh, she wanted them to wear the
baseball caps, to go ordinarily shopping with other kids and stuff. And I think, like I
say, although she knew that one day maybe the boys would be taken away from her and
sort of kind of smothered a little bit by the royal family when the day came, that the instinctive
role was to love them as a mother can only love her children, and that was always at
the most in her mind.
Diana was determined to get involved in charities that were not glossy. Her early involvement
in HIV and AIDS charities is now recognised as changing a nation's perception of the disease.
And it was Diana's work with children's charities that gave her such memorable images. She had
time for everybody and lit up a room when she entered it. She gave her pullback into
the plight of landmine sufferers, travelling to Angola and Bosnia to see for herself the
devastation landmines cause. She was a guiding light to all the charities she supported.
Part of Diana's main concerns, of course, was to protect the children, and she was always
aware that some damning press report might come out which would hurt them. So she would
always, if a particular damning report was due, she would go down to see William at school
and say, William, this is the situation. Please don't leave what you're going to read. Mum
and daddies do still love you. Whatever is said in the papers will always be here for
you. Don't believe these lies.
An interesting fact was that as William grew older, the role seemed to reverse somewhat,
and Diana was no longer the one that supported him. He became a short-to-crown. He actually
became very grown up, and he would sort of advise his own mother on how to sort of deal
with the press, how to be a little bit stronger. And I'm sure there were many times he'd sort
of say, Mummy, please don't cry. We love you very much. Be strong for us, and I'll always
be there for you.
Diana's immersion in her charity work and her devotion to her two sons was almost overshadowed
by her love-hate relationship with the world's press, especially the paparazzi.
Diana knew very well how to manipulate the press to her own advantage and to the advantage
of her charities, but it was a two-way thing. She couldn't take the pressure of the constant
attention, which after all had been upon her since she was just 17 or 18 years of age,
and eventually it became all too much. She would often be photographed running tearful
away from the cameras, not smiling at them.
Di felt herself at a disadvantage with the paparazzi. The rest of the royals could hide
themselves away on their royal estates and in their castles. But Diana was... Diana the
hunted.
I don't think anybody to this very day will ever understand the relationship that Diana
had with the press, nor indeed the press with Diana. From those very early images of Diana
as a very shy, slown, walking down the street being pursued before she'd even got engaged
to Charles when the rumours were just there. And then there were years and years and years
of just constant under the focus of the press. And I think she had to... Every day was this
tremendous pressure. Do you remember that awful incident where we had secret cams in
the gym where she went? So not only was she not allowed to be a public figure, she wasn't
really ever allowed to be a private figure. And you heard her render stories of paparazzi
who would crawl in stomachs to get under windows. There was this great network of wherever she
went on the plane, somebody would be tipped off. Every private visit to a doctor suddenly
would be ticked off and you'd be waiting there. And I think it must have taken its toll. I'm
very surprised that she wasn't really unhinged by it because to have that amount of pressure
would not do anybody any good, no matter how gorgeous Diana always looked for the cameras.
With the continual hounding by the press, it was only a matter of time before the world
would discover that Diana had possibly, at long last, finally found love.
She was photographed in August 1997 in the south of France with Dodi Fayad, the film
producer son of Mohamed El Fayad, owner of London's Dor Harrods. Was Dodi the key to
Diana's everlasting happiness? Sadly, we'll never know. But all the signs were there,
the two were very, very close. And in fact, they'd known each other a lot longer than
the press would lead us to believe. Diana was introducing Dodi as her boyfriend several
months before the press latched onto it. And they're very tactile, they're very loving,
very cuddling. And perhaps that's what Diana missed and that's what she wanted. And there
was a private gesture. Dodi brought her a beautiful ring as a symbol of his love and
found under Diana's pillow was a poem that Dodi had written her. So as I said, all the
signs were there. Sadly, we'll never know. But it did look like these two young people
had found long-lasting, deep love.
She was making no secret of the fact that she was at last in love. In the early hours
of Sunday, August the 31st, 1997, Diana and Dodi, having dined at the Ritz Hotel in Paris,
stepped into the back of the Mercedes and were driven at high speed to Dodi's Paris
home. The Mercedes swept into an underpass beside the River Seine and lost control. The
driver and Dodi died instantly. A three-hour operation ensued in a Paris hospital, a battle
for Diana's life. At four o'clock in the morning, the doctors announced that they had failed.
Within minutes, the news wires around the world were running red hot with the news that
nobody could have predicted and no one wanted to believe.
The Stalin warning was phenomenal. People came in droves to London to stand outside
Diana's home and Buckingham Palace and to cry for the princess that they loved. And
I think that it was interesting that because Diana was very much the people's princess,
those people reacted in the way that she would have expected from the heart. The tears were
real. They weren't ashamed to show their emotion. And it'll also go down in history as the day
that Diana's people actually changed the course of monarchy and their expression of grief
because it was because of the public outcry and the demands that the royal family felt
obliged to actually come out in the open and speak about their feelings for Diana. Never
before, and that speech the Queen made really will go down in history when she spoke about
Diana being a gifted person. I mean, to hear the Queen talk so personally and to express
an opinion is unprecedented. And I think it was the day that the monarchy bowed to public
pressure. They even had to bring down the flags to half-mast, which they haven't done
before. There's no better way for people to express their feeling of loss for Diana than
the expression of flowers because wherever Diana had been on her walkabouts, little children
would give her bouquets, old people would give her bouquets, and she sometimes would
give children flowers back. So I think it's a fairly obvious way that people would lay
flowers at her home in Kensington. And at some time there was up to a million bouquets
laid at those gates. That's more than a million goodbyes in the way that older people felt
that they could do so. And I think had Diana been looking down, she'd been more than touched
with just jeffery. There was a spontaneous outpouring of grief by the British public,
and then of anger, but first erected against the paparazzi who again had been pursuing
Diana that night, the night of her death. Then against the driver of the car, who it
appeared had been drinking. And finally, and astonishingly, against the royal family themselves,
against the senior members, against the Queen. The British public felt that the Queen had
not adequately shown her own grief. The family was tucked away safely in Balmoral. Charles
had come to London, his sons had come to London to see their mother's body, but the Queen
had not. And it was a critical moment for the House of Windsor. Eventually the public
came down. The Queen, Prince Philip, and the rest of the royals did come down, and the
flag was at last flown at half mast on top of Buckingham Palace. On the stroke of nine,
six horses and soldiers from the King's troop and the Welsh Guards walked into the gaze
of over two billion people worldwide. And in London, over two million people had come
to say goodbye to their Princess. When the funeral cortege reached St James's Palace,
it was joined by the Princes William and Harry and Diana's brother Charles, who had taken
such an active role in the planning of the day. Behind them walked 500 charity workers.
The service at Westminster Abbey was attended by 1800 of Diana's friends. Celebrities,
charity workers and heads of state all came together. Her brother wanted it to be a family
funeral to be shared by the people.
A tribute now from Earl Spencer. I stand before you today, the representative of a
family in grief, in a country in mourning, before a world in shock. We are all united,
not only in our desire to pay our respects to Diana, but rather in our need to do so.
But such was her extraordinary appeal, that the tens of millions of people taking part
in this service all over the world, via television and radio, who never actually met her, feel
that they too lost someone close to them in the early hours of Sunday morning. It is a
more remarkable tribute to Diana than I can ever hope to offer her today.
Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the
world she was a symbol of selfless humanity, a standard bearer for the rights of the truly
downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended nationality, someone with a natural nobility
who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue
to generate her particular brand of magic.
Today is our chance to say thank you for the way you brightened our lives, even though
God granted you but half a life. We will all feel cheated, always, that you were taken
from us so young, and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all. Only
now you are gone do we truly appreciate what we are now without, and we want you to know
that life without you is very, very difficult. We have all despaired at our loss over the
past week, and only the strength of the message you gave us through your years of giving has
afforded us the strength to move forward.
There is a temptation to rush to canonise your memory. There is no need to do so. You
stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities, not need to be seen as a saint.
Indeed, to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being, your
wonderfully mischievous sense of humour with a laugh that bent you double, your joy for
life transmitted wherever you took your smile and the sparkle in those unforgettable eyes,
your boundless energy which you could barely contain. But your greatest gift was your intuition,
and it was a gift you used wisely. This is what underpins all your other wonderful attributes,
and if we look to analyse what it was about you that had such a wider feel, we find it
in your instinctive feel for what was really important in all our lives. Without your God-given
sensitivity, we would be immersed in greater ignorance of the anguish of AIDS and HIV sufferers,
the plight of the homeless, the isolation of lepers, the random destruction of landmines.
Diana explained to me once that it was her innermost feelings of suffering that made
it possible for her to connect with her constituency of the rejected. And here we come to another
truth about her. For all the status, the glamour, the applause, Diana remained throughout a
very insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her desire to do good for others so she
could release herself from deep feelings of unworthiness, of which her eating disorders
were merely a symptom. The world sensed this part of her character and cherished her for
her vulnerability whilst admiring her for her honesty. The last time I saw Diana was
on July 1st, her birthday in London, when typically she was not taking time to celebrate
her special day with friends, but was guest of honour at a fundraising charity evening.
She sparkled, of course, but I would rather cherish the days I spent with her in March
when she came to visit me and my children in our home in South Africa. I am proud of
the fact that, apart from when she was on public display meeting President Mandela,
we managed to contrive to stop the ever-present paparazzi from getting a single picture of
her. That meant a lot to her. These were days I will always treasure. It was as if we had
been transported back to our childhood when we spent such an enormous amount of time together,
the two youngest in the family. Fundamentally, she hadn't changed at all from the big sister
who mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school and endured those long train journeys
between our parents' homes with me at weekends. It is a tribute to her level-headedness and
strength that, despite the most bizarre life imaginable after her childhood, she remained
intact, true to herself. There is no doubt that she was looking for a new direction in
her life at this time. She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because
of the treatment that she received at the hands of the newspapers. I don't think she
ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared
to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling. My own and
only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end
of the moral spectrum. It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps
the greatest was this. A girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in
the end, the most hunted person of the modern age. She would want us today to pledge ourselves
to protecting her beloved boys, William and Harry, from a similar fate. And I do this
here, Diana, on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regony
to drive you to tearful despair. And beyond that, on behalf of your mother and sisters,
I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative
and loving way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men, so that their
souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition, but can sing openly as you planned.
We fully respect the heritage into which they have both been born, and will always respect
and encourage them in their royal role. But we, like you, recognise the need for them
to experience as many different aspects of life as possible, to arm them spiritually
and emotionally for the years ahead. I know you would have expected nothing less from
us. William and Harry, we all care desperately for you today. We all chewed up the sadness
at the loss of a woman who wasn't even our mother. How great your suffering is, we cannot
even imagine. I would like to end by thanking God for the small mercies he's shown us at
this dreadful time, for taking Diana at her most beautiful and radiant, and when she had
joy in her private life. Above all, we give thanks for the life of a woman. I'm so proud
to be able to call my sister the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable
woman whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds.
From London, the cortege moved to the Spencer Ancestral Tone, all torqued house, 77 miles
away in the county of Northamptonshire. Diana was buried later that day on a beautiful island
in the middle of an ornamental lake. It was her father's favourite spot. The world would
never see a funeral like that. Every person I think that had a TV was tuned in that day.
Strangers wept openly in the streets. I think an unprecedented act, as Diana's hearse made
its way back to her resting place, Northamptonshire, the amount of flowers strewn in the path was
just, I think, an unforgettable sight. It's never been known before. Also the fact that
people cheered, which some might have thought was rather disrespectful, in fact, it was
a great respect that they could pay. People actually applauded in the church. They applauded
Diana's coffin. And I think that was to show love. And it really will be down in history
as the day that the world tuned in and said goodbye to the Queen of Hearts.
Prince William and his brother, Prince Harry, had the eyes of the world focused upon them
at the funeral of their mother. And they acquitted themselves magnificently. The boy born to
be king had, in the eyes of the British public and in the eyes of the world, become an adult
almost overnight.
I think one had to ask what legacy Diana left behind if it would be summed up in one word,
love. The love she felt for her sons, the love she felt for the people she came in contact
with, and particularly the love she felt for those who were suffering and lonely and hurt
and in pain. That'll always stay with us. And if the one good thing can come out of
it, it must be that hopefully we can carry on her work and the feeling she left behind
us. Maybe the charity that she worked for will still benefit, even though she's no longer
with us. And maybe the boys will always remember the work she did and they will carry it on.
And they'll always remember the words of wisdom she spoke to them. And hopefully the monarchy
will follow in her path too. And they will take them to Stuffins' away and become real
people. And I think that's what Diana would have wanted. And it is indeed a big legacy
to leave behind.
Now William, as handsome a Prince Charming as his mother was a fairy tale princess, is
being groomed to assume the ultimate role as head of the British royal family and to
shape their destiny. And that is Princess Diana's ultimate legacy.
.