Andrew Morton Quotes

While their normal working relations are pervaded by an atmosphere of intrigue and competitive resentment, Diana still feels a sense of responsibility towards her husband. When he returned to public duties last year following a lengthy recuperation from his broken arm he intended to make a bizarre "statement" regarding the intense speculation surrounding his injury. He instructed his staff to find a false arm with a hook on the end so that he could appear in public like a real-life Captain Hook. Diana was consulted by senior courtiers worried that he would make a fool of himself. She suggested that a false arm should be obtained but then conveniently mislaid shortly before he was to attend a medical meeting in Harley Street, central London. While Charles was annoyed by the subterfuge, his staff were relieved that his dignity had been preserved thanks to Diana's timely intervention.

For a time during the 1980s the Royal Family were not just the most influential family in Britain but probably in Europe and Prince Charles specifically was very much like a defacto Cabinet member and what he said actually had impact on public policy.

She seemed to have it all. Humanitarian success on the world stage, contentment and love in her private life. As she lazed on the deck of the Jonikal, for once the barometer of her heart was set fair. By some curious alchemy the public sensed this transformation, that this lonely, vulnerable and rudderless vessel had at last found a comforting anchor in life, a safe harbor to run to from the perils of the deep.
For a few short days she enjoyed that state of grace in a stormy existence. Then the heavens cracked open--and claimed her.

What they say behind my back is none of my business. But I come back here and I know when I turn my light off at night I did my best.

In her desperation she consulted Penny Thornton, an astrologer introduced to her by Sarah Ferguson. Diana admitted to Penny that she couldn't bear the pressure of her position any longer and that she had to leave the system. "One day you will be allowed out but you will be allowed out as opposed to divorcing," Penny told her, confirming Diana's existing opinion that she would never become queen.

lawyers' offices to sign the immunity agreement, her grandmother, Bernice, had said, "At last I can sleep at night." A few

Such is their mutual antipathy that friends have observed that Diana finds her husband's very presence upsetting and disturbing. He in turn views his wife with indifference tinged with dislike. When a Sunday newspaper reported how the Prince had pointedly ignored her at a concert at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the Queen Mother's 90th birthday, she remarked to friends that she found their surprise rather odd. "He ignores me everywhere and has done for a long time. He just dismisses me." She would, for example, never contemplate making any input into any of his special interests such as architecture, the environment or agriculture. Painful experience tells her that any suggestions would be treated with ill-disguised contempt. "He makes her feel intellectually insecure and inferior and constantly reinforces that message," notes a close friend. When Charles took his wife to see A Woman of No Importance when he celebrated his 43rd birthday, the irony was not lost on her friends.

The cultural code of the stiff upper lip is not for her boys. She is teaching them that it is not "sissy" to show their feelings to others. When she took Prince William to watch the German tennis star Steffi Graff win the women's singles final at Wimbledon last year they left the royal box to go backstage and congratulate her on her victory. As Graff walked off court down the dimly lit corridor to the dressing room, royal mother and son thought Steffi looked so alone and vulnerable out of the spotlight. So first Diana, then William gave her a kiss and an affectionate hug.
The way the Princess introduced her boys to her dying friend, Adrian Ward-Jackson, was a practical lesson in seeing the reality of life and death. When Diana told her eldest son that Adrian had died, his instinctive response revealed his maturity. "Now he's out of pain at last and really happy." At the same time the Princess is acutely aware of the added burdens of rearing two boys who are popularly known as "the heir and the spare." Self-discipline is part of the training. Every night at six o'clock the boys sit down and write thank-you notes or letters to friends and family. It is a discipline which Diana's father instilled in her, so much so that if she returns from a dinner party at midnight she will not sleep easily unless she has penned a letter of thanks.
William and Harry, now ten and nearly eight respectively, are now aware of their destiny. On one occasion the boys were discussing their

For as long as there are poets, playwrights and men with hearts to break, tales will be told of the princess who died across the water and returned home to be crowned a queen, the queen of all our hearts.

The first signal of the change in her behavior was Prince Andrew's stag night when the Princess of Wales and Sarah Ferguson dressed as policewomen in a vain attempt to gatecrash his party. Instead they drank champagne and orange juice at Annabel's night club before returning to Buckingham Palace where they stopped Andrew's car at the entrance as he returned home. Technically the impersonation of police officers is a criminal offence, a point not neglected by several censorious Members of Parliament. For a time this boisterous mood reigned supreme within the royal family. When the Duke and Duchess hosted a party at Windsor Castle as a thank you for everyone who had helped organize their wedding, it was Fergie who encouraged everyone to jump, fully clothed, into the swimming pool. There were numerous noisy dinner parties and a disco in the Waterloo Room at Windsor Castle at Christmas. Fergie even encouraged Diana to join her in an impromptu version of the can-can.
This was but a rehearsal for their first public performance when the girls, accompanied by their husbands, flew to Klosters for a week-long skiing holiday. On the first day they lined up in front of the cameras for the traditional photo-call. For sheer absurdity this annual spectacle takes some beating as ninety assorted photographers laden with ladders and equipment scramble through the snow for positions. Diana and Sarah took this silliness at face value, staging a cabaret on ice as they indulged in a mock con

The quest of the handsome prince was complete. He had found his fair maiden and the world had its fairytale. In her ivory tower, Cinderella was unhappy, locked away from her friends, her family and the outside world.

Stories about Diana's fashions, about possible rows between Charles and Diana, these were meat and drink.

I've got a lot to learn. I've got 101 books sitting by my bedside - piles of books - absolutely gripped.

so many issues and problems in a male dominated world derive from the aggressive, secretive and often insensitive masculine ego.

The fact that the Princess of Wales, a major international figure, and the BBC, a leading public broadcasting company, had to go to such extraordinary lengths to record an interview makes a mockery of the notion that we live in an open society. Indeed, if the programme had been the smuggled testimony of a Middle Eastern princess there would have been outraged protests about a repressive regime.

As the nation groped to understand the enormity of their loss, the need to apportion blame was the inevitable handmaiden of their grief. Before it was discovered that the driver was drunk and speeding, it was the notorious paparazzi who were in the dock. Speaking from South Africa, Earl Spencer was the first to point a finger. Visibly angered by the waste of his sister's life he said: 'I always believed the press would kill her in the end. But not even I could imagine that they would take such a direct hand in her death as seems to be the case. It would appear that every proprietor and editor of every publication that has paid for intrusive and exploitative photographs of her, encouraging greedy and ruthless individuals to risk everything in pursuit of Diana's image, has blood on their hands today.'
He went on: 'Finally the one consolation is that Diana is now in a place where no human being can ever touch her again. I pray that she rests in peace.

They defined what was private and what was public and they would move it whenever they wished.

On the eve of the wedding, which Diana spent at Clarence House, her mood was much improved when Charles sent her a signet ring engraved with the Prince of Wales feathers and an affectionate card which said: "I'm so proud of you and when you come up I'll be there at the altar for you tomorrow. Just look 'em in the eye and knock 'em dead.

Meeting the Prince of Wales

Then I was asked to stay at the de Passes in July 1980 by Philip de Pass who is the son. 'Would you like to come and stay for a couple of nights down at Petworth because we've got the Prince of Wales staying. You're a young blood, you might amuse him.' So I said 'OK.' So I sat next to him and 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 bale at the barbecue at this house and he'd just finished with Anna Wallace. I said: 'You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at Lord Mountbatten's funeral.' I said: '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. Anyway we talked about lots of things and anyway that was it. Frigid wasn't the word. Big F when it comes to that. 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?' Then he asked me to Cowes on Britannia and he had lots of older

It is one of the many savage ironies in a life suffused with tragedy, that, when she was still married to Prince Charles, one of Diana's most cherished ambitions was to spend a weekend in Paris without bodyguards or photographers, losing herself in the crowd. Instead, as life slipped from her, with the Mercedes horn mournfully blaring into the night like a macabre 'Last Post', her adult life ended as it had begun, in the brazen, staccato embrace of the camera flash. Even in the city of dreams she could not escape her past.

The turning-point [in Klosters, Switzerland in 1988]

[Diana's sister] Jane's wonderfully solid. If you ring up with a drama, she says: 'Golly, gosh, Duch, how horrible, how sad and how awful' and gets angry. But my sister Sarah swears: 'Poor Duch, such a shitty thing to happen.' My father says: 'Just remember we always love you.'
But that summer [1988] when I made so many cock-ups I sat myself down in the autumn, when I was in Scotland, and I remember saying to myself: 'Right, Diana, it's no good, you've got to change it right round, this publicity, you've got to grow up and be responsible. You've got to understand that you can't do what other 26- and 27-year olds are doing. You've been chosen to do a position so you must adapt to the position and stop fighting it.' I remember my conversation so well, sitting by water. I always sit by water when contemplating.
Stephen Twigg [a therapist] who comes to see me said once: 'Whatever anybody else thinks of you is none of your business.' That sat with me. Then once someone said to me, when I said I've got to go up to Balmoral, and they said: 'Well, you've got to put up with them but they've also got to put up with you.' This myth about me hating Balmoral--I love Scotland but just the atmosphere drains me to nothing. I go up 'strong Diana.' I come away depleted of everything because they just suck me dry, because I tune in to all their moods and, boy, are there some undercurrents there! Instead of having a holida

During the first weekend Prince Charles showed Diana around Highgrove, the 353-acre Gloucestershire home he had bought in July--the same month he had started to woo her. As he took her on a guided tour of the eight-bedroomed mansion, the Prince asked her to organize the interior decoration. He liked her taste while she felt that it was a "most improper" suggestion as they were not even engaged.

The smallest breach of royal behaviour is deserving of complaint. After a film premiere, she attended a party where she enjoyed a long conversation with Liza Minnelli. The following morning it was pointed out that it was not done to attend these occasions. It had a happy result however. She enjoyed a rapport with the Hollywood star who talked at length about her difficult life and told her simply that when she felt down she thought of Diana and that helped her endure. It was a touching and very honest conversation between two women who have suffered much in life and has since formed the basis of a long-distance friendship.

She believes that they are caught in an emotional timewarp without the necessary vision to appreciate the changes that have take place in society.

Diana took some small satisfaction when a Sunday newspaper accurately detailed Camilla's comings and goings, even reporting on the unmarked Ford estate car the Prince uses to drive the twelve miles to Middlewich House. This was further authenticated by a former policeman at Highgrove, Andrew Jacques, who sold his story to a national newspaper. "Mrs Parker-Bowles certainly figures larger in the Prince's life at Highgrove than Princess Di," he claimed, a view endorsed by many of Diana's friends.

While Diana finds the monarchy as presently organized a crumbling institution, she has a deep respect for the manner in which the Queen has conducted herself for the last forty years. Indeed, much as she would like to leave her husband, Diana has emphasized to her: "I will never let you down." Before she attended a garden party on a stifling July afternoon last year, a friend offered Diana a fan to take with her. She refused saying: "I can't do that. My mother-in-law is going to be standing there with her handbag, gloves, stockings and shoes." It was a sentiment expressed in admiring tones for the Sovereign's complete self-control in every circumstance, however trying.

Perhaps Diana's true feelings came to the surface the day she took Prince William for lunch at a fashionable family restaurant, Smollensky's Balloon in Central London, where magician John Styles took her wedding ring, placed it in a silk handkerchief and with a flourish, made it vanish. Diana collapsed into a fit of laughter and cried: 'Good.' Sadly, though, she knew all too well that there was no magic wand which could erase the hurt of the last decade, or easily resolve the constitutional and financial consequences of a royal divorce.

He's a TV producer, a theatrical impresario, and he wants to be treated as Mr. Windsor but when the going gets rough he wants to be treated like a member of the Royal Family.

During a recent lunch with a close friend who is also the mother of two young children, Diana told of an incident which underlines not only the current state of her relationship with her husband but also the protective nature of her son William. She told her friend that the week that Buckingham Palace decided to announce the separation of the Duke and Duchess of York was understandably a trying time for her. She had lost an amicable companion and was acutely aware that the public spotlight would once again fall on her marriage. Yet her husband seemed unmoved by the furore surrounding the separation. He had spent a week touring various stately homes, gathering material for a book he is writing on gardening. When he returned to Kensington Palace he failed to see why his wife should feel strained and rather depressed. He airily dismissed the departure of the Duchess of York and launched, as usual, into a disapproving appraisal of Diana's public works, especially her visit to see Mother Teresa in Rome. Even their staff, by now used to these altercations, were dismayed by this attitude and felt some sympathy when Diana told her husband that unless he changed his attitude towards her and the job she is doing she would have to reconsider her position. In tears, she went upstairs for a bath. While she was regaining her composure, Prince William pushed a handful of paper tissues underneath the bathroom door. "I hate to see you sad," he said.