09/07/13
For friend RICHARD KAY the truth about Princess Diana's turbulent life is far more gripping than anything
found in the new film
By Richard Kay September 7th 2013
Some weeks ago Hasnat Khan rang me. The publicity machine for a film was cranking up and magazine writers and
TV reporters wanted to talk to the man whom the movie claimed had ‘stolen’ Princess Diana’s heart.
Several years of living in relative anonymity in East London and working as a cardiothoracic surgeon at Basildon
University Hospital were about to come to an end.
The consultant had been through such times before, of course. For more than a year, around the period of the circus
that surrounded Diana’s inquest, he lived abroad, settling briefly in Dublin, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur and his Pakistan
homeland.
Truth and fiction: Naomi Watts' (left) portrayal of Princess Diana (right) is more a fictional representation
than an accurate account of the truth
Throughout he remained the same discreet and dignified figure who has avoided the limelight, eschewing the financial
fortune that he could so easily have made from writing about the love affair with Princess Diana that was always
doomed to end in tears.
But he had come back to England because, as he told me, it was where his friends were and where he could find the
work that gave him most fulfilment.
It was that same life-saving work that first attracted the separated, but still not divorced, Princess of Wales to him at
the Royal Brompton Hospital in 1995.
‘Here we go again,’ Hasnat said to me ruefully. We discussed arranging to see the film and laughed about him being
played by the impossibly handsome Naveen Andrews.
‘More lies and distortions, I expect. I think I’ll just keep my head down,’ he said.
This week, the film he dreaded — called simply Diana — had its West End premiere. Critics, including the Mail’s Chris
Tookey, who called it ‘terribly, terribly dull’, have panned it.
‘Squirmingly embarrassing’ was among the kinder epithets.
The film company says it set out to make an ‘insightful and compassionate study of Diana’s later years’. But has it? I,
too, have seen the film, which purports to tell the story of the love between the Princess and Hasnat Khan.
Remembered: Sixteen years on since Diana's death, the details, inevitably become foggy, and time warps everybody's
memories
As someone who knew Diana well throughout the period in which it is set, I wanted to know if it could live up to such
lofty ambitions.
Most of all, I wanted to know if it was truthful. Could a two-hour film really do justice to my friend Diana? The answer, I’
m afraid, is that it does not.
It would somehow have been more honest of the film-makers to have said from the outset that it was a fictional version
of the unlikely romance between Dr Khan and the Princess.
Instead, they have tried to have it both ways: insisting their story is based on the many written accounts of the affair —
although only one book is acknowledged in the credits — while at the same time injecting great chunks of make-
believe.
One falsehood in particular stands out. Diana and Hasnat are filmed walking on the seashore below the white cliffs of
Dover.
But no such visit took place — although they did venture out to Windsor and further afield to Stratford-upon-Avon,
where Khan’s uncle and his family lived.
How much more compelling it would have been to have shown the two lovers in Shakespeare’s birthplace.
Like many a Hollywood director dramatising real-life events, Oliver Hirschbiegel, a German, has played fast and loose
with the actualite.
The film is meant to cover the two-year period from Diana first meeting Khan to her death in August 1997. But
episodes outside that time frame are moved in to suit the director’s whim. The Princess’s visit to Australia in 1996, for
example, is switched to 1997, as is a trip to Italy.
Pictures of her surrounded by paparazzi and well-wishers, which actually took place in Rome in high summer, are
moved to Rimini, where it was wet and windy and there was no such crush of crowds.
Another image of her, head down in a taxi trapped by the photographers who stalked her, happened years earlier.
To many who see this film, such details will be trifling, but the danger is they and all the other errors help contribute to
an atmosphere that is entirely misleading.
Getting the detail right is the foundation on which any credible story must be built.
The Audi convertible in which Diana (played by Naomi Watts) is seen driving was, in fact, traded in for a more discreet
BMW soon after she met Hasnat.
Similarly, in real-life, the wine glass in Diana’s hand was almost always filled with nothing stronger than water — she
certainly never drank claret as she does with some abandon in the film.
And what ever happened to Hasnat’s moustache, surely one physical detail they could easily have kept? To those like
me who knew Diana, it is the authenticity, or rather lack of it, which so undermines this Hollywood fantasy.
That Diana had fallen in love with the burly heart surgeon was a secret she shared with very few, but it impacted
hugely on her life in a way that this film does scant justice to.
It was the deeply troubling reason that lay behind the rift that opened up between Diana and her mother Frances
Shand Kydd.
When they spoke on the telephone in May 1997, they quarrelled bitterly over her relationship with the ‘Muslim’ doctor.
For Diana it was an insult too far. After slamming down the phone, she never spoke to her mother again. I know, too,
that it was difficult for her sons to come to terms with the relationship.
Hasnat was a figure unlike any other of the men friends whose company Diana had enjoyed since her split from Prince
Charles.
Like so much of her life, Hasnat, too, was compartmentalised so that Diana’s time with him came when William and
Harry were away at school or with their father.
So what is the truth of the pair’s relationship? Was it the most significant episode of Diana’s life or has it all been
overblown?
Sixteen years on since Diana’s death, the details, inevitably become foggy, time warps everybody’s memories.
Those who see the new film will be shown a highly-strung Diana, who in the late summer of 1995 was bored and
lonely, separated from the Royal Family by her split from Charles but still part of it. In fact, her life in the early autumn
of 1995 was busy and thick with intrigue.
Troubled: In the final years of her life Diana was suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, some, of
course, of her own making
I well remember that the summer had been bruising and damaging for the Princess following claims of an affair
between her and Will Carling, the married England rugby captain. Carling’s marriage did not survive the allegations
and the relationship with the Princess also petered out.
Diana, missing the companionship and stabilising presence of Lucia Flecha de Lima, the wife of the former Brazilian
ambassador who had moved to Washington, was slowly re-evaluating her royal life.
She had by then met the TV journalist Martin Bashir through her brother Charles, Earl Spencer. It was to prove a fatal
introduction. Over the following weeks, Bashir was to persuade Diana — who was naturally cautious, unlike the
reckless figure portrayed by Watts — to record a TV interview about her marriage and life.
Naturally it was being planned with great secrecy. Her staff and friends were ignorant of it all.
But it was against this background that she had encountered Hasnat Khan at the bedside of Joseph Toffollo, whose
Irish wife Oonagh was the Princess’s acupuncturist and a former nurse to the late Duke of Windsor. Khan had
performed a triple heart bypass on Toffollo, whose life was greatly extended by the surgery.
Diana was looking for consolation of some kind, I know.
Newspaper reports at the time had once again been speculating on Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles,
the woman whom Diana blamed for having destroyed her marriage.
They had appeared together at a society party at the Ritz Hotel in London, the first time they had been seen in public
at the same event since Charles’s TV admission that he had been unfaithful to Diana. To Diana, the stars were
aligning themselves.
She was made miserable by her conviction, almost obsession, that Charles and Camilla were beginning to be allowed
to enjoy some degree of public acceptance of their relationship.
Public life: Newspaper reports speculating on Prince Charles's relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles weighed
heavily on the Princess.. Camilla, of course, was by now divorced from her Army officer husband Brigadier Andrew
Parker Bowles. It took a little gentle persuasion from some people such as myself to make Diana see she was losing
the PR war because ever since her marriage split she had been linked, unhelpfully, only to married men.
Dr Hasnat Khan had no such baggage. Two years older than Diana, he was 36 when they first met, and didn’t have a
girlfriend, let alone a wife.
His life revolved completely around his medical work, his studies (he was slaving over a PhD) and the commitments he
had with the charity Chain of Hope.
He willingly gave up holidays to travel to the Third World where he performed heart operations on patients for whom
Western medicine would otherwise have been out of reach.
Well-built and a tidy, if not stylish, dresser — in the film he is given a ludicrous make-over from glossy haircut to a
designer wardrobe which he has never possessed — he was certainly intrigued by the Princess.
But he was not absorbed; that was reserved for his surgical work.
According to the film, their romance was conducted with copious glasses of wine. Diana did, indeed, have a well-
stocked cellar at Kensington Palace but, as I have noted, she scarcely drank. By the late Nineties, she was virtually
teetotal.
Their moments together were few and secretive.
Paul Burrell, Diana’s butler (who is given an inexplicably butch personality in the film) was one of the few to be
involved, often collecting the doctor from pre-arranged spots near his South Kensington home and delivering him to
the Palace under a blanket in the back of a Vauxhall car.
Diana’s apartment, a vast elegant suite of rooms, is reduced in this film to the dimension of a twee country house
hotel.
"The kitchen, for example, where she and I once cooked a truly disgusting meal, was more like the kind you find in a
restaurant than a home. It certainly didn’t have the ornamental fireplace visible in the movie."
And her vast bedroom with its large collection of soft toys that gazed reproachfully from a distant sofa, is portrayed in
the film as a stuffy boudoir.
Hasnat’s flat, meanwhile, did not back on to the London Underground track with trains rattling past as depicted in
many scenes, presumably to add to the contrast between the pair.
Again, it is easy to be pernickety when you know the truth.
But I was amused by one particular line in an otherwise leaden script. It comes when Hasnat inquires how he can get
in touch with the Princess. She has a mobile, she says, adding ‘four actually’.
She didn’t, of course, but I know that she changed her phones and their numbers frequently.
In fact, it was her decision in July 1997 to change her number yet again which effectively ended her contact with
Hasnat — he did not have her new number.
She had resorted to this kind of action over several years, not just to protect herself from a prying media but also to
excommunicate friends she no longer wanted to know. It was cruel but highly effective.
The Diana I knew in those last two years was not the manic figure portrayed in this film.
She was still maintaining a roster of public duties. She went to Sandringham for Christmas — albeit for only one night.
She was feted in New York for her humanitarian work and she maintained a cordial relationship with Prince Charles for
the sake of their sons.
She was still suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, some, of course, of her own making.
Ordered to divorce after the disaster of the Bashir interview on BBC TV’s Panorama, she was to be stripped of her
HRH title.
She had also made an appalling gaffe with an untrue accusation levelled at her boys’ nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke.
To my surprise, I have a brief, if ignominious, off-camera moment in the film.
Diana is seen telephoning ‘Richard’ to encourage him not to believe reports about her and Khan.
The story of their romance had already been strongly hinted at — by me in the Mail and by others — but Diana
insisted it was completely untrue.
‘Bulls**t,’ was the word I recall he used, accurately reported in the film.
Fact: As the film suggests Diana was known to change her phone and
numbers frequently to manage her personal life.
The film doesn’t show it, but she was wrestling with herself about the Hasnat affair. She knew marriage to him would
be impossible but she longed for it. What she wanted from Hasnat was for him to try to make it happen. Yet, frankly,
he was in no position to do so.
The truth is that by the summer of 1997 she was drifting away from Hasnat. It is here where the film is particularly
disingenuous.
It chooses to portray her romance with Dodi Fayed as a fling to make Hasnat jealous — and by golly he was.
But it was with Dodi that she found peace and contentment, if only briefly. He was the only man she publicly
acknowledged — not counting her one-time Cavalry officer lover James Hewitt.
The idea, as depicted in the film, that she connived with the hated paparazzi to stage the photographs that emerged
of her with Dodi is equally ludicrous. In fact, two days before her death, she and Dodi began legal action in the French
courts against the very photographers the film says she was in cahoots with.
The question remains whether she would have returned to Hasnat Khan had she not died. Many of her friends believe
that to be the case.
This film, which inevitably dwells on sadness, suggests that they would.
For his part, Hasnat is more realistic about the possibility. ‘Maybe’ is the only word he allows himself to use.
But then he knows the real story, and this new film — he assures me — is most definitely not it.
"Hello,
I have this to say regarding this article by my friend Richard and one of the few journalists I truly trusted calling him
from Paris as I have said on my site; so privy to a lot of my life; not all of course naturally. Only I knew how I honestly
felt about personal things and played my cards close to my chest. The second atricle in this duo told by Lucia who was
indeed someone I confided in, I looked on her as somewhat of a mother figure since as this article says my mother and I
often had a very difficult relationship.
I will confirm that I changed my mobile number with regularity yes and odd therefore not one was reported anyway
to have been found with me in Paris amongst my things on the 31st August 1997. I often had two mobiles with me and
needed this personal connection with my boys of course. It has been said that the ex Duchess of York called me hearing
initially what happened to me in Paris and it went to voicemail so of course I had a mobile with me as did Dodi and Henri
Paul and Trevor Rees Jones, none of us incommunicado as officially it would seem we were .. how absurd! People can
believe this or not but I would have contacted Hasnat and if people remember he attended my funeral, his birthday card
from me in 1997 arriving in the same post as that invitation for him.
This article also confirming I did not drink and so as I have said would have certainly detected the smell of alcohol
on a drunken driver and have been driven nowhere by him! The fact is Henri Paul wasn't drunk and I am so sorry for his
parents that this stigma has been one attached to him very unfairly! Dodi and I however did allow certain images of us
to be taken because as I say we wanted to be seen publicly and of course I wanted to wipe out the headlines of Camilla
and Charles and this was one sure way of doing just that though this did not extend to having us being bumped off to do
so!
In regards to the film I do not think it right the actress portraying me Naomi Watts be criticised in what is
seemingly a witch hunt as at the end of the day she is an actress and was just doing her job! I would think it virtually
impossible for anyone to play me as similarly anyone playing Marilyn will be somewhat unfairly compared with her; it's
a drawback of being an iconic figure and a legend. The fact clearly the research for the film was clearly not as
professional as it might have been not being Naomi's responsibility and likewise she not being responsible for the script!
If people wonder yes I did contact Richard albeit through Andrew of course who sent him a copy of my
channeled book but he did not believe or trust it being me which was of great personal disappointment to me naturally
as I would have so enjoyed privately meeting with him as I did with Penny Thornton of course. Not everyone though is
open to believing they can be speaking to dead ex Princesses however convincing that communication might indeed be!
Diana
THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT DIANA
Richard Kay
Last updated at 00:00 29 November 2003
NO ONE was closer to Princess Diana than Lucia Flecha de Lima. Of all the friends she made in her short life, the
Princess's relationship with the elegant diplomat's wife was the strongest and most rewarding.
It began when Lucia's husband, Paulo Tarso Flecha de Lima, took charge of Brazil's London embassy, and it survived
when, three years later, he became ambassador to Washington.
Lucia was there at the worst of times as Diana's marriage to Prince Charles broke up under the weight of his betrayal
and when she found herself a virtual outcast from the Royal Family. It was in Lucia's home that the Princess watched
the news broadcasts of her separation from the Prince, confirmed in the flat tones of the then Prime Minister, John
Major.
And on the day of the divorce, it was Lucia who flew from America to be at her friend's side for the unbearably sad
final act of a marriage the Princess never wanted to end.
In the sophisticated Brazilian, Diana found more than just friendship: the two were like mother and daughter.
'She was one of the family and we came to treat her like our own children,' Lucia told me in her first major interview
with a British newspaper.
'I think it gave her a sense of belonging that she did not have elsewhere.' Following the death of Diana's father, Earl
Spencer, in 1992 and the seesaw relationship with her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, who was living off the West
coast of Scotland, the Princess found solace in the de Limas, the sort of family she had dreamed of as a child.
At the height of the recriminations that swirled around Diana, the de Limas allowed her to use their home as a
sanctuary. She had her own room and would stay for weekends.
It was there that she took the now infamous letters from Prince Philip (in which he tried to help patch up her marriage),
and there that she and Lucia would pour over her responses.
It is also, I can reveal, the place where these letters - which Lucia described as 'warm, courteous and helpful' - were
hidden for years.
While many of Diana's friendships perished on the high altar of her expectations, Lucia's never did. It even prospered
after the de Limas moved to the U.S., where Lucia became one of Washington's most admired hostesses and through
whom the Princess met America's powerful elite, including Hillary Clinton.
A year ago, when Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, was accused of theft, Lucia was one of an impressive list of the
Princess's friends who was prepared to stand up in court as a character witness for him.
'I was doing it for Diana,' she says.
'It is what she would have expected of me. I thought it was perfectly normal that he should have had the things he did
of hers in his house - even the more expensive items.
'Diana was always generous and she would often leave out items on a table for her staff to help themselves, even
Cartier clocks she had been given and had no wish for.' Back in London last week for the first time since the fiasco of
the Burrell trial, she has watched with horror the fallout from the publication of the former servant's book.
'I feel extremely disappointed and sad because Paul has let all of us down, including Diana. I recognise that he was in
a difficult position. He had been humiliated, his family was distraught and he couldn't find a job.
'He had his two sons to think about, and nobody from the Establishment had given him a helping hand. In such
circumstances, people sometimes do extreme things.
'Paul once promised me that he would never write a book about Diana. But there it is, he has to deal with that.
'I have not heard a word from him since the case. I received a letter from his lawyer, but that is all - no word of thanks
from him.
WHAT I do find uncomfortable is the manner in which Paul paints himself as Diana's friend. He was not.
He was her servant. He opened the door, he closed the door, he served drinks and cleared away dishes.
'In all the time I knew Diana, I never saw him sitting beside her and having a conversation. It is also interesting how he
now refers to her by her first name. Because he would never have dared call her "Diana".
'He once told me he was thinking of publishing a book of recipes so, looking back, perhaps it was always going to lead
up to this.' No longer an ambassador's wife - last year, her husband retired from the diplomatic service after more
than four decades - Lucia is now a dignitary in her own right as secretary of state for tourism in Brasilia.
We meet in the Mayfair home of the current ambassador, the townhouse that used to be Diana's bolthole.
'I am sleeping in the same room we gave Diana, and the same member of staff who looked after her is taking care of
me,' she tells me. 'It is somehow very comforting.' She finds London less bright now.
'Diana lit the place up. Even Hello! magazine seems duller because she is no longer in it.' The two women met in
1990, soon after the de Limas arrived in Britain, but became close the following year when the Waleses made an
official visit to Brazil. A mutual friend suggested to Lucia that she would be a 'good help' to Diana, who was more than
20 years her junior.
'The first thing Diana said to me was: "You are Lucia. I've been told we should become good friends.'' 'It was all on her
initiative ... we clicked, just like that. Friendship needs no explanation, but I know I was a mother figure to her and she
was like a daughter to me.' At the time, the Waleses were hardly on speaking terms and couldn't even bear to be in
the same room.
A remarkable friendship soon developed between the two women.
'Diana was a very lonely young woman. The boys were quite small then and she had her friends, of course, but she
was growing apart from some of them,' says Lucia.
Soon after the trip, Diana became a regular visitor to the de Limas' London home. At weekends, when her sons were
away with their father, Diana would stay at the embassy.
'We went to museums together, to lunch at Harry's Bar and San Lorenzo or shopping,' says Lucia.
At the time, three of the five de Lima children were living with their parents.
'Diana just became another one of the family. My husband adored her and she felt completely at ease with us.'
Indeed, so at ease that some mornings, after Paulo Tarso had left the marital bed, Diana would jump in, just as a
daughter might.
'I didn't find it a drama. I adopted her as a daughter and she adopted me as a mother,' says Lucia.
'At my house, Diana was a girl in trouble and I would listen to her and give her advice if she wanted it.
Mostly, I listened.' All the same, Lucia cautioned the Princess against divorcing Charles.
'I told her they could lead separate lives but should remain married. It was not like an ordinary marriage, she didn't
have to ask him for money, or press his shirts or cook for him or even move into a small apartment.
Nothing much needed to change.
'I told her that the people should know they were no longer living together: that would have been their responsibility
towards the nation.
'The truth is I don't think she wanted to separate, but they were too competitive.' To begin with, Lucia tried not to take
sides. 'When a marriage fails, it is not one person's fault. I liked Prince Charles very much; so did my husband.
He was most charming to us.' Lucia did not know much about the Princess's secret collaboration with the author
Andrew Morton, whose 1992 book revealed the depth of the misery of her marriage.
'I admit I was shocked when it came out. I thought Diana had put herself in danger, exposing too much of herself to
her enemies. For a long time, she denied she had done anything and said it was all the work of her friends.
'But she eventually told me that although she never met Mr Morton, she had co-operated through a third party.
I later discovered she had one of the chapters delivered here!' Lucia recalls the day the separation was announced.
'We watched the news together at our house and she was pleased that Mr Major said there were no plans for a
divorce.' It was during the dying days of the royal marriage that Prince Philip began his correspondence with his
daughter-in-law.
Lucia recalls how the Princess kept the letters, together with copies of her responses (written with the help of Lucia
and another of Diana's close friends, Rosa Monckton, the wife of Sunday Telegraph editor Dominic Lawson) in a safe
at the embassy.
'She was afraid that someone might find them at Kensington Palace,' she says. 'At that time, she and Charles were
not separated and all sorts of people could come and go in her apartment.' There were about half a dozen letters
from Philip. 'He was trying to be helpful. They were warm and kind, and were like a father writing to a daughter. He
referred to himself as "Pa" and the Queen as "Ma", and always signed off with love.
'He drew on his own experiences: in one letter he wrote about how, when he and the Queen married, they thought
they would have some years together living their own lives.
But it was not to be, and "Ma" was called to her duty and he had to give up the career he loved.
'Philip felt Diana and Charles could live separate lives, with separate apartments at Kensington Palace, but they
should remain together. Diana thought Philip wanted her to be submissive towards the royals.
'I wish I had spoken to Prince Philip because I am sure if he had known my side of the story, he could have helped
Diana more effectively. But I thought he would refuse to see me or, worse, ask why an ambassador's wife was
interfering in a private family matter.
'In retrospect, knowing what I do, I wish I'd taken that risk and perhaps I could have helped.' Later, Lucia attempted to
return the Philip letters to Diana. 'My husband said they were an important part of British history and should remain in
Britain,' she says.
'But Diana wanted me to keep them so, in the end, we compromised. I had copies made, which I kept in the diplomatic
pouch.' Lucia is convinced Diana never wanted a divorce. She also insists the marriage was not loveless. 'She often
told me how happy they were in the beginning, especially after William was born, and how they bathed him together.
'When she was with Charles for the last time as man and wife, her parting words to him were: "I will love you for ever." I
really think she never stopped loving him.
'The problem was Camilla, which is why Diana was so hurt by the Dimbleby interview (when.the Prince of Wales
admitted his adultery). For Charles, it was a shock to find out that his wife had a temper.' It is this intimate knowledge
that convinces Lucia that rumours about the Prince and a servant are wrong. 'He was a regular man, Diana always
assured me of that,' she says.
When Charles and Diana's divorce came through in July 1996, Lucia answered the Princess's cri de coeur and flew to
London to be with her. 'She was in need of comfort, she wanted me to be there because I was her friend.' The de
Limas' new home in America became a refuge for Diana and they would go on holiday together. But travelling with
Diana was not always easy.
Once, Diana, Lucia, her daughter Beatriz and Rosa Monckton travelled to the remote Indonesian island of Mojo.
'After 12 hours, she wanted to come home. In the end, she came home alone.'
Lucia last saw Diana in June 1997, ten weeks before her death, when the Princess auctioned her dresses for charity
in New The following month, on her husband's birthday, Lucia received a fax from the Princess with a list of her phone
numbers for a break she was taking in the South of France. It was the holiday where she was to meet Dodi Fayed, the
son of Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed.
Diana told Lucia how simpatico and polite Dodi was towards her and about his kindness to her sons. Later, she told
Lucia about the presents he had given her: a necklace, bracelet and watch.
'She did not mention a ring and I am sure she would have - she told me everything,' she says. 'I remember I told her to
be careful.
'I did not know Dodi but I know he was not "The One". I do not believe she would have married him. Why? Because
when I asked her about him, she said: "Lucia, he is very kind to me." You don't use those words about the man you
are in love with.' The Princess and Lucia spoke for the last time three days before Diana's death. 'She was happy
enough, but she was tired and wanted to come home. This was the Diana I knew.
'To me, that film footage of her leaving the Ritz Hotel for the last time says it all, she looks cross and fed up - certainly
not someone about to become engaged.' In her study, Lucia keeps a framed photograph of Diana alongside one of
her son, Paulinho who, disabled from birth, died three years ago.
Not a day goes by when Lucia doesn't think about the Princess.
She has never seen Diana's island grave at Althorp, the Spencer family's ancestral home.
'I have never been invited there,' she says. 'Anyway, it was the wrong place to bury her. She would never have wanted
to be out of reach of the public she loved so much.
'Why couldn't she be buried where everyone laid flowers in front of Kensington Palace? I feel sure that is what she
would have wanted. Diana belongs to England, not the Spencers.'
"My comments on this article being again I sent Lucia a fax of the numbers I could be reached at in the South of France
so clearly therefore had mobiles with me naturally so too on August 31st 1997! I would imagine found and destroyed at
the scene with the cocaine being as I have said on my site being carried by me for Dodi. I have explained I was aware of
his addiction though a sporadic user and not an addict but I was accustomed to working with addictions and knew I
could be helpful to him therefore in this respect. No I would not have indulged myself to those who wonder!
As for Paul Burrell when Andrew met him in London throughout their conversation Paul referred to me as "The
Princess" and never once Diana. I can appreciate her disappointment in writing a book about his experience working for
me and I refer to the one "A Royal Duty" but Andrew was touched by the manner in which Paul spoke about me with
tears in his eyes the day he told Andrew that it had been decided by the 'Princess of Wales Memorial Fund' of which he
was a member that a fountain in London would be built to commemorate me; I dare say not the moat design that has
been the result! They spoke of the fact my being a native water sign; a Cancerian and remembering my passion for
swimming that this seemed the most appropriate symbol with which to honour my life.
My being buried at Althorp, well I wanted to live in the Gatehouse there in 1997 and a request refused me by my brother
Charles, the Nineth Earl Spencer; so I got part of my wish in death I wanted in life! He felt I would bring unwanted
publicity there and chances are actually I might have done now of course the Spencer Family seat promoted as being
my resting place so attracting a lot of public attention. Where else though could I have been buried, I would hardly have
welcomed anywhere with a royal connection being by the time I died an ex royal and often feeling extricated from them
when I was one! I think the fact my boys and now Catherine and baby George have somewhere private to go to for
quietness remembering me; so the island in the lake called "The Oval" is the most appropriate place therefore!
Regarding the letters from the Duke of Edinburgh suggesting Charles and I remain together officially but living separate
lives was not something either of us were in favour of doing albeit for very different reasons. Also of course not a
healthy emotional environment for our children and they were always our first priority;it's the one thing we never
quarreled about actually, pretty united on that front! Prince Philip thinking of the Monarchy and not of our marriage
and the scandal official separation and divorce would bring to it but it was clear to everyone on our last tour of Korea,
one I did not want to go on and in which we were called 'The Glums' that the game was up and the team tired of playing
publicly as we had done of course for so long. It is true I loved Charles but I was no longer in love with him and I
honestly do not believe he was ever in love with me and drew a question mark over that question himself during our
official engagement interview ' Whatever in love means' .. put your own interpretation on that. Facing facts the woman
he loved, later his mistress now his second wife was married and anyway too old to give him the needed heir and as luck
would have it spare though for us both William and Harry are the two good things to have resulted from an otherwise
disastrous marriage and to all intent purposes an arranged one as there were contenders before me proving being the
acceptable one, ticking all the right boxes with blood more blue than the royals.
Diana
Timeline
16 Years of Inquests and Inquiries later, Diana, Princess of Wales death still cloaked in mystery!
August 31st 1997 ... Diana, Dodi and chauffeur Henri Paul die when car crashes in Pont de L' Alma tunnel in Paris
after leaving Ritz Hotel. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones badly injured. Paparazzi photographers arrested.
In evening Diana's body bought home to the U.K. by ex husband H.R.H. The Prince of Wales and Diana's sisters.
Royal coroner Dr. John Burton carries out post-mortem examination. Dodi Fayed's body taken to Regents Park mosqe
before private family funeral in Surrey.
September 6th 1997 ... Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey a globally watched event.
September 17th 1997 ... Debris at crash site hints at involvement of white Fiat Uno, never found.
August 1999 ... France's state prosecutor recommends dismissing charges against photographers and motorcyclists.
September 3rd 1999 ... Judge Herve Stephan publishes long awaited report after two year investigation. Concluded
that Henri Paul was drunk and under the influence of antidepressants. Photographers and press motorcyclists
cleared of manslaughter.
July 2000 ... Dodi's father Mohamed al- Fayed loses High Court battle for joint or concurrent inquests into deaths
of Diana and Dodi.
November 2001 ... Mr. al-Fayed loses claim for damages over what he called 'Flawed' part of inquiry into Diana' death.
April 2002 ... France's highest court upholds dismissal of manslaughter charges against photographers and
motorcyclists.
June 2003 ... In Scotland Mr. al-Fayed launches court attempt to secure public inquiry into deaths.
August 29th 2003 ... New Royal coroner Michael Burgess declares inquests into deaths of Diana and Dodi will go
ahead.
December 2003 ... Mr. al-Fayed's lawyers tell Court of Session in Edinburgh, Scotland that deaths need same scrutiny
as Bloody Sunday shootings and death of government adviser Dr. David Kelly.
January 6th 2004 ... Diana and Dodi's inquests opened and adjourned separately more than six years after their
deaths. On same day the Daily Mirror publishes letter from Diana to her butler Paul Burrell, 10 months before her
death in which she claimed H.R.H. Prince of Wales was plotting to kill her in a car accident.
January 7th 2004 ... Former Royal coroner John Burton present at Diana's autopsy says she was not pregnant when
she died.
January 10th 2004 ... Scotland Yard refuses to comment on report that senior British police officers doubt authenticity
of chauffeur Henri Paul's blood sample.
( On this note I, Andrew, have made it my business to ask police officers their opinion of events in Paris and the
overriding opinion expressed by them being murder but all doubtful of this ever being made public knowledge! )
March 2004 ... Mr.al-Fayed loses attempt to hold full public inquiry in Scotland
April 2004 ... Sir John Srevens re-enacts Diana's final journey, driving route taken by the Mercedes Benz limousine.
July 6th 2004 ... Diana Memorial Fountain opened by H.M. Queen in London's Hyde Park in the presence of other
members of the Royals including Diana's sons Princes William and Harry as well as her brother Charles, Earl Spencer
and sisters Sarah and Jane.
August 2004 ... French court orders new investigation into alleged falsification of alcohol and drug tests on Henri Paul.
His parents had rejected original post-mortem examination's findings.
January 2005 ... Sir John Stevens retires as Head of Metropolitan Police but still heads Diana inquiry. He becomes
Lord Stevens after being made life peer.
February 2005 ... Scotland Yard team works on creating 3D computer model of crash site.
May 2005 ... Detectives said to have questioned Britain's two most senior spy chiefs John Scarlett, Head of M.I.6. and
Eliza Manningham-Butler, M.I.5. Director-General.
July 2005 ... Wrecked Mercedes Benz brought to Britain for forensic examination
December 2005 ... H.R.H. The Prince of Wales questioned by Lord Stevens
February 2006 ... Three photographers convicted of breaching France's privacy laws for taking photographs of Diana
and Dodi at crash site. Symbolic fine of one Euro imposed.
May 2006 ... Lord Stevens says new witnesses and forensic evidence gathered but refuses to elaborate.
July 2006 ... Michael Burgess quits inquests blaming 'heavy and constant' workload.
September 2006 ... Britain's former top woman judge Baroness Butler-Sloss takes on task.
December 2006 ... Baroness Butler-Sloss backs down on holding inquests preliminary hearings in private.
December 14th 2006 ... Lord Stevens publishes findings and concludes crash was an accident.
January 8th 2007 ... Preliminary hearings take place in public to decide if there will be a jury and joint or separate
inquests. Baroness Butler-Sloss rules there will not be a jury of members of the royal household.
January 15th 2007 ... Baroness Butler-Sloss announces there will be no jury and she will sit alone.
March 2007 ... Mr. al-Fayed wins judicial review, jury will now be present at inquest. Further preliminary hearing held.
Mr. al-Fayed wants to see thousands of pages of 'underlying material' used in Metropolitan Police report.
April 24th 2007 ... Baroness Butler-Sloss says she will step down. Lord Justice Scott Baker to take over.
October 2nd 2007 ... Inquest into deaths begins.
April 7th 2008 ... After six months, jury returns verdict of 'Unlawful Killing' saying Henri Paul and paparazzi share blame
for deaths. Lord Justice Scott Baker rules out concluding couple were murdered because of insufficient evidence.
August 17th 2013 ... Scotland Yard announces it is 'Scoping Information' recently received regarding deaths but
stresses it is 'not a reinvestigation'.
I would ask what is it then as if this is so than already there must be a determination to deny the authenticity of this
new information before it is examined which is therefore immediately a strategy that is suspect!
Andrew Russell-Davis
For friend RICHARD KAY the truth about Princess Diana's turbulent life is far more gripping than anything
found in the new film
By Richard Kay September 7th 2013
Some weeks ago Hasnat Khan rang me. The publicity machine for a film was cranking up and magazine writers and
TV reporters wanted to talk to the man whom the movie claimed had ‘stolen’ Princess Diana’s heart.
Several years of living in relative anonymity in East London and working as a cardiothoracic surgeon at Basildon
University Hospital were about to come to an end.
The consultant had been through such times before, of course. For more than a year, around the period of the circus
that surrounded Diana’s inquest, he lived abroad, settling briefly in Dublin, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur and his Pakistan
homeland.
Truth and fiction: Naomi Watts' (left) portrayal of Princess Diana (right) is more a fictional representation
than an accurate account of the truth
Throughout he remained the same discreet and dignified figure who has avoided the limelight, eschewing the financial
fortune that he could so easily have made from writing about the love affair with Princess Diana that was always
doomed to end in tears.
But he had come back to England because, as he told me, it was where his friends were and where he could find the
work that gave him most fulfilment.
It was that same life-saving work that first attracted the separated, but still not divorced, Princess of Wales to him at
the Royal Brompton Hospital in 1995.
‘Here we go again,’ Hasnat said to me ruefully. We discussed arranging to see the film and laughed about him being
played by the impossibly handsome Naveen Andrews.
‘More lies and distortions, I expect. I think I’ll just keep my head down,’ he said.
This week, the film he dreaded — called simply Diana — had its West End premiere. Critics, including the Mail’s Chris
Tookey, who called it ‘terribly, terribly dull’, have panned it.
‘Squirmingly embarrassing’ was among the kinder epithets.
The film company says it set out to make an ‘insightful and compassionate study of Diana’s later years’. But has it? I,
too, have seen the film, which purports to tell the story of the love between the Princess and Hasnat Khan.
Remembered: Sixteen years on since Diana's death, the details, inevitably become foggy, and time warps everybody's
memories
As someone who knew Diana well throughout the period in which it is set, I wanted to know if it could live up to such
lofty ambitions.
Most of all, I wanted to know if it was truthful. Could a two-hour film really do justice to my friend Diana? The answer, I’
m afraid, is that it does not.
It would somehow have been more honest of the film-makers to have said from the outset that it was a fictional version
of the unlikely romance between Dr Khan and the Princess.
Instead, they have tried to have it both ways: insisting their story is based on the many written accounts of the affair —
although only one book is acknowledged in the credits — while at the same time injecting great chunks of make-
believe.
One falsehood in particular stands out. Diana and Hasnat are filmed walking on the seashore below the white cliffs of
Dover.
But no such visit took place — although they did venture out to Windsor and further afield to Stratford-upon-Avon,
where Khan’s uncle and his family lived.
How much more compelling it would have been to have shown the two lovers in Shakespeare’s birthplace.
Like many a Hollywood director dramatising real-life events, Oliver Hirschbiegel, a German, has played fast and loose
with the actualite.
The film is meant to cover the two-year period from Diana first meeting Khan to her death in August 1997. But
episodes outside that time frame are moved in to suit the director’s whim. The Princess’s visit to Australia in 1996, for
example, is switched to 1997, as is a trip to Italy.
Pictures of her surrounded by paparazzi and well-wishers, which actually took place in Rome in high summer, are
moved to Rimini, where it was wet and windy and there was no such crush of crowds.
Another image of her, head down in a taxi trapped by the photographers who stalked her, happened years earlier.
To many who see this film, such details will be trifling, but the danger is they and all the other errors help contribute to
an atmosphere that is entirely misleading.
Getting the detail right is the foundation on which any credible story must be built.
The Audi convertible in which Diana (played by Naomi Watts) is seen driving was, in fact, traded in for a more discreet
BMW soon after she met Hasnat.
Similarly, in real-life, the wine glass in Diana’s hand was almost always filled with nothing stronger than water — she
certainly never drank claret as she does with some abandon in the film.
And what ever happened to Hasnat’s moustache, surely one physical detail they could easily have kept? To those like
me who knew Diana, it is the authenticity, or rather lack of it, which so undermines this Hollywood fantasy.
That Diana had fallen in love with the burly heart surgeon was a secret she shared with very few, but it impacted
hugely on her life in a way that this film does scant justice to.
It was the deeply troubling reason that lay behind the rift that opened up between Diana and her mother Frances
Shand Kydd.
When they spoke on the telephone in May 1997, they quarrelled bitterly over her relationship with the ‘Muslim’ doctor.
For Diana it was an insult too far. After slamming down the phone, she never spoke to her mother again. I know, too,
that it was difficult for her sons to come to terms with the relationship.
Hasnat was a figure unlike any other of the men friends whose company Diana had enjoyed since her split from Prince
Charles.
Like so much of her life, Hasnat, too, was compartmentalised so that Diana’s time with him came when William and
Harry were away at school or with their father.
So what is the truth of the pair’s relationship? Was it the most significant episode of Diana’s life or has it all been
overblown?
Sixteen years on since Diana’s death, the details, inevitably become foggy, time warps everybody’s memories.
Those who see the new film will be shown a highly-strung Diana, who in the late summer of 1995 was bored and
lonely, separated from the Royal Family by her split from Charles but still part of it. In fact, her life in the early autumn
of 1995 was busy and thick with intrigue.
Troubled: In the final years of her life Diana was suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, some, of
course, of her own making
I well remember that the summer had been bruising and damaging for the Princess following claims of an affair
between her and Will Carling, the married England rugby captain. Carling’s marriage did not survive the allegations
and the relationship with the Princess also petered out.
Diana, missing the companionship and stabilising presence of Lucia Flecha de Lima, the wife of the former Brazilian
ambassador who had moved to Washington, was slowly re-evaluating her royal life.
She had by then met the TV journalist Martin Bashir through her brother Charles, Earl Spencer. It was to prove a fatal
introduction. Over the following weeks, Bashir was to persuade Diana — who was naturally cautious, unlike the
reckless figure portrayed by Watts — to record a TV interview about her marriage and life.
Naturally it was being planned with great secrecy. Her staff and friends were ignorant of it all.
But it was against this background that she had encountered Hasnat Khan at the bedside of Joseph Toffollo, whose
Irish wife Oonagh was the Princess’s acupuncturist and a former nurse to the late Duke of Windsor. Khan had
performed a triple heart bypass on Toffollo, whose life was greatly extended by the surgery.
Diana was looking for consolation of some kind, I know.
Newspaper reports at the time had once again been speculating on Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles,
the woman whom Diana blamed for having destroyed her marriage.
They had appeared together at a society party at the Ritz Hotel in London, the first time they had been seen in public
at the same event since Charles’s TV admission that he had been unfaithful to Diana. To Diana, the stars were
aligning themselves.
She was made miserable by her conviction, almost obsession, that Charles and Camilla were beginning to be allowed
to enjoy some degree of public acceptance of their relationship.
Public life: Newspaper reports speculating on Prince Charles's relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles weighed
heavily on the Princess.. Camilla, of course, was by now divorced from her Army officer husband Brigadier Andrew
Parker Bowles. It took a little gentle persuasion from some people such as myself to make Diana see she was losing
the PR war because ever since her marriage split she had been linked, unhelpfully, only to married men.
Dr Hasnat Khan had no such baggage. Two years older than Diana, he was 36 when they first met, and didn’t have a
girlfriend, let alone a wife.
His life revolved completely around his medical work, his studies (he was slaving over a PhD) and the commitments he
had with the charity Chain of Hope.
He willingly gave up holidays to travel to the Third World where he performed heart operations on patients for whom
Western medicine would otherwise have been out of reach.
Well-built and a tidy, if not stylish, dresser — in the film he is given a ludicrous make-over from glossy haircut to a
designer wardrobe which he has never possessed — he was certainly intrigued by the Princess.
But he was not absorbed; that was reserved for his surgical work.
According to the film, their romance was conducted with copious glasses of wine. Diana did, indeed, have a well-
stocked cellar at Kensington Palace but, as I have noted, she scarcely drank. By the late Nineties, she was virtually
teetotal.
Their moments together were few and secretive.
Paul Burrell, Diana’s butler (who is given an inexplicably butch personality in the film) was one of the few to be
involved, often collecting the doctor from pre-arranged spots near his South Kensington home and delivering him to
the Palace under a blanket in the back of a Vauxhall car.
Diana’s apartment, a vast elegant suite of rooms, is reduced in this film to the dimension of a twee country house
hotel.
"The kitchen, for example, where she and I once cooked a truly disgusting meal, was more like the kind you find in a
restaurant than a home. It certainly didn’t have the ornamental fireplace visible in the movie."
And her vast bedroom with its large collection of soft toys that gazed reproachfully from a distant sofa, is portrayed in
the film as a stuffy boudoir.
Hasnat’s flat, meanwhile, did not back on to the London Underground track with trains rattling past as depicted in
many scenes, presumably to add to the contrast between the pair.
Again, it is easy to be pernickety when you know the truth.
But I was amused by one particular line in an otherwise leaden script. It comes when Hasnat inquires how he can get
in touch with the Princess. She has a mobile, she says, adding ‘four actually’.
She didn’t, of course, but I know that she changed her phones and their numbers frequently.
In fact, it was her decision in July 1997 to change her number yet again which effectively ended her contact with
Hasnat — he did not have her new number.
She had resorted to this kind of action over several years, not just to protect herself from a prying media but also to
excommunicate friends she no longer wanted to know. It was cruel but highly effective.
The Diana I knew in those last two years was not the manic figure portrayed in this film.
She was still maintaining a roster of public duties. She went to Sandringham for Christmas — albeit for only one night.
She was feted in New York for her humanitarian work and she maintained a cordial relationship with Prince Charles for
the sake of their sons.
She was still suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, some, of course, of her own making.
Ordered to divorce after the disaster of the Bashir interview on BBC TV’s Panorama, she was to be stripped of her
HRH title.
She had also made an appalling gaffe with an untrue accusation levelled at her boys’ nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke.
To my surprise, I have a brief, if ignominious, off-camera moment in the film.
Diana is seen telephoning ‘Richard’ to encourage him not to believe reports about her and Khan.
The story of their romance had already been strongly hinted at — by me in the Mail and by others — but Diana
insisted it was completely untrue.
‘Bulls**t,’ was the word I recall he used, accurately reported in the film.
Fact: As the film suggests Diana was known to change her phone and
numbers frequently to manage her personal life.
The film doesn’t show it, but she was wrestling with herself about the Hasnat affair. She knew marriage to him would
be impossible but she longed for it. What she wanted from Hasnat was for him to try to make it happen. Yet, frankly,
he was in no position to do so.
The truth is that by the summer of 1997 she was drifting away from Hasnat. It is here where the film is particularly
disingenuous.
It chooses to portray her romance with Dodi Fayed as a fling to make Hasnat jealous — and by golly he was.
But it was with Dodi that she found peace and contentment, if only briefly. He was the only man she publicly
acknowledged — not counting her one-time Cavalry officer lover James Hewitt.
The idea, as depicted in the film, that she connived with the hated paparazzi to stage the photographs that emerged
of her with Dodi is equally ludicrous. In fact, two days before her death, she and Dodi began legal action in the French
courts against the very photographers the film says she was in cahoots with.
The question remains whether she would have returned to Hasnat Khan had she not died. Many of her friends believe
that to be the case.
This film, which inevitably dwells on sadness, suggests that they would.
For his part, Hasnat is more realistic about the possibility. ‘Maybe’ is the only word he allows himself to use.
But then he knows the real story, and this new film — he assures me — is most definitely not it.
"Hello,
I have this to say regarding this article by my friend Richard and one of the few journalists I truly trusted calling him
from Paris as I have said on my site; so privy to a lot of my life; not all of course naturally. Only I knew how I honestly
felt about personal things and played my cards close to my chest. The second atricle in this duo told by Lucia who was
indeed someone I confided in, I looked on her as somewhat of a mother figure since as this article says my mother and I
often had a very difficult relationship.
I will confirm that I changed my mobile number with regularity yes and odd therefore not one was reported anyway
to have been found with me in Paris amongst my things on the 31st August 1997. I often had two mobiles with me and
needed this personal connection with my boys of course. It has been said that the ex Duchess of York called me hearing
initially what happened to me in Paris and it went to voicemail so of course I had a mobile with me as did Dodi and Henri
Paul and Trevor Rees Jones, none of us incommunicado as officially it would seem we were .. how absurd! People can
believe this or not but I would have contacted Hasnat and if people remember he attended my funeral, his birthday card
from me in 1997 arriving in the same post as that invitation for him.
This article also confirming I did not drink and so as I have said would have certainly detected the smell of alcohol
on a drunken driver and have been driven nowhere by him! The fact is Henri Paul wasn't drunk and I am so sorry for his
parents that this stigma has been one attached to him very unfairly! Dodi and I however did allow certain images of us
to be taken because as I say we wanted to be seen publicly and of course I wanted to wipe out the headlines of Camilla
and Charles and this was one sure way of doing just that though this did not extend to having us being bumped off to do
so!
In regards to the film I do not think it right the actress portraying me Naomi Watts be criticised in what is
seemingly a witch hunt as at the end of the day she is an actress and was just doing her job! I would think it virtually
impossible for anyone to play me as similarly anyone playing Marilyn will be somewhat unfairly compared with her; it's
a drawback of being an iconic figure and a legend. The fact clearly the research for the film was clearly not as
professional as it might have been not being Naomi's responsibility and likewise she not being responsible for the script!
If people wonder yes I did contact Richard albeit through Andrew of course who sent him a copy of my
channeled book but he did not believe or trust it being me which was of great personal disappointment to me naturally
as I would have so enjoyed privately meeting with him as I did with Penny Thornton of course. Not everyone though is
open to believing they can be speaking to dead ex Princesses however convincing that communication might indeed be!
Diana
THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT DIANA
Richard Kay
Last updated at 00:00 29 November 2003
NO ONE was closer to Princess Diana than Lucia Flecha de Lima. Of all the friends she made in her short life, the
Princess's relationship with the elegant diplomat's wife was the strongest and most rewarding.
It began when Lucia's husband, Paulo Tarso Flecha de Lima, took charge of Brazil's London embassy, and it survived
when, three years later, he became ambassador to Washington.
Lucia was there at the worst of times as Diana's marriage to Prince Charles broke up under the weight of his betrayal
and when she found herself a virtual outcast from the Royal Family. It was in Lucia's home that the Princess watched
the news broadcasts of her separation from the Prince, confirmed in the flat tones of the then Prime Minister, John
Major.
And on the day of the divorce, it was Lucia who flew from America to be at her friend's side for the unbearably sad
final act of a marriage the Princess never wanted to end.
In the sophisticated Brazilian, Diana found more than just friendship: the two were like mother and daughter.
'She was one of the family and we came to treat her like our own children,' Lucia told me in her first major interview
with a British newspaper.
'I think it gave her a sense of belonging that she did not have elsewhere.' Following the death of Diana's father, Earl
Spencer, in 1992 and the seesaw relationship with her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, who was living off the West
coast of Scotland, the Princess found solace in the de Limas, the sort of family she had dreamed of as a child.
At the height of the recriminations that swirled around Diana, the de Limas allowed her to use their home as a
sanctuary. She had her own room and would stay for weekends.
It was there that she took the now infamous letters from Prince Philip (in which he tried to help patch up her marriage),
and there that she and Lucia would pour over her responses.
It is also, I can reveal, the place where these letters - which Lucia described as 'warm, courteous and helpful' - were
hidden for years.
While many of Diana's friendships perished on the high altar of her expectations, Lucia's never did. It even prospered
after the de Limas moved to the U.S., where Lucia became one of Washington's most admired hostesses and through
whom the Princess met America's powerful elite, including Hillary Clinton.
A year ago, when Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, was accused of theft, Lucia was one of an impressive list of the
Princess's friends who was prepared to stand up in court as a character witness for him.
'I was doing it for Diana,' she says.
'It is what she would have expected of me. I thought it was perfectly normal that he should have had the things he did
of hers in his house - even the more expensive items.
'Diana was always generous and she would often leave out items on a table for her staff to help themselves, even
Cartier clocks she had been given and had no wish for.' Back in London last week for the first time since the fiasco of
the Burrell trial, she has watched with horror the fallout from the publication of the former servant's book.
'I feel extremely disappointed and sad because Paul has let all of us down, including Diana. I recognise that he was in
a difficult position. He had been humiliated, his family was distraught and he couldn't find a job.
'He had his two sons to think about, and nobody from the Establishment had given him a helping hand. In such
circumstances, people sometimes do extreme things.
'Paul once promised me that he would never write a book about Diana. But there it is, he has to deal with that.
'I have not heard a word from him since the case. I received a letter from his lawyer, but that is all - no word of thanks
from him.
WHAT I do find uncomfortable is the manner in which Paul paints himself as Diana's friend. He was not.
He was her servant. He opened the door, he closed the door, he served drinks and cleared away dishes.
'In all the time I knew Diana, I never saw him sitting beside her and having a conversation. It is also interesting how he
now refers to her by her first name. Because he would never have dared call her "Diana".
'He once told me he was thinking of publishing a book of recipes so, looking back, perhaps it was always going to lead
up to this.' No longer an ambassador's wife - last year, her husband retired from the diplomatic service after more
than four decades - Lucia is now a dignitary in her own right as secretary of state for tourism in Brasilia.
We meet in the Mayfair home of the current ambassador, the townhouse that used to be Diana's bolthole.
'I am sleeping in the same room we gave Diana, and the same member of staff who looked after her is taking care of
me,' she tells me. 'It is somehow very comforting.' She finds London less bright now.
'Diana lit the place up. Even Hello! magazine seems duller because she is no longer in it.' The two women met in
1990, soon after the de Limas arrived in Britain, but became close the following year when the Waleses made an
official visit to Brazil. A mutual friend suggested to Lucia that she would be a 'good help' to Diana, who was more than
20 years her junior.
'The first thing Diana said to me was: "You are Lucia. I've been told we should become good friends.'' 'It was all on her
initiative ... we clicked, just like that. Friendship needs no explanation, but I know I was a mother figure to her and she
was like a daughter to me.' At the time, the Waleses were hardly on speaking terms and couldn't even bear to be in
the same room.
A remarkable friendship soon developed between the two women.
'Diana was a very lonely young woman. The boys were quite small then and she had her friends, of course, but she
was growing apart from some of them,' says Lucia.
Soon after the trip, Diana became a regular visitor to the de Limas' London home. At weekends, when her sons were
away with their father, Diana would stay at the embassy.
'We went to museums together, to lunch at Harry's Bar and San Lorenzo or shopping,' says Lucia.
At the time, three of the five de Lima children were living with their parents.
'Diana just became another one of the family. My husband adored her and she felt completely at ease with us.'
Indeed, so at ease that some mornings, after Paulo Tarso had left the marital bed, Diana would jump in, just as a
daughter might.
'I didn't find it a drama. I adopted her as a daughter and she adopted me as a mother,' says Lucia.
'At my house, Diana was a girl in trouble and I would listen to her and give her advice if she wanted it.
Mostly, I listened.' All the same, Lucia cautioned the Princess against divorcing Charles.
'I told her they could lead separate lives but should remain married. It was not like an ordinary marriage, she didn't
have to ask him for money, or press his shirts or cook for him or even move into a small apartment.
Nothing much needed to change.
'I told her that the people should know they were no longer living together: that would have been their responsibility
towards the nation.
'The truth is I don't think she wanted to separate, but they were too competitive.' To begin with, Lucia tried not to take
sides. 'When a marriage fails, it is not one person's fault. I liked Prince Charles very much; so did my husband.
He was most charming to us.' Lucia did not know much about the Princess's secret collaboration with the author
Andrew Morton, whose 1992 book revealed the depth of the misery of her marriage.
'I admit I was shocked when it came out. I thought Diana had put herself in danger, exposing too much of herself to
her enemies. For a long time, she denied she had done anything and said it was all the work of her friends.
'But she eventually told me that although she never met Mr Morton, she had co-operated through a third party.
I later discovered she had one of the chapters delivered here!' Lucia recalls the day the separation was announced.
'We watched the news together at our house and she was pleased that Mr Major said there were no plans for a
divorce.' It was during the dying days of the royal marriage that Prince Philip began his correspondence with his
daughter-in-law.
Lucia recalls how the Princess kept the letters, together with copies of her responses (written with the help of Lucia
and another of Diana's close friends, Rosa Monckton, the wife of Sunday Telegraph editor Dominic Lawson) in a safe
at the embassy.
'She was afraid that someone might find them at Kensington Palace,' she says. 'At that time, she and Charles were
not separated and all sorts of people could come and go in her apartment.' There were about half a dozen letters
from Philip. 'He was trying to be helpful. They were warm and kind, and were like a father writing to a daughter. He
referred to himself as "Pa" and the Queen as "Ma", and always signed off with love.
'He drew on his own experiences: in one letter he wrote about how, when he and the Queen married, they thought
they would have some years together living their own lives.
But it was not to be, and "Ma" was called to her duty and he had to give up the career he loved.
'Philip felt Diana and Charles could live separate lives, with separate apartments at Kensington Palace, but they
should remain together. Diana thought Philip wanted her to be submissive towards the royals.
'I wish I had spoken to Prince Philip because I am sure if he had known my side of the story, he could have helped
Diana more effectively. But I thought he would refuse to see me or, worse, ask why an ambassador's wife was
interfering in a private family matter.
'In retrospect, knowing what I do, I wish I'd taken that risk and perhaps I could have helped.' Later, Lucia attempted to
return the Philip letters to Diana. 'My husband said they were an important part of British history and should remain in
Britain,' she says.
'But Diana wanted me to keep them so, in the end, we compromised. I had copies made, which I kept in the diplomatic
pouch.' Lucia is convinced Diana never wanted a divorce. She also insists the marriage was not loveless. 'She often
told me how happy they were in the beginning, especially after William was born, and how they bathed him together.
'When she was with Charles for the last time as man and wife, her parting words to him were: "I will love you for ever." I
really think she never stopped loving him.
'The problem was Camilla, which is why Diana was so hurt by the Dimbleby interview (when.the Prince of Wales
admitted his adultery). For Charles, it was a shock to find out that his wife had a temper.' It is this intimate knowledge
that convinces Lucia that rumours about the Prince and a servant are wrong. 'He was a regular man, Diana always
assured me of that,' she says.
When Charles and Diana's divorce came through in July 1996, Lucia answered the Princess's cri de coeur and flew to
London to be with her. 'She was in need of comfort, she wanted me to be there because I was her friend.' The de
Limas' new home in America became a refuge for Diana and they would go on holiday together. But travelling with
Diana was not always easy.
Once, Diana, Lucia, her daughter Beatriz and Rosa Monckton travelled to the remote Indonesian island of Mojo.
'After 12 hours, she wanted to come home. In the end, she came home alone.'
Lucia last saw Diana in June 1997, ten weeks before her death, when the Princess auctioned her dresses for charity
in New The following month, on her husband's birthday, Lucia received a fax from the Princess with a list of her phone
numbers for a break she was taking in the South of France. It was the holiday where she was to meet Dodi Fayed, the
son of Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed.
Diana told Lucia how simpatico and polite Dodi was towards her and about his kindness to her sons. Later, she told
Lucia about the presents he had given her: a necklace, bracelet and watch.
'She did not mention a ring and I am sure she would have - she told me everything,' she says. 'I remember I told her to
be careful.
'I did not know Dodi but I know he was not "The One". I do not believe she would have married him. Why? Because
when I asked her about him, she said: "Lucia, he is very kind to me." You don't use those words about the man you
are in love with.' The Princess and Lucia spoke for the last time three days before Diana's death. 'She was happy
enough, but she was tired and wanted to come home. This was the Diana I knew.
'To me, that film footage of her leaving the Ritz Hotel for the last time says it all, she looks cross and fed up - certainly
not someone about to become engaged.' In her study, Lucia keeps a framed photograph of Diana alongside one of
her son, Paulinho who, disabled from birth, died three years ago.
Not a day goes by when Lucia doesn't think about the Princess.
She has never seen Diana's island grave at Althorp, the Spencer family's ancestral home.
'I have never been invited there,' she says. 'Anyway, it was the wrong place to bury her. She would never have wanted
to be out of reach of the public she loved so much.
'Why couldn't she be buried where everyone laid flowers in front of Kensington Palace? I feel sure that is what she
would have wanted. Diana belongs to England, not the Spencers.'
"My comments on this article being again I sent Lucia a fax of the numbers I could be reached at in the South of France
so clearly therefore had mobiles with me naturally so too on August 31st 1997! I would imagine found and destroyed at
the scene with the cocaine being as I have said on my site being carried by me for Dodi. I have explained I was aware of
his addiction though a sporadic user and not an addict but I was accustomed to working with addictions and knew I
could be helpful to him therefore in this respect. No I would not have indulged myself to those who wonder!
As for Paul Burrell when Andrew met him in London throughout their conversation Paul referred to me as "The
Princess" and never once Diana. I can appreciate her disappointment in writing a book about his experience working for
me and I refer to the one "A Royal Duty" but Andrew was touched by the manner in which Paul spoke about me with
tears in his eyes the day he told Andrew that it had been decided by the 'Princess of Wales Memorial Fund' of which he
was a member that a fountain in London would be built to commemorate me; I dare say not the moat design that has
been the result! They spoke of the fact my being a native water sign; a Cancerian and remembering my passion for
swimming that this seemed the most appropriate symbol with which to honour my life.
My being buried at Althorp, well I wanted to live in the Gatehouse there in 1997 and a request refused me by my brother
Charles, the Nineth Earl Spencer; so I got part of my wish in death I wanted in life! He felt I would bring unwanted
publicity there and chances are actually I might have done now of course the Spencer Family seat promoted as being
my resting place so attracting a lot of public attention. Where else though could I have been buried, I would hardly have
welcomed anywhere with a royal connection being by the time I died an ex royal and often feeling extricated from them
when I was one! I think the fact my boys and now Catherine and baby George have somewhere private to go to for
quietness remembering me; so the island in the lake called "The Oval" is the most appropriate place therefore!
Regarding the letters from the Duke of Edinburgh suggesting Charles and I remain together officially but living separate
lives was not something either of us were in favour of doing albeit for very different reasons. Also of course not a
healthy emotional environment for our children and they were always our first priority;it's the one thing we never
quarreled about actually, pretty united on that front! Prince Philip thinking of the Monarchy and not of our marriage
and the scandal official separation and divorce would bring to it but it was clear to everyone on our last tour of Korea,
one I did not want to go on and in which we were called 'The Glums' that the game was up and the team tired of playing
publicly as we had done of course for so long. It is true I loved Charles but I was no longer in love with him and I
honestly do not believe he was ever in love with me and drew a question mark over that question himself during our
official engagement interview ' Whatever in love means' .. put your own interpretation on that. Facing facts the woman
he loved, later his mistress now his second wife was married and anyway too old to give him the needed heir and as luck
would have it spare though for us both William and Harry are the two good things to have resulted from an otherwise
disastrous marriage and to all intent purposes an arranged one as there were contenders before me proving being the
acceptable one, ticking all the right boxes with blood more blue than the royals.
Diana
Timeline
16 Years of Inquests and Inquiries later, Diana, Princess of Wales death still cloaked in mystery!
August 31st 1997 ... Diana, Dodi and chauffeur Henri Paul die when car crashes in Pont de L' Alma tunnel in Paris
after leaving Ritz Hotel. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones badly injured. Paparazzi photographers arrested.
In evening Diana's body bought home to the U.K. by ex husband H.R.H. The Prince of Wales and Diana's sisters.
Royal coroner Dr. John Burton carries out post-mortem examination. Dodi Fayed's body taken to Regents Park mosqe
before private family funeral in Surrey.
September 6th 1997 ... Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey a globally watched event.
September 17th 1997 ... Debris at crash site hints at involvement of white Fiat Uno, never found.
August 1999 ... France's state prosecutor recommends dismissing charges against photographers and motorcyclists.
September 3rd 1999 ... Judge Herve Stephan publishes long awaited report after two year investigation. Concluded
that Henri Paul was drunk and under the influence of antidepressants. Photographers and press motorcyclists
cleared of manslaughter.
July 2000 ... Dodi's father Mohamed al- Fayed loses High Court battle for joint or concurrent inquests into deaths
of Diana and Dodi.
November 2001 ... Mr. al-Fayed loses claim for damages over what he called 'Flawed' part of inquiry into Diana' death.
April 2002 ... France's highest court upholds dismissal of manslaughter charges against photographers and
motorcyclists.
June 2003 ... In Scotland Mr. al-Fayed launches court attempt to secure public inquiry into deaths.
August 29th 2003 ... New Royal coroner Michael Burgess declares inquests into deaths of Diana and Dodi will go
ahead.
December 2003 ... Mr. al-Fayed's lawyers tell Court of Session in Edinburgh, Scotland that deaths need same scrutiny
as Bloody Sunday shootings and death of government adviser Dr. David Kelly.
January 6th 2004 ... Diana and Dodi's inquests opened and adjourned separately more than six years after their
deaths. On same day the Daily Mirror publishes letter from Diana to her butler Paul Burrell, 10 months before her
death in which she claimed H.R.H. Prince of Wales was plotting to kill her in a car accident.
January 7th 2004 ... Former Royal coroner John Burton present at Diana's autopsy says she was not pregnant when
she died.
January 10th 2004 ... Scotland Yard refuses to comment on report that senior British police officers doubt authenticity
of chauffeur Henri Paul's blood sample.
( On this note I, Andrew, have made it my business to ask police officers their opinion of events in Paris and the
overriding opinion expressed by them being murder but all doubtful of this ever being made public knowledge! )
March 2004 ... Mr.al-Fayed loses attempt to hold full public inquiry in Scotland
April 2004 ... Sir John Srevens re-enacts Diana's final journey, driving route taken by the Mercedes Benz limousine.
July 6th 2004 ... Diana Memorial Fountain opened by H.M. Queen in London's Hyde Park in the presence of other
members of the Royals including Diana's sons Princes William and Harry as well as her brother Charles, Earl Spencer
and sisters Sarah and Jane.
August 2004 ... French court orders new investigation into alleged falsification of alcohol and drug tests on Henri Paul.
His parents had rejected original post-mortem examination's findings.
January 2005 ... Sir John Stevens retires as Head of Metropolitan Police but still heads Diana inquiry. He becomes
Lord Stevens after being made life peer.
February 2005 ... Scotland Yard team works on creating 3D computer model of crash site.
May 2005 ... Detectives said to have questioned Britain's two most senior spy chiefs John Scarlett, Head of M.I.6. and
Eliza Manningham-Butler, M.I.5. Director-General.
July 2005 ... Wrecked Mercedes Benz brought to Britain for forensic examination
December 2005 ... H.R.H. The Prince of Wales questioned by Lord Stevens
February 2006 ... Three photographers convicted of breaching France's privacy laws for taking photographs of Diana
and Dodi at crash site. Symbolic fine of one Euro imposed.
May 2006 ... Lord Stevens says new witnesses and forensic evidence gathered but refuses to elaborate.
July 2006 ... Michael Burgess quits inquests blaming 'heavy and constant' workload.
September 2006 ... Britain's former top woman judge Baroness Butler-Sloss takes on task.
December 2006 ... Baroness Butler-Sloss backs down on holding inquests preliminary hearings in private.
December 14th 2006 ... Lord Stevens publishes findings and concludes crash was an accident.
January 8th 2007 ... Preliminary hearings take place in public to decide if there will be a jury and joint or separate
inquests. Baroness Butler-Sloss rules there will not be a jury of members of the royal household.
January 15th 2007 ... Baroness Butler-Sloss announces there will be no jury and she will sit alone.
March 2007 ... Mr. al-Fayed wins judicial review, jury will now be present at inquest. Further preliminary hearing held.
Mr. al-Fayed wants to see thousands of pages of 'underlying material' used in Metropolitan Police report.
April 24th 2007 ... Baroness Butler-Sloss says she will step down. Lord Justice Scott Baker to take over.
October 2nd 2007 ... Inquest into deaths begins.
April 7th 2008 ... After six months, jury returns verdict of 'Unlawful Killing' saying Henri Paul and paparazzi share blame
for deaths. Lord Justice Scott Baker rules out concluding couple were murdered because of insufficient evidence.
August 17th 2013 ... Scotland Yard announces it is 'Scoping Information' recently received regarding deaths but
stresses it is 'not a reinvestigation'.
I would ask what is it then as if this is so than already there must be a determination to deny the authenticity of this
new information before it is examined which is therefore immediately a strategy that is suspect!
Andrew Russell-Davis
