Diana's Nightmare - The Family (24 page)

As Morton made his first calls, the doughty figure of Lord McGregor of Durris took over as chairman of the new Press Complaints Commission. This was a voluntary body whose membership was drawn from the upper and lower reaches of the Fourth Estate as well as other parts of society. Its objective was to enforce a code of conduct governing the invasion of privacy. If this system of self-regulation worked, it would preclude the need for statutory controls over the media. Nothing less than the freedom of the Press was at stake.

McGregor, a Yorkshireman like Morton, is the son of a farmer. He had been made a life peer in 1978 after serving as chairman of the Royal Commission on the Press. He was, therefore, no stranger to muck-spreading of one kind or another. Top of his agenda was newspaper reporting of the Royal Family or, more particularly because it quickly emerged as the number one priority, the private lives of the Prince and Princess of Wales. He resolved to approach this uncertain terrain not as a pathfinder for the establishment or the Press barons but on behalf of the ordinary citizen. He soon found that he had entered the heart of a very dark forest where deception and intrigue were part of the scenery.

When they deigned to comment at all, Buckingham Palace haughtily denied that there was anything wrong with the royal marriage. One report of a rift was dismissed as 'complete rubbish'. Confessing anxiety over the situation, McGregor invited Sir Robert Fellowes, the Queen's Private Secretary, and Charles Anson, her Press Secretary, to lunch at the commission's headquarters in Salisbury Square, just off Fleet Street. As Sir Robert was also Diana's brother-in-law, it was accepted that the guidance they received was coming from highly privileged sources. Everything was all right at Kensington Palace, according to the Men from the Mall.

Sir Robert responded by inviting Lord McGregor and other members of the commission including Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, an extra lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, and Sir Edward Pickering, the
eminence grise
of the Murdoch empire, to a return lunch at the Palace. This cosy luncheon club kept in touch with the avowed aim of exploring 'the possibilities of mutual assistance'.

In other words, how to deal with freelance mavericks like Andrew Morton who were outside the direct control of either editors or Palace officials. 'Morton went alone - and this is his secret,' said the Fleet Street insider. 'He hunted alone.'

Working out of his first-floor office in a yellow brick building opposite Joe's Cafe, Morton built up a picture of Diana and Charles that had never been seen before, it is explaining to the outside world that this is the reality and then trying to get them to believe it,' he said. 'People actually believe the image of dashing, charming princes and beautiful, alluring princesses because it is deeply enmeshed in their psychology from childhood. I was intrigued as an individual about Diana's own childhood because her brother John had died after ten hours. I wanted to know how she felt about that - that's what I was interested in.'

In May, McGregor suddenly realised that someone was deliberately laying a false trail when he spoke to Lord Rothermere, last of the hereditary Press barons and proprietor of the
Daily Mail.
'Lord Rothermere told me at a private dinner in Luxembourg that the Prince and Princess of Wales had each recruited national newspapers to carry their own accounts of their marital rifts,' he wrote in a letter to Sir David Calcutt, QC, head of a Government enquiry into Press controls.

If McGregor sensed that he was losing his way, the calls Andrew Morton was making would have confirmed his worst fears. 'He went to Diana's friends and he asked about the diets she used,' said the Fleet Street insider. 'Some time that summer, she gave the go-ahead for Carolyn Bartholomew to talk about bulimia. The food issue came first - before Camilla and all that stuff about suicide attempts. But he was still doing
Diana's Health & Beauty Secrets
into the summer of 1991.'

As it had been suspected for years that Diana suffered from an eating disorder, probably
anorexia nervosa,
this would have been an important revelation. But it would have been nowhere near as damaging to Charles as an expose of his relationship with Camilla. A deeply entrenched fear about her own position influenced Diana's decision to go for the conjugal jugular. 'She knew from her pals in the Press that Charles had approached several top people in the media to put across his point of view,' said the source. 'She believed that Charles used people in the media when it suited him.'

The most blatant example of this was a story leaked to the
Daily Mail
by the Prince's friends that Diana had vetoed plans for a party to celebrate her thirtieth birthday in July. 'She didn't want a party because Charles was so busy with Camilla Parker Bowles, but two of his friends went to Nigel Dempster and told him that Diana had refused Charles's offer of a party,' said the Fleet Street insider.

It was indicative of the Princess's state of mind that the story infuriated her: 'She knew that the
Sun
had at least one Squidgy tape because they had told James Gilbey. Diana's greatest fear was that the Charles camp would use the tape against her. No one is saying that they would have done it, just that her fears grew. So Di had a meeting with her brother Charles, James Gilbey, Carolyn Bartholomew and a couple of other pals - a council of war, if you like. They decided she had to strike first.'

Morton was chosen as the messenger for Diana's side of the story 'because he was already researching his book on health and beauty, and she trusted him'. This scenario baffled Morton, who said: 'Why single out some guy you don't know and, more importantly, you don't know whether you can trust?'

Was he chosen?

'No.'

Had he been fed with information?

'I wish they had done!'

Morton claimed that Diana had never discussed her marital problems or anything else with him personally. She had simply told the friends he had approached to 'make up your own mind'. Harry Arnold put it succinctly: 'Diana went along with what was happening. Charles had no say. She had engulfed him.'

James Gilbey had been 'serving his time' as a prisoner of Squidgy for exactly a year when the authors questioned him about his role in the Morton book. Asked in August 1993 if Diana had told him 'to make up his own mind', he said: i must say my recollection of events, as you can imagine, becomes more and more distorted as more and more things are apparently quoted back which I said many years ago. But I'm sure if that's what Andrew said, that's what Andrew said. I don't know. I haven't got a tape recording of the conversation that took place between us. If that's what I did say, I'm very surprised that he said that to you knowing full well that you're likely to publish it. I'm very sort of amenable about these things. I don't want to be awkward about it.'

Morton's quest had begun in earnest when one of his contacts arranged to meet him in a cafe at North Ruislip outside London soon after Diana's tenth wedding anniversary on 29 July. He revealed what Morton called 'the flip side of the fairytale'. Diana had seriously considered calling off the wedding, the contact told Morton, because of the Prince's continuing friendship with Camilla Parker Bowles.

'I had a long interview with a guy in this working man's cafe where many things were hinted at but nothing was confirmed,' he said, clarifying the position, it was basically, "This is what you should be thinking about." There were bits and pieces coming in from different sources over a period of time. I read a clutch of books about Diana that came out for the thirtieth birthday and the tenth anniversary and I thought, "They're not taking the story any further". I realised that I could just have a go.

'The idea was to concentrate on Diana from the start and see what it was like through her eyes. Ultimately, you mesh it all together - and Hey Presto!'

Morton called his publisher, Michael O'Mara, an American from Philadelphia, with the news that he was on to a really mega royal story.

'Camilla was an evolving thing because it was building up the evidence and just trying to work it out from the dates,' said Morton, it is just detective work really, isn't it? You have an idea of what is going on and, having a thesis, you develop it and try to explore certain avenues. The bulimia had been half hinted at a long time before, but I interviewed Carolyn Bartholomew (about that). I confirmed the suicides by a separate source other than Gilbey.

'So much that has been said about this whole affair has been done with the benefit of hindsight. The key is that in March 1992 you would not have said, "Is it a conspiracy?" The fact is that all of these things have happened independently of me. The Andy and Fergie separation was first, Anne's divorce second, then Diana did the Egypt trip on her own and the India trip where there was that misguided kiss (between her and Charles). A pattern of events was building up to a climax - symbolically, the fire at Windsor Castle. Fortunately, I did not have a box of matches.'

Not since Prinny and Caroline had the Royal Family faced such a brutal stand-off between two of its married members. If a measure of sanity had prevailed, some kind of moratorium could have been agreed between the warring partners. Morton would have published Diana's bulimia secret and Squidgy might have remained on deposit at the Midland Bank.

This could well have averted two of the most crushing blows of
annus horribilis,
but it wouldn't have stopped the Fergie Follies.

AS ever the team player, Fergie wanted Diana's connivance to confirm to the world that royal life was unbearable and the Queen's sons inadequate. But the Princess had rejected the idea out of hand during Christmas at Sandringham. She decided to let Fergie make her 'mad break' alone, believing she could manipulate events to her advantage from inside her marriage, in her own way, Diana's obsessional behaviour is obviously very sick,' said the titled Chelsea lady. 'But she's got a much stronger sense of self-preservation than Fergie.'

Even at the eleventh hour, Lord McGregor tried to clear a path through the undergrowth. 'I told the then Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Kenneth Baker, of my anxieties in December 1991,' he said, 'and suggested that he might wish to consider how the Palace Press Office could act to limit the damage.' Just to make sure no base remained uncovered, McGregor also tipped off John Major's Press Secretary, Gus O'Donnell, thus ensuring that the Prime Minister was alerted to the dangers of the internecine warfare going on inside the House of Windsor.

The heavy duty artillery was all lined up. When Diana returned to the safety of Kensington Palace from the unfriendly shooting country of Norfolk, she put her own plan into action. One of the phone calls she made was to Penny Thornton at her home, Branshott Court, Hampshire. 'My marriage isn't the only one in disarray,' she said. 'Sarah and Andrew have also got problems.' Ms Thornton said she recorded that call in her diary under the date: Thursday, 2 January, 1992.

Diana knew from her friends that Morton had made considerable progress on several aspects of his new work, secretly renamed
DIANA: Her True Story.
A major breakthrough had been securing the co-operation of her masseur/therapist, Stephen Twigg, who had helped to restore Diana's confidence after the Year of Living Dangerously. Morton said that Twigg decided 'on his own volition to speak to me'. 'I have subsequently found out that he spoke to the Princess of Wales who said, "Don't do it," ' said the writer. 'Now I would hardly call that co-operation.'

Twigg's dilemma was that although he wished to respect the confidence of his client, he saw that here was a chance for a wider audience to be told about his work. 'Basically, the situation was that people close to the Princess were telling Andrew about me and my influence in her situation,' Twigg recalled. 'As a result, he came to me and my immediate inclination was not to have anything to do with him, but subsequently common sense prevailed and I decided I'd better know what he was going to say even if it meant contributing.'

Matthew Freud, a public relations consultant who was later hired by Twigg, said it was his understanding that up to a matter of weeks before publication of the book, 'Stephen still hadn't told Diana that he had talked to Morton.' She was well aware, however, that her brother Charles had personally guided him through her childhood and that her father had provided the publisher with pictures from the family album and a selection from the portfolio of Patrick Demarchelier, one of which had appeared on the
Vogue
cover. The photographer was as surprised as anyone when he was told they would turn up in
DIANA: Her True Story.
'Patrick didn't know any of that,' said his agent, Brian Bantrey. 'They were all pictures that her father had.'

But still Diana raised the ante. 'She suddenly released permission for all the Camilla stuff to go in,' said the Fleet Street insider. Terrified of the Squidgy threat, Diana had decided to bring her husband's mistress out into the open.

'I remember very distinctly it was 12 January, 1992, that I had a call from Andrew (Morton) asking me to do a tiny piece of research on Camilla Parker Bowles for his new book,' said Margaret Holder, the royal researcher, immediately he said it, I knew it wasn't a health and beauty book at all. He said it wasn't urgent but his voice betrayed that it was. I knew he worked to deadlines at the end of March so I got on with it fairly quickly. In fact, he asked for two names, Camilla Parker Bowles and Emilie van Custem (one of the Highgrove Set). It was very simple, basic research and he was happy with it.'

Word of Morton's enterprise reached Sir David English, the highly experienced editor of the
Daily Mail,
'I knew months before it was written that Andrew Morton and his agent were claiming to be producing a book about the problems of the royal marriage - with the full co-operation of the Princess's side,' he said, i found it difficult to believe that Morton would be given such information and made my own inquiries. At a reception in early March, I actually asked the Princess of Wales about the book. I told her that if it was not true it would be a most damaging and dangerous book. In that conversation, I was left in no doubt that she not only knew about the book, and what its contents were, but also did not feel it would be a danger to her.'