Diana's Nightmare - The Family (54 page)

Diana neither heard the camera's repeated clicks nor summoned her bodyguard as her image was captured on film. After only six frames of the thirty-six-shot film were exposed, the shutter jammed. Exchanging the camera for a new one, Taylor repeated the exercise on 4 May. This time Diana, in a patterned top and blue shorts, obligingly ran her fingers through her hair to give him a different sort of picture.

Six months later, Taylor sold both sets of pictures to the
Daily Mirror
and
Sunday Mirror
for a reported £100,000. The Mirrormen had no idea of how neatly they were playing into Diana's hands. The screaming started on Saturday night, 6 November, when copies of the first edition of the Sunday paper surfaced around the country. In the cover photograph the royal gymnast was seen astride the leg press, her elbows and knees wide apart. 'The stunning picture is part of a remarkable set,' boasted the caption. Fleet Street's other editors were unanimous in their censure of the tabloids for publishing the snatched pictures, particularly since the
Sunday Mirror
had taken pains to detail the subterfuge Taylor had employed in order to trick the Princess, who immediately expressed her 'distress and deep sense of outrage'.

The
Daily Mirror's
headline declaring
WE LOVE DI
alongside another stolen snap on its Monday morning front page did nothing to defuse the row. 'Features locked in concentration and biceps straining, Diana is a study in grim determination as she clenches the handles of the weight machine,' began the story.

The Princess appeared an even grimmer study of determination when she dispatched her lawyers to the High Court where they won an injunction against Taylor and the newspapers from further publishing, disclosing or supplying (that is, syndicating to defray their huge cost) the photographs. Lord McGregor, still chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, condemned the publication outright. In retaliation, the
Mirror
called him 'an arch buffoon' and chief executive David Montgomery pulled MGN out of the commission while the Royal Family, Parliament and the rest of Fleet Street united in a formidable alliance against his papers.

However mortified she may have been by the pictures, Diana knew that she had found the perfect scapegoat. On Friday, 3 December, she was due to deliver a speech at a lunch arranged by one of her causes, the National Head Injuries Association. The sun shone for just two hours the previous day but the dull, wintry weather would not have bothered Diana, confined as she was behind the Kensington Palace walls of apartments 8 & 9, drafting the address she planned to launch on an unsuspecting nation.

More than one purpose would be served by her oratory: Fleet Street needed to be taught a lesson and what better way than to make it report its own punishment?

Early in the day, she telephoned Ludgrove School to inform her sons of her intentions. By mid-morning, Fleet Street editors, TV and radio stations had been told that the Princess would be including an important announcement in her lunchtime speech. The Queen was informed and Her Majesty had made no attempt to dissuade her daughter-in-law from the course of action she had chosen. Prince Charles made it clear that he saw no reason why she needed to make a personal statement at all.

As the details emerged of a Gallup poll which showed that Diana was, in fact, holding her lead over other royals in the popularity stakes (twenty-four per cent naming her their favourite royal against nineteen per cent for the Queen Mother, seventeen per cent for the Queen and just six per cent for Charles), the Princess was being driven from Kensington Palace to the Hilton in Park Lane. Dressed eye-catchingly as ever in a bottle-green velvet outfit by Amanda Wakeley, she strode into the hotel and was shown to the Grand Ballroom where 550 guest were already seated, eagerly awaiting her arrival. The master of ceremonies Lord Archer, himself a master of suspense, had already been briefed by Diana about her plans. She had only to pass the time by toying with a mozzarella salad, a bowl of consomme and a helping of Christmas pudding (she refused the main course of turkey), until Archer announced that Her Royal Highness wished to make 'a personal statement'.

'It is a pleasure to be here with you again,' she began uncertainly, 'sharing in your successes of the past year.' Gaining confidence, she praised her audience for giving her 'an education by teaching me more about life than any books or teachers could have done. My debt of gratitude to you all is immense. I hope in some way I have been of service in return.'

The strain of her three-hour wait showed as she continued: 'A year ago I spoke of my desire to continue with my work unchanged. For the past year I have continued as before. However, life and circumstances alter and I hope you will forgive me if I use this opportunity to share with you my plans for the future which now indeed have changed.'

Clearly referring to the
Mirror
pictures, she then dropped her bombshell: 'When I started my public life twelve years ago, I understood the media might be interested in what I did. I realised then that their intention would inevitably focus on both our private and public lives. But I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention would become; nor the extent to which it would affect both my public duties and my personal life, in a manner that has been hard to bear.'

As faxes were being dispatched to every one of her 118 charities explaining what her decision meant to them, Diana continued: 'At the end of this year, when I have completed my diary of official engagements, I will be reducing the extent of the public life I have led so far. I attach great importance to my charity work and intend to focus on a smaller range of areas in the future. Over the next few months I will be seeking a more suitable way of combining a meaningful public role with, hopefully, a more private life. My first priority will continue to be our children, William and Harry, who deserve as much love, care and attention as I am able to give, as well as an appreciation of the tradition into which they were born. I would also like to add that this decision has been reached with the full understanding of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, who have always shown me kindness and support.'

Fighting back the tears, she concluded: 'I hope you can find it in your hearts to understand and to give me the time and space that has been lacking in recent years. I could not stand here today and make this sort of statement without acknowledging the heartfelt support I have been given by the public in general. Your kindness and affection have carried me through some of the most difficult periods and always your love and care have eased that journey. And for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart.'

When she sat down, Diana listened to a round of applause that lasted almost as long as her five-minute speech. The decision could not have been communicated more effectively and her husband had no need to question further why she had needed to make a public announcement.

It comforted Diana to learn that she was by no means the only royal with a guilty secret. Suddenly, the spotlight was turned glaringly on Princess Margaret when the spectre of her adulterous love affair with Robin Douglas-Home in 1967 came back to haunt her. Never again could Auntie Margo point the finger of censure at the Princess she had called 'insensitive and utterly selfish'.

When Margaret's son Lord Linley had told friends at a London dinner part that 'something's going to come out that makes everything else look like nothing', he was speaking with authority. Linley had lived all his adult life with his mother's dread that the love letters she had penned to the love-lorn pianist in her own hand on Kensington Palace notepaper would one day be made public.

The letters, last known to be resting in a New York safe, turned up in the possession of Noel Botham, the Soho publican and journalist who had befriended Douglas- Home back in the Sixties. Ten days before he killed himself, Douglas-Home had told Botham: 'I want you to promise me that one day, when the climate is right for it, the world will know my relationship with Princess Margaret was a serious one. We did talk about divorce and about us getting married. Make sure the world sees these letters. Remember I have given them away and you know who to.' Botham waited until 1994 before publishing them in his book
Margaret: The Untold Story,
explaining that 'the climate with the royals has now changed'.

Although the affair had lasted a mere thirty days, it had obviously affected Margaret deeply. In one memorable phrase, she likened her love to the passionate scent of new-mown grass and lilies.

The most romantic of the young royals, Prince Edward, followed every scene of the royal high drama with even greater detachment than before. He had a life of his own to lead and things were looking up. No longer benefiting from the Civil List, he had launched a new TV company called Ardent Productions and become its joint managing director.

However, Edward's love life was still less private than he would have preferred. When his secret Sloaney girlfriend emerged in public she turned out to be Sophie Rhys-Jones, a twenty-eight-year-old blonde business consultant. Born in Oxford, she had been educated at Kent College for Girls before embarking on a career in public relations. She had met the bachelor prince while working on a project for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme in the summer of 1993. 'Edward is so sure he has found the right girl that he wasn't even nervous when he introduced her to his mother,' said a friend.

In fact, the Queen was overjoyed that one of her sons seemed to have found happiness. Sophie's west London flat, inauspiciously near 60 Coleherne Court, the address Diana had shared with three flatmates before she made what she now called 'my bad decision' to marry Charles, was soon besieged in the traditional manner, making her life extremely difficult.

She spent evenings with Edward at his apartment at Buckingham Palace and weekends at his quarters at Windsor Castle. Both enjoyed tennis, skiing and nights at the ballet. Although Edward had followed a similar routine during previous romantic entanglements, there was a new maturity in the way he proceeded. He took the extraordinary step of issuing a statement to editors under the Ardent letterhead asking them to leave him and his sweetheart alone. It had little noticeable effect. As the royal juggernaut, with Diana firmly in the driving seat, rumbled ever closer to the edge of the precipice, the media recorded every twist and turn of the journey.

Nothing thus far has brought Diana greater embarrassment than the story of her infatuation with a married man, antiques dealer Oliver Hoare. She stood accused of plaguing Hoare and his French wife with some 300 nuisance telephone calls to their £2 million mansion home in Tregunter Road, one of London's most exclusive streets on the edge of Chelsea, Fulham and Kensington.

The calls, silent at first, had come in at the rate of twenty a week over a period of eighteen months, beginning in September 1992, three months before the official announcement of Diana's separation from Charles. But it was not until October 1993 that the Hoares decided to take action after the calls took on a more menacing tone.

Hoare's wife Diane was distressed when she picked up the phone and heard an unidentified female shout a stream of abuse down the line. An independent and strong-minded woman, Diane Hoare had had enough. She sent Oliver round to Kensington police station to report the matter. Born into the highest echelons of French society, Diane is the daughter of Baroness Louise de Waldner, a friend of both Prince Charles and the Queen Mother, who calls her Lulu. When the Prince had broken his arm playing polo, he was invited to her chateau near Avignon to recover.

Diane and Oliver had met in France in his art student days and when she worked at the Paris office of Christie's. They married on 27 May 1976 at Kensington register office. He was thirty and she was twenty-eight and they were already living together at Oliver's bachelor home in Kynance Mews, Kensington.

By the time the telephone calls started in 1992, the Hoares considered themselves as friendly with Diana as they were with Charles and his grandmother. By then one of the world's leading dealers in Islamic art - a rarefied sector of the art market where only the very richest can afford to indulge - Oliver heads the Ahuan gallery in Belgravia and their house in Tregunter Road is filled with treasures.
Harpers & Queen
described the couple as 'cultured and erudite' and they are familiar figures on the art circuit of receptions, auctions and exhibitions.

Once Oliver Hoare contacted the police, British Telecom placed an electronic tracing device on their telephone line. Activated by pressing digit one on the phone's dial, the tracer instantly establishes where calls are coming from if not, initially, who is making them. The tracer proved that some anonymous calls to the house in Tregunter Road were made from numbers to which Diana had exclusive access - her private line at Kensington Palace and her personal mobile phone - while others were made from the home of her sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale.

The nuisance calls had come to an end following the personal intervention of a government minister, who contacted the Royal Household. Diana remained close friends with Oliver throughout and he contacted her immediately when, in summer 1994, it became known that details of the matter had been leaked to the Press.

Diana response was to contact Richard Kay, a friendly reporter on the
Daily Mail.
Kay was told to drive to a rendezvous with the Princess in a square close to Paddington Station, just five minutes drive from Kensington Palace. He did as he was told and soon after he arrived, Diana drove up alone in her Audi. 'Extremely distressed', according to Kay, she got into the front passenger seat of his car.

'They are trying to make out I was having an affair with this man or had some sort of fatal attraction,' she told him, referring to Oliver Hoare. it is simply untrue and so unfair.' Diana asked the reporter if he would mind taking her for a drive in his car: 'Then,' he wrote in his subsequent account, 'over several hours, she poured out her anger and unhappiness.'