The People's Princess I knew: Diana's extraordinary life remembered by our legendary royal reporter James Whitaker

Fifteen years on from Princess Diana's death in a Paris car crash, we publish our late, lamented reporter's poignant recollections online for the first time

Soldiers' favourite: With French SFOR soldiers in Sarajevo three weeks before she died

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As the Daily Mirror's royal editor, James Whitaker followed the life of Princess Diana for 19 years.
After her sudden death in a Paris car crash on 31 August 1997, he wrote an obituary of the woman who went from being Lady Diana Spencer to the People's Princess for the Daily Mirror's memorial edition.

On the 15th anniversary of Diana's death, we publish it online for the first time.
I first set eyes on Diana in January, 1978. She was just 16, full of girlish joy - and I was captivated.
The pretty teenager was standing close to Prince Charles while he was out shooting pheasants with friends at Sandringham.
There was snow all around and the air temperature was well below freezing. But Lady Diana Spencer, as she then was, was full of the joys of spring.
She was peering at me and a colleague down a long, tree-lined path through a pair of powerful binoculars.
As the binoculars were still attached by a strap to Charles's neck, his head was at a curious angle.
Both were laughing uproariously and clearly happy.
I was baffled why Diana should be with Charles. Why wasn't her elder sister, Lady Sarah, at his side?
She was the prince's girlfriend at the time and she was at Sandringham as well. I could only imagine Diana was there for Prince Andrew.
That day, Diana found the attention of the photographers fun, even a game. For some years she continued to be amused and intrigued by them before despair set in.
We met again four months later - on April 20, 1978 - when I was covering the wedding of Diana's other sister, Lady Jane, to Robert Fellowes, then an assistant private secretary to the Queen.
She bounded towards me in the Guards Chapel, near Buckingham Palace saying: "I know who you are. You're the wicked Mr Whitaker, aren't you?"
I nodded, and replied: "Who are you, and how do you know me?"
Diana laughed, and said: "I am Diana, the little sister and I know all about you from Sarah."
That was understandable. I had charted Sarah's love affair with Charles during which time I had got to know her well. Obviously she had talked to "little sis" about our relationship.
Over the next 19 years, I was to get to know "little sis" very well.

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Princess Diana's life in pictures

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 Diana's story begins in the afternoon of July 1, 1961, when she was born as the Honorable Diana Frances Spencer at Park House, Sandringham.
She was the third daughter of Viscount Althorp, the eighth Earl Spencer, who was an equerry to both George VI and the Queen.
Diana's maternal grandmother Ruth, Lady Fermoy, was a close friend and lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother. Through these links with the Royal Family, Diana became a childhood playmate of Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.
She did not have a happy childhood as her parents drifted apart. Sometimes, she would tiptoe downstairs and watch, leaning over the banisters, as her mother Frances and father Johnnie fought both verbally and, apparently, physically.
When Diana was six, Frances left her husband for the wallpaper heir Peter Shand Kydd. From that age, Diana was deprived of the full-time mother love she famously believed was so important.
At the time, Frances sought custody of Diana and her younger brother Charles. But she was thwarted by her mother Ruth who said the children should stay with their father.
After the Spencers divorced in 1969, Lady Diana continued to live at Park House until the death of her grandfather, the seventh earl, in 1975. She then moved to the Spencer family seat at Althorp House, in Northamptonshire.
Yet again, happiness eluded her. Diana had a succession of nannies to look after her, far too many in fact. Most described Diana as "difficult" or "tricky."
At nine, Diana went to Riddlesworth Hall, a boarding school near Diss in Norfolk. Even at the best of times, school was not an institution in which she would shine, at least not academically.
With the inevitability of family tradition, she went on to West Heath, an all-girls public school near Sevenoaks, Kent, where her mother had gone.
But astonishingly, after one of the most expensive educations money could buy, Diana failed all her O-levels - even at the second taking - and left school at 16.
Engulfed by turmoil and misery, she kept her sanity and sense of caring at this time by mothering her brother Charles, now Earl Spencer.
After a brief stay at the Institut Alpin Videmanette, an expensive Swiss finishing school, Diana's father bought her a flat which she shared with friends on the borders of Kensington.
Three days a week, the beauty who was to become one of the world's most famous women worked for well-heeled friends cleaning floors for £1 an hour, serving canapes at parties and acting as a nanny.
Then she became an assistant at the Young England kindergarten, in London's Pimlico.

Practicing for the future: Teenage Diana cradles two children in June 1980

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 In July 1980, just a few months before her "Romance of the Century" with Charles began, I came across Diana again.
I was covering a polo match in which Charles was playing at Cowdray Park, in Sussex. It seemed a routine assignment until I saw this pretty young girl quickly say hello to the prince in between chukkas.
I was curious about their relationship, but no more. Again, later, I learned that they were in the same house party. But what was so enchanting about that afternoon was watching this charming young girl just playing with a pal's baby.
A few months later, I saw Diana at the Braemar Gathering, the highlight of the Highland Games circuit that takes place each year throughout Scotland.
That morning I was out walking along the banks of the River Dee, the salmon river that runs through the grounds of Balmoral Castle where the Queen and her family spend each August and September. Coming round a bend in the river I found Charles, up to his waist wearing waders, fishing.
Then I saw a flash of light coming from across the other side of the Dee.
There was Diana leaning with her back to a pine tree eyeing me with the aid of a vanity mirror so she did not reveal herself.
She was booked on the afternoon flight from Aberdeen to London. With her, were two male companions. I laugh now when I recall who they were.
One was Nicholas Soames, an equerry to Prince Charles and an acknowledged critic of the princess in recent years. The other was Colonel Andrew Parker Bowles, the husband of Charles's future mistress Camilla.
I watched Diana that day pass through the airport security point. What did she have in her jewellery box? asked an official.
I was standing behind her, and she looked embarrassed and flustered as she produced nothing of great value apart from a pretty gold necklace with the single letter attached to it.
In the years to come, she would come to own diamonds and jewellery worth millions.
On the plane, I asked Diana if she had had a good weekend. She said she had but would not say much more.
It was the beginning of her courtship with Charles and she didn't want to spoil anything by loose words. But she seemed happy enough.
At the other end of the journey, everything was still completely unofficial with Diana leaving the plane like any other passenger.
Her anonymity, however, was not to last long. "Lady Di", as she was to become known, was tracked down to her home in Chelsea's Coleherne Court, where battalions of reporters and photographers pitched camp round the clock.
I discovered Diana had three flatmates - Ann Bolton, Carolyn Pride and Virginia Pitman - and that they took it in turns to get the early morning papers and milk for breakfast.
On that first morning, it was Diana's turn to do this chore.
After a couple of days, I became concerned that the girls would be worried by our attention and rang the doorbell to say who I was and what I was doing.
I think it was Ann who said: "Thank goodness, we were a bit worried as to what was happening."
I asked whether everybody was looking after Diana and was assured by Ann and then Carolyn that this was the case.
It was around this time that Diana was pictured at her kindergarten with one child gently balanced on her hip and the sunlight shining through her dress.
Many believe that photographers "set her up" for this picture. I was there and the claim isn't true.
It was an unposed shot and only later, when the film, was developed did photographers realise you could see her legs quite so well.
Diana is said to have cried when she saw the result of this photo session which she had willingly given to around half a dozen of us.
She was only unhappy because she didn't think her legs were very good. I later learned that Charles, like the rest of us, thought she looked great.
And so the weeks went on. Diana continued to enchant and enthral all who met her. The pressure was growing hugely on Charles to do something about this delightful girl.
I have never believed that the press forced him into proposing marriage. But I think we were an influence to the extent that we were writing very positive stories and the public began to love Diana very much through our words and pictures.
I believe that if Charles hadn't done the "decent thing" he would have been metaphorically lynched.
In December 1980, I remember an astonishing late evening when I called round to see Diana at her flat after being tipped that there was an engagement announcement imminent.
I talked to Diana for a long time about the situation. She would not commit herself to anything, but she assured me that marrying into the Royal Family would not be a problem for her.
She made it clear that as the girl who was literally brought up next door to Sandringham House (as a child she lived at Parkhouse on the Estate) she was used to the Royal Family.
When I pressed her to guide me whether there was to be an engagement even as soon as the next day, Diana urged me to be cautious.
I did not write the story.
The engagement was announced in February 1981. I could not have been more thrilled.
Two days before the announcement on February 24, I had a long chat with Diana on the phone one Sunday afternoon.
I told her that I was very sad that Prince Charles' steeplechaser, Allibar had died on the gallops at Lambourn while Prince Charles was exercising it.
I said to Diana that I wanted to write to Charles to say how sorry I was. She urged me to do so. "Just do it," she said. "He will appreciate you doing so."
I subsequently did and two days later the engagement was announced. On that very day, the Prince wrote back to me thanking me for my letter.
There was then the build up to the wedding of the century.
There were clearly problems for Diana but I, like everybody else, put this down to nerves and pressure as she began captivating certainly the world's press, if not the world itself.
When asked if they were in love, Diana replied "Of course", but the Prince added inauspiciously: "Whatever love is."
If there were doubts about the wisdom of a match between a shy, inexperienced nursery school assistant and a settled bachelor raised in the awesome expectation of becoming king, no one voiced them at the time.
She was the first English woman to marry an heir to the throne for over 300 years.
Their wedding at St Paul's Cathedral on 29 July, 1981 was a fairytale occasion on which it seemed the hopes of the nation - and the future of the monarchy - depended.

Carriage ride: Charles and Diana smile for the crowds as they make their way from St Paul's Cathedral to Buckingham Palace

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 Diana, I firmly believed, had always wanted to become an actual member of this family, not a servant to them.
She was once heard, at a friend's wedding in some grand cathedral, saying: "This isn't for me. When I marry it will be at Westminster Abbey."
In the end, she didn't get that chance but the occasion was just as regal and grand.
I was there, right up level with the altar, to witness the betrothal.
But even at the service she and the prince muddled each other's names and heard the Archbishop of Canterbury describe the wedding as "the stuff of fairy tales" which he knew was not the case.
Their honeymoon was a two week cruise of the Mediterranean abroad the Royal yacht Britannia, ending in the Red Sea in Egypt.

Sharing a laugh: Prince Charles and Princess Diana giggle on board the Royal Yacht Britannia while on honeymoon in August 1981

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 Both partners came to their marriage in need of warmth and affection, but readier to receive than to give.
From the start, it was clear that the 12-year age gap was going to be a problem.
She was a 20-year-old, young for her years when she married, he a 32-year-old who already seemed middle-aged.
It would later emerge that tormented Diana was stricken with bulimia, which blighted the early part of her marriage and helped drive a wedge between her and Charles.
Mix in different characters, different enthusiasms and different desires and there was a recipe for disaster.
His older, wiser friends intimidated and bored her. Her younger, brighter set irritated him.
She did not care for his polo, nor for the country pursuits which were the centre of his family's life.
He was not at home in discos, or even on the dance floor, and preferred Berlioz to Dire Straits.
Much was made of the trainee Princess's careful "grooming" for royal life. Yet in reality, she found the transition to her royal role a great strain.
The abrupt move from girlish independence at Coleherne Court to the conformity of court life appalled her.
Her husband came from a family unused to spontaneous expressions of love.
Soon she was wandering the palace corridors wearing a gold-plated Walkman, shutting out the royal world in which she felt ever less at home.
She told friends she felt bewildered and lost.
The building was remote, the courtiers unapproachable.
The royal couple undertook an intensive programme of official home and overseas visits.
It dawned on the prince fairly quickly that the crowds who turned out to see them were more interested in a tall-glamorous blonde and her frocks than a worthy but dull heir to a thousand-year-old British institution.
The prince had never seen his role as that of a superstar, while his wife undoubtedly did.
In the outside world, her presence electrified crowds but merely made her husband gloomy.
"I might just as well stay in the car," he said.
At first overwhelmed by the crowds who turned out to see her, the sweet and shy teenager quickly became a young woman of violent mood swings, according to her husband's authorised biographer Jonathan Dimbleby.
Often the princess was in tears as she and the prince travelled to venues, pleading that she could not cope.
Feeling trapped and frightened in a gilded cage, the "Prisoner of Wales" began to suffer from bulimia nervosa disease.
Unable to deal with growing depression, she sought help by attempting suicide on more than one occasion.
The first indication came a few days before the wedding when Diana "broke down" at a polo match at Tidworth in Hampshire.
Photographers, particularly the paparazzi, were blamed.
She was already in a very fragile state and it was the general public at this match crowding in on her as much as anything that caused her to rush away in tears.
At the time she was comforted by Lady "Penny" Romsey, the wife of Lord Mountbatten's grandson, Lord Romsey who subsequently became two of Diana's greatest detractors.
They told friends at the time that they thought the marriage was quite wrong. But we didn't realise it in our euphoria.
Shortly after the couple flew back from their honeymoon, they posed for pictures on the banks of the River Dee.

Moment of love: Princess Diana leaning on Prince Charles' shoulder at Balmoral after their return from honeymoon in June 1981

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 Di looked thin as she had started to be in the weeks leading up to the wedding.
But nobody was particularly concerned. It was a demanding time for her.
On the surface, the early days of Di's marriage appeared happy.
After a few weeks, the Prince and Princess went off on their first official tour together. Naturally, they chose the Principality of Wales to put themselves on display.
I remember covering the visit. It never stopped raining and we were all soaked.
But Diana always refused to wear an overcoat or mac. She felt that the public wanted to see her and not hidden away under outer clothes.
She was an instant smash hit.
She didn't know what she was doing, she later confessed that nobody had taught her anything from within the Royal Family, but she just behaved as herself. And the crowd loved her for it.
She was great at small talk, she was great with kids and older people and she never once complained about the appalling weather except in a jokey fashion.
Diana-mania had well and truly started.
In February, 1982 when she was already pregnant with Prince William, she set off on her famous visit to the Bahamas on holiday with her husband and the Romseys.
Pictures were taken of her and Charles on the beach, him rubbing suntan lotion into her fair skin.
But behind the scenes, a different picture of a deeply troubled Princess was emerging.
Author Andrew Morton, later claimed she slashed at her wrists with a razor blade, a penknife and a lemon slicer and once threw herself against a glass cabinet.
In January 1982, six months into the marriage, the princess threw herself down the stairs at Sandringham.
She was pregnant, anxiously trying to accommodate herself to her new position and her new family, and haunted by the rapidly unravelling relationship with her seemingly-uncaring husband.
I have never believed this was an attempt at suicide. I think it was just a call for help, something she clearly felt she was not receiving from her husband or the rest of the Royal Family.
Indeed, later in the infamous Panorama interview she said: "I was actually crying out because I wanted to get better in order to go forward and continue my duty and my role as wife, mother, Princess of Wales.
"So yes, I did inflict upon myself. I didn't like myself, I was ashamed because I couldn't cope with the pressures."
During the next few weeks, and before the birth of William in June in the Lindo Wing of St Mary's, Paddington, Diana suffered badly. She did not have a happy pregnancy, suffering from regular morning sickness.
But she continued to carry on with public engagements and again enchanted everybody she met.
In June following the birth, we saw a very frail-looking Diana on the steps of the hospital with William in her arms.

New mum: Princess Diana leaves St Mary's Hospital with newborn Prince William in June 1982

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 Despite the birth, Prince Charles appeared distant. When asked about married life, Prince Charles said: "It's all right, but it interferes with my hunting."
For the next few months, Diana busied herself with William and attending to his every need.
But duty always called and as a senior member of the Royal Family it was her duty to carry out overseas engagements as well as domestic ones. And in early 1983, her duty was to go on tour of Australia and New Zealand with her husband, Prince Charles.
The Royal Family wanted her to go without William. But she would not think of it.
Her stipulation was that if she went, her new child had to go, too.
Buckingham Palace didn't like the idea, but everybody else did.
And it worked for her. After landing in Alice Springs in Australia, she installed William with Nanny Barbara Barnes at a safe house in New South Wales and whenever she had a spare moment, she would travel there with Charles to spend even a few hours with the nine month old Prince.
In between, she carried out engagements all over Australia and was a triumph wherever she went.

Royal couple: Princess Diana And Prince Charles watch an official event during their first royal tour to Australia in January 1983

 At the same time, and without my realising it at the time, seeds of discontent started to stir in Prince Charles.
She was a star and he wasn't.
He had never been used to this. As Prince of Wales, he had been the centre of attention all his life.
I covered the whole of this five and a half week visit and I remember how the crowds which lined either side of the street wherever they went would groan when they ended up with Charles on their side of the road and Diana the other.
Charles tried to make light of it. He would say things like: "You've got me. You'd better ask for your money back."
Or: "I'll have to split Diana in half so that she can walk down both sides of the street at the same time."
From Australia, the couple moved to New Zealand. They were as big a triumph there, and there was added delight when Prince William gave us his first- ever photocall.
It took place on the lawns of Government House in Auckland, and both Charles and Diana were the original proud-as-Punch parents.

Family tour: Charles and Diana took baby William with them on their tour of Australia and New Zealand in April 1983

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 The tour of both countries had been a triumph, but less so for Prince Charles. He did feel surplus to requirements. And he didn't like it.
But none of us realised this at the time.
Immediately after this visit, there was a second important one, this time to Canada.
The timing was terrible. Everybody was exhausted from the first trip to Australasia and Prince William was left behind.
Diana was not happy.
The Prince and Princess and young William had a break after these two trips when they could concentrate on playing mum and dad in a reasonably normal manner.
However, the Princess's progress from popular idol to saint, achieved through her remarkable personal warmth as comforter of the sick, the dying and the needy, was not easy for her husband to swallow.
She won worldwide acclaim for her espousal of the cause of Aids victims, doing much to dispel the common belief that social contacts, such as shaking hands, could spread the disease.
In between the tours of the UK, there were regular overseas visits by the Prince and Princess.
The Government realised that Diana, in particular, was a major asset to the country, and they couldn't wait to get her into a country to help boost goodwill and extra exports.
The tours came in quick succession. There was one to Spain, another to France, a magnificent two-week visit to all parts of Italy, to Portugal, to the United States of America and later to Brazil, Japan and India.
But within the Royal Family, the Princess seems to have been regarded as an uncontrollable "wild card", and she was isolated accordingly.
No single event can be said to have caused the breakdown of the marriage. The Prince told TV viewers that he was faithful to Diana until the relationship had "irretrievably broken down" - in the second half of the Eighties.
The Princess's estimate of when the marriage died is earlier than her husband's.
She says it was effectively over after the birth of her second son, Prince Harry, in September 1984. Prince Charles had hoped for a girl.
A dismissive remark - "Oh it's a boy and he's even got rusty hair" - marked the beginning of the end.
"From that moment, something inside me died," the Princess told friends.
Rage and rows were reported as commonplace.
The Prince stuck rigidly to his annual schedule of polo, hunting, shooting and fishing, regardless of school holidays or family weekends. The Princess sank into the trough of bulimia.
Charles, taught from birth to keep his feelings under a tight rein and to himself, hid his unhappiness behind the mask of his royal duty.
But his wife - more emotional, more theatrical, too highly-strung and less well trained - was unable to camouflage her distress.
One of the main problems was that they had nothing in common.
Diana was never an airhead - she was quick-witted and bright - but most things that she liked Charles did not.
She did like the opera and the ballet, as does Charles.
She didn't dislike hunting in the way that people accused her of - although she wasn't mad about it.
And she didn't object to polo in the early days, as some suggested, but she found many of Charles' intellectual friends boring.
She grew to loathe the dinner parties he gave at Kensinton Palace.
She had little in common with many of the guests - people such as the late Laurence Van Der Post and Prince Charles's polo friends.
She was no gourmet, didn't particularly like wine, except in bursts, when she would binge on certain drinks, and would start going to bed before the party broke up and quite early.
After a year or two of trying her best - which wasn't good enough - she started missing the dinner parties altogether.
She acquired a young set of friends, more her own age, to spend time with.
They included James Gilbey, the car dealer with whom she had the famous "Squidgy" phone conversation, and guards officer Major David Waterhouse.
She would attend dinner and bridge parties with these people in preference to being at home with her husband. When she wasn't socialising she actually led a lonely existence.
Occasionally she would go to the cinema on High Street Kensington but often would curl up at home with a book and go to bed early.
It seemed that the whole world was in love with her except for her husband.
As an antidote to her lonely existence, Diana agreed to fulfil more and more engagements on behalf of her many charities and to work out even harder.
People who criticised her for going out to gyms and running the gauntlet of the dreaded paparazzi each morning didn't understand her need to get out of Kensington Palace.
She felt cooped up there, incredibly frustrated.
One of her aides told me: "She has this great urge to go out and meet real people. Of course she could have a private gym at the palace but she finds the place a little bit like prison."
At the same time, Diana's relationship with her family was proving very difficult. Originally she got on very well with her mother but in recent years that relationship deteriorated.
And in the last few months she was quite hostile towards Frances Shand Kydd, with Diana believing and telling friends that her mother drank too much.
Recently, the princess was furious when Mrs Shand Kydd gave an interview in which she expressed the opinion that Diana was upset that her HRH tag had been removed during her divorce settlement.
At the same time, Diana's relationships with her brother, Charles, and her two sisters, Sarah and Jane, were up and down.
The volatile red-head, Lady Sarah, was a sometime lady-in-waiting for Diana, but they didn't always get on that well.
There was ever-present sibling rivalry and always a bit of a problem that Sarah had been the girlfriend of Charles before Diana.
In the case of her brother Charles, Diana was unhappy when she was refused permission to create a home at the Althorp family seat in Northamptonshire.
The princess was equally distraught at the breakdown of Charles's marriage to Victoria and their subsequent departure for South Africa where the two lived in separate homes near Capetown.
With Jane there was a problem too.
She is the easiest-going of all the Spencer children but she is married to Sir Robert, who is 100 per cent supportive of the Queen and took the royal side when it came to the divorce.
During the mid-Eighties when the prince and princess were taking their young children, William and Harry, on bucket-and-spade holidays as guests of the King and Queen of Spain in Majorca, there was little physical or mental rapport between the two.
I was told that the last time they slept together was the spring of 1986.
A sunshine holiday in the summer of 1986 first publicly exposed the cracks in the marriage.
I remember that year being shocked at the indifference displayed between the two while they were out for a day's cruise off Palma, Majorca.
For seven hours the couple did not exchange a single word with one another.
They were on King Juan Carlos's motor yacht, the Fortuna, but not together. When Charles came up on deck Diana went below and vice versa.
Diana swam alone, Charles wind-surfed all by himself.
They didn't exchange a single word.
Still it was hard to understand that the marriage was failing.
But clearly it was.
Charles came home three days early from Majorca, leaving behind his wife and young sons.
It was said that the prince was going fishing. Many later believed the real reason was that he wanted to join Camilla Parker Bowles in Scotland.
Newspapers asked: "Are Charles and Di still in tune?" Buckingham Palace insisted everything was fine.
In fact, friends have said that after this trip to Majorca the couple never slept together again.
Her husband's early departure set a pattern that was to become familiar over the next six years. They spoke little and appeared to go out of their way to avoid each other's company.
The Princess repeatedly dropped hints about her husband, telling one hospital patient Charles did not approve of the books she read.
At a polo match, Charles kissed his wife for consolation after losing a game.
She scornfully wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
Then, witnesses told of an extraordinary scene in the car park where Diana appeared to kick out at her husband and he shoved her back against the car.
Throughout the Eighties, I could not accept - I just didn't want to - that there was a problem within the Wales' marriage.
But signs were beginning to emerge that all was not well.
In each country that they visited I heard whispers that they were not sharing the same bedroom. In February 1987, the Prince and Princess visited Portugal together but hotel staff said he had one bedroom and his wife asked for another.
Vic Chapman explained to me that this was only for practical reasons.
Loyally, he would explain that they needed separate rooms so that they could get ready in a hurry in the morning without bumping into one another.
I was half convinced, but the signs were slightly ominous. Neither I, nor any of my colleagues, could really accept that things were going wrong.
Wasn't this the marriage of the century? A marriage of which dreams are made?
We certainly knew that there were problems, but as Vic Chapman said and I accepted all marriages have their ups and downs.
On the domestic front, all was going well enough. Diana was involved in numerous charities as Patron or President and was a triumph.
She was not only charming and able, but she helped raise millions of pounds for the organisations she was spear-heading.
She was tireless in her quest to help the disadvantaged and poor. When she attended an engagement she would always over-run her allotted time considerably.
Each child got a pat on the head, each parent received numerous kind words.
She was faultless. She also began to feed on the adulation and adoration that the public gave her.
In some ways she no longer needed Prince Charles, but by the end of the Eighties he was no longer there for her.
I have no doubt that, in his own way, he tried to make the marriage work. He knew how catastrophic it would be if it ended in divorce.
He did not contemplate the idea for a moment but emotionally he was involved with only one woman - Camilla Parker Bowles.
It is hard to say whether Diana really hated Camilla by now. I'm told she was more contemptuous of her than anything else.
And by now, as we have subsequently learned, Diana had taken her own lover, James Hewitt, a good-looking former cavalry officer who had helped teach William and Harry to ride and at the same time had won the Princess's broken heart.
In her infamous Panorama interview Diana talked of how much she had "adored" Hewitt.
But the marriage struggled on and, outwardly at least, the seams were not coming apart.
By the autumn, the couple were leading separate lives, sometimes not meeting for up to a month.
The Princess wanted her husband's undivided love and attention. That was what he could not supply.
She sought friendship outside her marriage - with used-car dealer James Gilbey and James Hewitt, a handsome Life Guards officer.
Diana's relationship with Major Hewitt is supposed to have lasted from 1986 to 1991. If Hewitt has told the truth of a passionate affair, then the princess betrayed her husband as surely as he was accused of betraying her.
Charles continued to see Camilla who coincidentally is the great-granddaughter of Alice Keppel, mistress of Charles's great-great grandfather, Edward VII1.
No one was surprised when, in 1988, author Anthony Holden published a biography portraying the royal relationship as a marriage of convenience.
Throughout 1988 Diana was treated, sometimes for days at a time, by eminent London psychiatrist Dr Maurice Lipsedge. He broke her dependency on the gorging and rejection of food, which is the foundation of bulimia.
Friends say the doctor made her see that the illness was a result of inner depression and insecurity and that, once she conquered that, the physical side could be dealt with. And it was.
The marriage, however, had become a tyrrany of togetherness and seemed beyond treatment. Had Charles and Diana been an ordinary couple, they would undoubtedly have divorced years earlier.
They were christened "The Glums." Diana looked positively gloomy at her husband's side, yet relaxed and friendly on her own. Charles, in turn, appeared cold and disinterested in his wife.
By 1991, the marriage was teetering on the edge with former royal policeman Andrew Jacques revealing: "They never smile, laugh or do anything together. They seem to want as little contact as possible."
In February 1992, the royal couple visited to India where for the first time I learned that the they were not in separate bedrooms but on separate floors of their palace.
In India, the signs of open hostility between Charles and Diana became more and more apparent.
There was one truly grim day when the couple split with Charles staying behind in Delhi to address businessmen while Diana went to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal, the world's most romantic monument to love.

All alone: Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal

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 While there, she made a huge point of posing all alone in front of the building looking downcast and forlorn.
Charles was left explaining that he had not made a wise decision staying behind in the capital. Too true.
And a few days later, on the eve of St Valentine's Day, Diana made her biggest point ever when she turned her head away at the end of a polo match in Jaipur when Charles went to kiss her.
He ended up brushing her ear, totally humiliated.

Close call: Prince Charles tries to kiss Princess Diana on their tour of India in Jaipur in February 1992

MIRRORPIX

 The cracks in the marriage had split wide open.
Visits were not on the menu in the way they had once been - but there was one ghastly tour still to come, to Korea in November
Again, I was on this visit and the frostiness between the two was awful. After a couple of days it was as if they were on separate tours of the same country.
And then, while visiting a shipyard in Southern Korea one of the Prince's senior advisors, Peter Westmacott, admitted to me that the marriage was in difficulty.
That was the first time anybody had made an official remark to this effect.
Separation, if not divorce was horribly on the cards. It was hard to imagine that this fairytale marraige had disintegrated in the way it had. But the reality was there.
It was almost incidental that Prince Andrew and Fergie's own marriage was heading for disaster too. What with Princess Anne's divorce from Mark Phillips the three married Windsor children were in a terrible mess.
All the Windsor family values, as encouraged so much by Queen Victoria, were in a shambles.
But the only marriage that really and truly mattered was that of Charles and Diana.
True, there was an excellent heir and a perfect "spare" in Prince Harry. But that wasn't really the point.
The British public who had expected so much of Charles and Diana in 1981 expected more of them than they were getting now.
I suppose each was to blame to a degree - they were emotionally and intellectually miles apart - but the great British public tended to blame Charles.
Then came Andrew Morton's bombshell book Diana: Her True Story, written with the princess's tacit consent. It portrayed a lonely, neurotic woman, driven to tears, bulimia and tantrums by her unhappy marriage.
The book exposed the prince as a distant father, uncaring husband and adulterer.
It disclosed that, even as the fairytale couple honeymooned on the Royal Yacht Britannia, the prince was in regular touch with his longtime companion and mistress, Camilla.
Doubts about the origin of the Morton revelations were squashed when, three days after the first extract of the book was published, the princess visited her friend Carolyn Bartholomew who had furnished much telling material for the book.
Emotional and mental stability became the theme of coverage of the princess in the US, where Americans largely saw her as the victim of a cold-hearted Charles.
In Britain, Diana had only to shed a few tears in public for the nation to be at her feet.
The princess continued to maintain her extraordinary hold on public sympathy and affection despite the publication of tapes of intimate phone conversations.
These were apparently between her and James Gilbey, whose voice could be heard professing love, and became known as the "Squidgy Affair."
A taped conversation between Charles and Camilla was also published.
The disastrous tour of Korea by the ill-at-ease prince and princess in November 1992 - was followed a month later by Buckingham Palace's announcement of their separation.
It was inevitable that everyone would take sides. The nation was either for Charles or for Diana.
The question was whether the princess's bulimia destroyed the marriage, or did her unhappiness within the marriage lead to bulimia.
The truth lay in the no man's land between the two camps.
In December 1993, the Princess announced in a blaze of publicity that she intended to reduce her official engagements and develop a more private life.
In an emotional speech to Headway National Head Injuries Association she said: "I hope you can find it in your hearts to understand and to give me the time and space so lacking in recent years.
"I could not stand here today and make this sort of statement without acknowledging the heartfelt support I have been given by the public in general.
"Your kindness and affection have carried me through some of the most difficult periods, and always your love and care have eased that journey For that I thank you, from the bottom of my heart."
Foolishly, in my opinion, Diana dropped all her Scotland Yard security deciding officers were restricting her freedom by always being around.
But the limelight beckoned again just four months later when Diana took on the role of Red Cross roving ambassadress and the Queen invited her to join the D-Day commemorations.
Diana did not drop her patronages and presidencies after her announcement that she was withdrawing from public life. But she did go into partial Purdah.
I was told then that she would start to carry out engagements that she wanted to fulfil and not engagements that were more or less thrust upon her by the organisations she represented.
I was told then that she would never go back to carry out the number of duties that she had once indulged in. And the information given to me was correct.
That was a phase of her life that was gone forever.
But she was still incredibly caring and brought great benefits to many millions of people worldwide.
She cultivated a great friendship with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was the one person in the world to whom Diana would fly if needed.

Friendship: Mother Teresa and Princess Diana both showed other people they cared

 At the same time and, after the falling out with her mother, Diana adopted a substitute mother figure.
This was the formidable Lucia Flecher de Lima, the wife of the Brazilian Ambassador to London at the time.
Lucia helped Diana enormously during this turbulent period of her life. But there was another side to Diana that the public knew little about and were upset when they learnt what had been happening.
Diana was never that clever when it came to choosing men friends.
She had enjoyed a string of unsuccessful relationships since her 15-year marriage began to go wrong.
A soldier, a heart surgeon, a property developer and a rugby star are among her former loves.
But the tears were never far behind the start of each new affair.
James Hewitt was Princess Diana's secret lover for five years.
It was rumoured that former Life Guards officer Hewitt earned more than £ 200,000 for his confessions in the Princess in Love book written by Anna Pasternak.
He also received another large - unrevealed - sum for his 'Cadorama' TV interview in which he talked about his love affair with Diana.
In her celebrated Panorama programme, she confessed to the affair - the only one she has spoken about publicly despite being linked to a string of men.
Asked on air if she had been unfaithful to Charles, she admitted: "Yes, I adored him (Hewitt). I was in love with him. But he let me down."
In his TV confessions, Hewitt explained how they first met a pal's dinner party in London.
The expert horseman later helped her get over her fear of riding and even coached the young princes on their ponies.
All the while Charles - pursuing his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles - and the rest of the nation were unaware of the passionate affair going on at Hewitt's home in Devon.
Hewitt said: "Diana's love is all-encompassing.
"I was privileged to be on the receiving end. What we had together was very, very special and will remain with me forever."
But the smooth-talking charmer, dubbed a cad and Royal rat, was snubbed by many old Army pals and society people in horsey circles.
He has revealed that Diana wrote to him every day while he was a tank commander in the Gulf War.
It is thought he could have as many as 100 love letters from the princess in his possession. One of Diana's close personal aides is alleged to have resigned after it was suggested that she try to buy some of the letters back.
Those who have accused Hewitt of already making huge sums of money out of his affair with the then future Queen of England have long feared he would try to cash in on the letters.
But in any backlash to Diana's tragic death, it remains to be seen whether Hewitt will seek or find a buyer for those intimate letters, or whether he will keep them secret or even destroy them.
Public opinion, and even new laws, over press intrusion and privacy may make the letters unsaleable in the foreseeable future.
Like the wrongs and misdeeds of past kings and queens, they may have to be locked away for years until they can be read as part of "history" rather than the living legend of Diana. Hewitt was not at his estate in the Devon countryside yesterday.
But his twin sister Syra greeted callers at Eversfield Manor, near Okehampton, red-eyed from crying.
She said in a breaking voice: "It is terrible, shocking news. I can't believe it.
"James is not here. He will be away for a week.
"I have left a message for him on an answering machine."
Syra, like Hewitt's mum, Shirley, shared some intimate moments with Diana when she travelled in secret to their cottage in Ebford, just outside Exeter.
Hewitt and Diana enjoyed romantic weekends in the ivy-clad, thatched "lovenest" - which yesterday stood sadly empty.
It is up for sale - at £160,000 - by the family since James and his mother moved to the country mansion about 30 miles away.
They paid a judge £225,000 for the five-bedroom Georgian house which has stables and rambling grounds.
Another suitor from the Eighties was car salesman James Gilbey, an old friend.
She turned to Gilbey, now a 40-year-old Grand Prix marketing chief, in the mid-to-late Eighties when her marriage was at its lowest ebb.
But the pair suffered public ridicule with the release of the notorious "Squidgygate" tapes, a recording of their intimate phone chat.
The 30-minute tape, made in 1989 but not revealed until 1992, featured Gilbey calling Di "Darling" 53 times and "Squidgy" 14 times.
However Di always insisted they were never lovers.
Gilbey had been dating Lady Alethea Savile for two years when he fell for Di. After splitting with Gilbey, Lady Alethea sank into depression and drug addiction and later committed suicide.
David Waterhouse, a major in the Life Guards and a Gulf War veteran, met the Princess in 1986.
He was introduced to her after the Duchess of York's wedding and they became close companions.
But unlike Hewitt, the 38-year-old bachelor tried to keep their liaison secret and described speculation that they were more than good friends as "nonsense".
Philip Dunne met Diana through through his sister Millie and they became close friends.
He joined a skiing party at Klosters in 1987, much to Charles's apparent annoyance.
Speculation surrounding them peaked when they spent a weekend alone together while Charles was abroad.
Merchant banker Dunne, 36, married Domenica Fraser, daughter of former Rolls-Royce chairman Sir Ian, in February 1989.
The revelation of Diana's relationship with 51-year-old art dealer Oliver Hoare, a friend of Charles, sparked further controversy.
Hoare, married to heiress Diane de Waldner, was forced to call police over Di's nuisance calls to their Chelsea mansion in 1995.
Later the same year Diana was sensationally linked to former England captain Will Carling.
The denials of an affair swiftly followed.
But the rugby star eventually confessed to his wife Julia that he had had an intimate relationship with the Princess.
Julia, 32, told a friend: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was like a bombshell. I felt destroyed.""
She decided to try and give the marriage one more chance after Will vowed never to see Diana again.
But three weeks later he was photographed at a London health club at the same time as Diana.
Humiliated and hurt, Julia finally lost her patience and ordered Carling to leave their home in Putney, south west London. The couple have since divorced.
In December 1995, she was reportedly dating property developer Christopher Whalley.
The 42-year-old tycoon later told how Princess Diana chatted him up at her favourite Chelsea Harbour gym club.
She stopped him on the stairs and asked: ""What does a girl have to do to get a coffee around here?"
He was said to have been "stunned" by her approach. A pal said: ""He thought she had mistaken him for someone else."
But Whalley went on to share secret meetings with the Princess for breakfasts and lunches for 14 months.
Diana is also believed to have spent weekends at his secluded country farmhouse in Yorkshire.
Whalley, who works out twice a day at the exclusive Harbour Club and is one of London's most eligible bachelors, was described as "the ultimate charmer".
A friend said at the time: "He is renowned for being able to get a woman's telephone number in a shorter period than anyone else on earth.
"Women love him. He is intelligent, articulate and a wonderful shoulder to cry on.
"When he is in love, he is intensely loyal. He is a real find."
Whalley is credited with having helped her cope with the shame of the Oliver Hoare episode.
Di went to extraordinary lengths to keep their friendship quiet, even hiding Whalley in the boot of her car to sneak him into Kensington Palace.
Although their relationship has cooled, they still see each other and were recently photographed leaving a restaurant together with Prince William after a lunch date.
Di was said to be secretly devastated when dishy surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan ended their affair.
The handsome 38-year-old heart surgeon broke off their relationship just four months ago.
The Princess had pinned her hopes on marrying the handsome Pakistani, but he decided he could not take the "intense pressure" of being Di's new man.
A close pal of the surgeon told The Mirror: "He just found it too intense being under so much scrutiny all the time.
"There were also problems over his religious background.
"Although Diana has become fascinated by the Muslim faith, his family would expect him to undertake an arranged marriage and that would obviously be impossible in this case.
"In the end he found it all too difficult and decided the best thing to do would be to break off the relationship."
Diana first met Dr Khan at the Brompton Hospital in West London through her friendship with transplant pioneer Sir Magdi Yacoub.
After watching him perform heart ops, she invited him to her home at Kensington Palace.
They began sharing candlelit dinners and the pair spent spent intimate, relaxed weekends together in the Stratford-upon-Avon home of Hasnat's uncle Omar, whose wife Jane is an English lawyer.
By November last year, it was reported that Diana was keen to marry the doctor and was hoping for a little sister for William and Harry.
Although the pair publicly denied they were having an affair, in private the relationship blossomed.
They would sometimes meet at safe houses in London, provided by close friends, or at pubs near Harefield Hospital where Khan works.
The turning point came in May this year when Diana slipped away from her bodyguards in Lahore, Pakistan, to visit Khan's parents.
The doctor was clearly embarrassed by the behaviour when The Mirror rang him.
After months of silence, he went on to give us an extraordinary interview in which he described Di's actions as "bizarre'.
"Why would she go to meet my family? It doesn't make any sense," he said.
"I realise people are going to say there must be more to our relationship if she has gone to meet my family. But I just can't explain it - it's bizarre to say the least.
"It's so embarrassing when I read things like I've said I love her or that she says she wants to have my babies."
His choice of words was deeply hurtful for the Princess and spelt the end of their relationship.
In June this year Di went dancing with Asian millionaire Gulu Lalvani, a divorced father-of-three, 23 years her senior.
The pair became close after the electronics tycoon invested a substantial sum in one of her charities. Mr Lalvani insisted they were "just good friends".
In June 1994, Prince Charles admitted that he had been unfaithful in a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby.
In Dimbleby's authorised biography, published four months later,Charles said he had never loved his wife and married her only because his father had bullied him into it.
The book sent shock waves through the palace by blaming his parents, his upbringing, his school as well as his wife for the emotional upheavals of his life.
It caused the public to look more critically at the Princess of Wales but the exposure of more intimate details of a lacerating domestic saga marked another damaging episode for the Royal Family.
Fifteen million people watched as Prince Charles opened his heart in an interview with Jonathan Dimbleby in June 1994.

 In the two-and-a-half-hour documentary, "Charles The Private Man, The Public Role", he admitted his adultery. He dismissed as "extraordinary" any suggestions that he might abdicate, and made it clear he intended to rule.
He implicitly revealed that he would never give up his mistress.
He said: "Mrs Parker Bowles is a great friend of mine. She's been a friend for a very long time, and will continue to be for a very long time."
Speaking publicly for the first time about his "deeply regrettable" separation, he called it a dreadful thing which caused great unhappiness and consternation.
Wringing his hands and endlessly contorting his face, he said both he and Di had desperately tried to save their marriage.
And in a genuine show of emotional pain, he added: "Obviously, I'd much rather it hadn't happened and I'm sure...mmm...my wife would have felt the same.
"It wasn't for lack of trying, you know, on both parts trying to ensure these things work.
The question of divorce, he added, was a "very personal and private thing between my wife and myself, and that's how it will remain."
Challenged over stories that he had been "persistently unfaithful" through carying on a relationship with Camilla, Charles replied: "These things are so personal that it is difficult to know how to talk about them.
"There is no truth in so much of this speculation. Mrs Parker-Bowles is a great friend of mine.
"I'm terribly lucky to have many friends who I think are wonderful and make the whole difference to my life which would otherwise become intolerable."
Asked if he had tried to be "faithful and honourable" to Diana when he took his marriage vows, he said: "Yes, absolutely."
Dimbleby: "And you were?" Charles: "Yes, until it became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried."
Asked if he believed that the breakdown of his marriage had damaged his reputation and the monarchy, Charles said: "Well obviously, I don't recommend it to anybody."
Showing sympathy to Di's plight, he admitted that marrying into the Royal Family was difficult for outsiders.
He said: "I think those who marry into my family find it increasingly difficult to do so because of the added pressure.The strains and stresses become almost intolerable."
Referring to his children Wills and Harry, he told of his concern at what they read about his relationships.
He said: "I feel very strongly they should be protected as much as possible. It's important for them to develop in as private an atmosphere as possible."
The documentary - broadcast in the run-up to the tomorrow's 25th anniversary of Charles's investiture as Prince of Wales - cost almost £1million and took more than a year to make.
Dimbleby was given unprecedented access to the prince's life and accompanied him at home and abroad.
In August 1994, the princess was linked with England rugby captain Will Carling and, two months later, Anna Pasternak's book Princess In Love chronicled her five-year affair with former Army officer James Hewitt.
If Buckingham Palace hoped that the princess would play Ophelia and float gently downstream to a nunnery, she insisted on the role of Lady Macbeth.
The princess questioned her estranged husband's suitability to become King in a Panorama television interview in November 1995, suggesting that she would prefer the succession to go to Prince William.
 

With breath-taking candour, she revealed misery, hatred and wrath in what was hailed as a masterly performance.
She referred to her husband's staff as "the enemy" and declared she would not "go quietly" because she had an ambassadorial role to fulfil as a "queen of hearts". "I'll fight on," she said.
She also confessed that her relationship with James Hewitt had gone beyond mere friendship, but blamed the collapse of the marriage on her husband's relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Talking about her marriage, she said: "I desperately wanted it to work, I desperately loved my husband and I wanted to share everything together, and I thought that we were a very good team."
She added: "Here was a fairy story that everybody wanted to work."
But she then revealed: "There were three of us in this marriage so it was a bit crowded," she said.
Of her own role she said she wanted to be an ambassador for Britain: "I'd like to be an ambassador for this country. I'd like to represent this country abroad.
"When I look at people in public life, I'm not a political animal but I think the biggest disease this world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved, and I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give - I'm very happy to do that and I want to do that.
"I think the British people need someone in public life to give affection. I lead from the heart, not the head, and albeit that's got me into trouble in my work, I understand that. But someone's got to go out there, love people and show it."
"I'd like to be a queen of people's hearts, in people's hearts, but I don't see myself being Queen of this country."
The princess declared that she had no intention of initiating a divorce. But the interview had a contrary effect.
Her remarks about the succession, in particular, directly challenged Buckingham Palace and launched republican elements of the Labour Party into a discussion of the need for debate on the future of the monarchy.
Constitutionalists began to argue that a speedy divorce was the only way to clean up an increasingly messy battle of wills between two bitter protagonists.
Several opinion polls showed falling support for the royals, and many young Britons said the reason was Charles's affair with Camilla.
In Australia, Charles was named "Republican of the Year" by anti-monarchists who felt he had done most to advance their cause.
Four weeks after the princess's appearance on Panorama, the Queen wrote to her son and daughter-in-law urging a quick divorce to spare the feelings of their children.
Until the interview, the prince and princess seemed to have come to a private understanding not to divorce for the sake of the children.
Now the princess entrusted herself to the negotiating skills of solicitors Mishcon de Reya presided over by her chief adviser, octogenarian Labour peer Lord Mishcon. The prince was represented by the firm of Farrer and Company.
There was no serious dispute over the essential terms of the divorce and in February, 1996 - three years after the separation - Diana brokered the final terms of a deal at a teatime summit with her husband at St James's Palace.
The divorce was officially announced on February 28, 1996. Di later won a settlement estimated at £17million, although she lost the right to the title Her Royal Highness.
But in the months which followed, she began to lead an increasingly lonely and isolated life.
The royal soap opera descended into black farce in March, 1996, when England rugby captain Will Carling was reported to have confessed to his wife that he had slept with the princess.
Public interest in the Windsors' antics waxed and waned, but the princess managed to keep the balance of sympathy in her favour.
Whatever she may have done, the prince strayed first. And polls showed overwhelming hostility to the idea of Charles marrying Camilla who divorced in 1995.
Diana once admitted to a close friend; "I had so many dreams as a young girl.
"I hoped for a husband to look after me, he would be a father figure to me, he would support me, encourage me, say `well done' or 'that wasn't good enough'.
"I didn't get any of that. From, now on I am going to own myself and be true to myself."
Before embarking on her affair with Dodi Fayed, she lived a remarkably quiet life in her private apartment at the palace.
It was there she felt truly safe and completely private, cocooned from the many pressures of her life.
Then, last month she finally found the love she longed for with 41-year- old Dodi.

Dodi Al Fayed

Rex

 The Princess first met Dodi at a polo match in Windsor 10 years ago. It was only this summer while she spent 10 days on his father Mohamed Al Fayed's yacht off St Tropez, France, that love finally blossomed.
It was a true romance Diana felt able to admit to the world.
The couple appeared not to care who noticed. Unlike previous romances, there were no serious attempts to deny the affair.
But yesterday it all ended in hideous tragedy as the couple died in a Paris car crash. The tragedy that was Diana's life was over.