A series of tapes made by the late Princess Diana and used by Andrew Morton for his book Diana: Her True Story have been aired on US television for the first time.
In them, the Princess speaks of her wedding day - describing it as one of the worst of her life - her pain over Prince Charles' affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, and her struggles with low self-esteem and bulimia.
Recalling her 1981 nuptials, during which she reveals she was scanning the congregation for a sight of Camilla, Diana says: "I was very, very deathly calm. Deathly, deathly calm. I felt I was a lamb to the slaughter, and I knew it but I couldn't do anything about it."
She goes on to admit to throwing herself down the stairs while three months pregnant, after confessing to her husband her desperation over the state of their marriage. "Charles said I was crying wolf, and I said I felt I was so desperate and I was crying my eyes out. And he said, 'I'm not going to listen. You're always doing this to me'. He said, 'I'm going riding now', so I threw myself down the stairs…"
The tapes form part of a two-part documentary entitled Princess Diana: The Secret Tapes, which, in addition to seven hours of audio recording, also features an hour of video footage. While the information on the tapes was already known, "the drama of it all" was more forceful when heard in the Princess' own voice, said former royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter.
In the wake of the screening, one of the late royal's closest friends, Rosa Monckton, who collaborated in making the programme, accused NBC of being "dishonest and misleading". Rosa, whose daughter Domenica was Diana's last godchild, tried to get her interview dropped after discovering that the programme was to include the Morton tapes.
"At first I thought there must be some terrible mistake, that there must be two separate films," she told Dail Mail columnist Richard Kay. "When I realised it wasn't, I told NBC I wanted nothing to do with their film because it could only upset William and Harry."
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
