Diana: Her True Story

And that letter, you know, that letter is really our anchor for this deep dive today.

It has to be because, well, we are looking at a story that the world simply refuses to close the book on.

Like our mission today is to look way past the heavily manufactured fairy tale of the 1980s.

Right.

Prince Charles of Wales had fully resumed his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles and Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, engaged in affairs of her own, most notably with cavalry officer James Hewitt and later with a man named James Gilbey.

And this leads us right into the War of the Waleses in the 1990s.

The traditional royal playbook was to maintain a stiff upper lip, ignore rumors, and project absolute stoicism.

But she threw out the playbook.

And British cinemas were showing, God, a very macho, Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, Patriot Games with Harrison Ford, Lethal Weapon 3, and David Fincher's Alien 3.

And the best-selling hardbacks included Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton, of course, Domes of Fire by David Eddings, Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn, The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser, and Gerald's Game by Stephen King.

God, Henry VIII and his six wives.

They can't get enough of that.

you've got harry and megan they're back they're looking for a 12 million pound house with nine bedrooms in a film studio somewhere out in the cotswolds you've got william not speaking to them you've got the king trying to make peace and then today once again andrew mountbatten-winsor former prince andrew is in the news as rep thomas massey from kentucky claims Andrew committed sex crimes in the USA.

Now, to break it all down for us, and frankly, to break some news, we've got Andrew Morton, who is the acclaimed English journalist and best-selling royal biographer who made global history with his revelatory 1992 book, Diana, her true story in which Diana actually participated in.

Now, Andrew is a leading international authority and television commentator on the British monarchy with best-selling profiles of Queen Elizabeth and Meghan Markle.

So of course I had to get his thoughts on everything.

And then between William and Harry, there's lingering resentment that Harry felt he didn't get as much money as his brother.

You know, he had the bigger room at Balmoral, he was treated differently, he was treated, and he hated always being in his shadow.

Well, that is the name of the game, hence the title of the book, Spare.

I mean, Princess Margaret managed to have quite a decent life as the Spare, and quite a glamorous life.

Charles and Diana's marriage had also deteriorated badly.

Intimate details were appearing almost daily in newspapers and books.

Then, on November 20th, a fire broke out at Windsor Castle.

A faulty spotlight ignited a curtain in Queen Victoria's private chapel and the flame spread through the historic building.

For the iPaper, Harry Mount writes, "If the Sussexes do grow closer to the Spencers, there will be once again two rival courts at work involving these two families." Even before Charles and Diana separated in 1992, they and their allies had split into two courts.

In that same year, Andrew Morton published his explosive biography, Diana: Her True Story, with revelations passed on from Diana about the parlous state of the royal marriage.

For years, the separated couple were marooned in a miserable world of briefing and counter-briefing, culminating in the infamous 1995 Martin Bashir interview with Diana on Panorama.

In a sign of the toxic world Diana had to negotiate her way through then, it emerged in 2020 that Bashir had used forged bank statements to win the trust of Diana and Earl Spencer.

That actually came from Diana.

It was in Andrew Morton's biography of her, Diana, Her True Story, published in 1992, which was written with Diana's help.

And that note is important.

It will come up again later.

So the men in gray, when we talk about them, it really involves the top level aides to each principal royal household.

So in Diana's day, it would have been Buckingham Palace for the queen.

kensington palace for herself and now it's kensington palace for william and kate for king charles over time it's been kensington palace clarence house and now buckingham palace but even charles i found this interesting has run up against the men in gray back when he was heir to the throne and queen elizabeth was still queen jonathan dimbleby who wrote his like authorized biography described how martin charteris who was the queen's private secretary intervened when the idea of Charles's very successful foundation, the Prince's Trust, was first concocted.

I just found that so interesting.

But the stronger her public identity became, the more chaotic her private life looked.

In 1992, the carefully managed public image of the royal marriage was shattered by the publication of Andrew Morton's biography, Diana: Her True Story.

The book contained a series of extraordinary revelations about Diana's life behind palace walls, including her struggle with bulimia, her profound unhappiness, episodes of self-harm and suicide attempts, and the devastating breakdown of her marriage to Charles.

At the time, Diana's involvement with the book was firmly denied, allowing Morton to present his account while protecting his most important source.

Separation did not bring peace for Diana.

If anything, it opened a new stage of the conflict in which both sides fought for public sympathy.

Charles participated in an authorized biography by Jonathan Dimbleby, and in a 1994 television interview, acknowledged that he had been unfaithful after he believed the marriage had irretrievably broken down.

The admission confirmed what much of the public already suspected and placed Camilla permanently inside the story as a villain.

It's like we know.

We read Diana: Her True Story.

And it, it, it did seem like in some of the promotion for it, he's lashing out at the royal experts that don't know what they're talking about, and it's like, well, actually, our research material has been your sister's voice, has been your sister's quotes, and your sister was incredibly close, some would suggest, I mean, in the case of Richard Kay, closer to some royal reporters than her own brother.

Absolutely.