GETTY IMAGES. (SPEN/AL)/CAMERA PRESS/REDUX PICTURES.Diana
The
Diana, aged 21,
at the Braemar
Highland Games,
in Scotland,
September 1982.I knew
Diana’s biographer,
Tina Brown, reveals
the pain, loves and
incredible evolution of
her best friend, the Princess of Wales
in this exclusive extract from a new
National Geographicbook.
D
iana was always a rebel.
She has been memorialised
forever as the People’s
Princess. But first and
foremost, Diana was a
Spencer. Hers was a family more
than 500 years old, with centuries of
experience as power brokers to the
throne. She was never intimidated by
the royal family or afraid to take them
on. It’s one of the ironies of Diana’s
story that it took a girl from an
impeccably aristocratic background
to break the monarchy out of the
crueller rigidities of class.
To understand why, you have to
look to the experience that shaped her.
When Diana was seven years old, her
mother, Frances, left her father, then
Viscount Althorp, for Peter Shand
Kydd, the man she adored. Diana’s
two older sisters, Sarah and Jane,
were already off at boarding school.
Her younger brother, Charles, was
too small to feel the pain – as Diana
did – of their mother’s departure.
They watched as her car drove off.
Her pain was compounded by the
treachery of Frances’ mother, Baroness
Fermoy, who sided with her father in
the custody dispute. When Frances
returned to try to get access to her
children, the butler shut the door of
Park House in her face; they could not
hear her screams to let her see them.
Diana’s childhood was limited in its
circle and almost feral in its neglect.
She spent most of her free time with
the servants below stairs. She rattled
around the gilded halls of Althorp
House, avoiding the company of her
despised, social-climbing stepmother,
Raine, whom her father had abruptly
married in 1976, when Diana was 15,