Diana Frances Spencer was born to Viscount and Viscountess Althorp at Park House on Elizabeth II's Sandringham estate in Norfolk on 1 July 1961. Officially a commoner, she had royal antecedents, including Charles II, James II and Mary Queen of Scots. Following her parents' acrimonious divorce in 1969, she and her younger brother Charles went to live with their mother in London; at the end of a Christmas visit to Althorp, the family estate in Northamptonshire, their father refused to return them. Custody was contested in court, but following testimony against her daughter by the children's maternal grandmother, Viscount Althorp won. The result was a difficult childhood for the two youngest Spencers.
Diana – who became Lady Diana Spencer in 1975 when her father became the 8th Earl Spencer – received the standard education of an upper-class girl: private school plus Swiss finishing school. She was a poor student, and settled for working as a part-time assistant at the Young England Kindergarten in London.
She had previously met the prince of Wales in 1977 when she was 16 and he was dating her elder sister Sarah. After that, they occasionally saw each other socially, but from February 1980, he began to court her seriously. The press discovered the relationship in September, after they spent a long weekend at Balmoral together, and from then on, Diana's privacy was a thing of the past. Their engagement was announced on 24 February 1981 and they were married on 29 July.
It was, said the archbishop of Canterbury in his sermon, 'a fairytale wedding'. These seem to have been Diana's feelings as, with adolescent glee, she looked forward to becoming a real, live princess. Charles's emotions were far more ambivalent. He had blown hot and cold on the engagement until his father Prince Philip had put his foot down: Charles had gone too far and was honour bound to marry, he said.
The result was that the fairytale ended quickly and, before long, turned into a nightmare for both parties. There had been difficulties from the start, as Diana, young, highly strung and chaotically brought up, found it hard to fit into the rigid customs of the royal family. She also had her suspicions, almost certainly unfounded at this stage, that Charles was continuing his affair with his old flame Camilla Parker Bowles.
Finally, instead of bringing the couple together, the births of their two sons – Princes William, born in 1982, and Harry, in 1984 – completed their estrangement and, from about 1987, they led separate lives. Charles returned to Camilla in earnest, while Diana began a serious of short, tempestuous affairs.
The press – still besotted, like much of the public, with the fairytale of Cinderella who had found her prince and lived happily ever after – showed no inclination to probe. Instead, the royal couple themselves decided to play spin doctors. First came the books – Diana had secret discussions with journalist Andrew Morton, while Charles gave candid interviews to Jonathan Dimbleby – and then television took over. Diana's interview with Martin Bashir was remarkable for her use of sophisticated (and blatant) techniques designed to woo the public. Charles's with Dimbleby simply seemed to brand him as self-pitying. Unsurprisingly, the marriage ended ignobly in divorce in 1996.
The Diana story reached its climax, at once tragic and tawdry, with her death in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Killed with her was her lover Dodi Al Fayed, the son of Mohamed Al Fayed, owner of Harrods department store in London. The senior Al Fayed spent the next decade trying to prove that his son and Diana had been about to be married and, because of this, had been murdered.
The Diana story is a testament to the revolution in British values that took place during the Windsor years. In 1936, Edward VIII had been widely reviled, not least by the archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, for putting personal happiness above royal duty. In the 1990s, however, Diana – who, like Edward, was photogenic, a celebrity, a clothes-horse and profoundly self-indulgent – was praised to the skies for doing just that. Duty was fuddy-duddy, happiness a right – whatever the cost.
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 The Death of Princess Diana
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/08/
diana/index.html
Portmanteau site from CNN that has news stories, remembrances, a tour of Althorp and much else.
Ten Years On: Why Diana mattered
www.time.com/time/specials/2007/0,28757,
1650830,00.html
Special edition of Time magazine, on the 10th anniversary of Diana's death.
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Diana: Her true story &ndash in her own words by Andrew Morton (O'Mara, rev. ed. 1998)
Originally published in 1992, this biography was produced with the full cooperation and input of the princess.
Get this book
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Diana: The making of a saint by Ted Harrison (Hodder, 2007)
The real Diana, the unremarkable daughter of a British aristocrat, has become enveloped by myths and legends. In exploring this phenomenon, Harrison uncovers some revealing truths, and investigates why the life and spirit of Diana continues to resonate so strongly even years after her death.
Get this book
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 Althorp
The Stables
Althorp
Northampton NN7 4HQ
Tel: 01604 770 107
Email: mail@althorp.com
Website: www.althorp.com
Built in 1508, this has been home to the Spencer family for nearly 500 years. It became the focus of world attention following the tragic death of Diana, who spent her childhood here and is buried on an island in the lake.
Channel 4 Television takes no responsibility for the content of third-party sites. |
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