Princess Diana

♪ (dramatic music) ♪ Narrator: It was the event of the century.

Amanda Foreman: The wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana was spectacular.

Narrator: Almost a billion people tuned in to watch a young, naïve bride marry her prince.

Tessy Ojo: Who didn't wish to be a princess?

Debbie Frank: This whole sense of gorgeous enchantment of this beautiful lady just captivated the public.

Narrator: As her profile surged, so would her confidence.

John Travolta: She was utterly charming, utterly beautiful.

Narrator: But while the world embraced her warm-hearted radiance-- Frank: Charles felt so jealous of the attention she was getting.

Prince Charles: I've come to the conclusion, that really, it would have been far easier to have had two wives.

Narrator: Behind the palace walls, her fairy tale marriage went cold.

Andrew Morton: It was deeply disturbing, because it was going to affect the monarchy.

♪ Narrator: Leaving the most photographed woman on the planet depressed and unwell.

Morton: She felt bereft...lonely.

Foreman: She had to claw her way towards the person that she wanted to be.

♪ Narrator: But Diana evolved, transformed, and took control of her life.

Morton: She became the humanitarian, with a lot to give and a lot to say.

Diana: We have a battle on our hands.

HIV does not make people dangerous to know.

Frank: She took on difficult causes.

Man: Firing!

(explosion) Prince Harry: If she hadn't have campaigned the way that she did, this could still be a minefield.

Diana: I'm only trying to highlight a problem that's going on all around the world.

Narrator: Diana became the princess who couldn't be stopped.

Diana: I'm not a political figure.

I am a humanitarian figure, and always have been and always will be.

♪ ♪ Morton: Abandonment was the theme of Diana's life.

♪ She'd married this perfect family, the Royal Family, and what had happened, she'd married a man who was in love with somebody else.

♪ Kate Williams: There was still the romanticizing of her, this romantic, wonderful princess.

And she wanted to come out there and say, 'my life has not been like that.'

I've suffered.

Frank: She felt that the public had a right to know what was going on.

So, she made it happen.

♪ Williams: She decides it will be done via secret tapes, smuggled in and out of Kensington palace.

Morton: The first time I'd listened to a tape recording that Diana had made, it was like I'd entered another world.

Diana was very nervous when the book came out.

She was expecting a volcano to explode, and it duly exploded.

Reporter: The world was stunned when Andrew Morton published, 'Diana - Her True Story.'

Williams: She really put a bombshell out there, that had been suffering from the beginning.

Customer: I want to see what she actually says in her own words.

I'm quite sick of people talking for her.

♪ Williams: Diana was born in 1961 at the Sandringham estate owned by the Queen.

Morton: She was the daughter of an Earl, Earl of Spencer.

Stewart Pearce: Well, the Spencers are referred to as being one of the most noble lineages in this Kingdom.

Williams: They had a huge estate, they had money, they had political influence and they really were one of the most powerful aristocratic families in the land.

♪ Morton: She was the third of the four children, and she always said to me that her parents expected a boy and were very disappointed.

♪ (soft music) ♪ ♪ ♪ Foreman: Diana's childhood was marred by the exceptionally bitter divorce case between her parents.

Dr. James Colthurst: She remembered her parents' marriage as being very unhappy.

Lots of rows, lots of shouting.

She told me that on one occasion her father hit her mother.

It was a very disconcerting childhood for Diana.

(bell tower ringing) Andrew Morton: In the divorce hearing, Lady Ruth Fermoy, who was Diana's grandmother, actually gave evidence against Diana's own mother, Frances.

Kate Williams: Lady Fermoy thought very much that it was an aristocratic family, the children belonged to the estate, they belonged with their father.

Morton: The judge ruled in favour that the children should be brought up by Earl Spencer.

At that time that was a very unusual verdict.

One of Diana's most vivid memories is the sound of her mother walking across the gravel courtyard from their house, climbing into a car, shutting the trunk with her suitcases and driving off.

♪ She was a little girl, looking for a mother.

Diana was deeply affected by her parents' divorce.

She felt that she had been abandoned by her mother, and that's one of the tragedies of her life.

Ken Lennox: Her father remarried.

It was Raine Spencer.

Kate Williams: This was a real shock for the children.

They weren't even invited to the wedding.

Foreman: He had neglected to inform his children that he had married Raine.

So when he did, Diana actually slapped her father.

♪ ♪ Lennox: Diana's father chased after her and said, 'You musn't ever do that again.'

And she said, 'You must never marry again without telling me.'

Foreman: That's an extraordinary thing to do, when you're a teenager.

That's balls of steel.

Williams: After Diana's father married Raine, Diana was sent to boarding school.

It wasn't a place that was determined on academic results.

Foreman: Diana's education was pathetic by modern standards.

Williams: Aristocratic girls in Diana's generation were very much overlooked, and even though middle class girls were going off to university, training as teachers, increasingly training as lawyers and getting careers, it wasn't the same in the aristocracy.

It was about flower arranging, it was about speaking French, it was about cordon bleu cookery, it was about dressmaking.

It was about really creating the perfect wife.

It wasn't what she wanted.

She was very unhappy, and she was desperate to come to London.

♪ (upbeat bass guitar) ♪ Foreman: The late 1970s, Britain was quite a grim place.

Dr. Colthurst: There was a very strong anti-authoritarian and anti-discipline line.

Crowd: Stop police harrasment!

Williams: What you saw was a quite significant surge in anti-Royal sentiment against the establishment.

(Singer) ♪ Nowhere to run on the streets of London-town ♪ Foreman: Britain was practically bankrupt.

There were strikes all the time.

We just had something called 'the long winter of discontent' where rubbish was on the streets.

There were rats running around the city.

♪ (rock music) ♪ Dr. Colthurst: It was a pretty disturbed time, and I think there were people hoping that something good might change the mood of the country at the time.

(Singer) ♪ Oh ooh, London boys!

♪ (crowd commotion) ♪ (dramatic music) ♪ Morton: In the 1970s, Charles was known as the 'action man Prince,' the man who parachuted from 1,800 feet, who dived under the ice cap.

♪ (adventurous music) ♪ Lennox: He was the skipper of a boat in the St. Lawrence waterway.

He played polo.

♪ Morton: Charming, funny, had a string of girlfriends, and was really, you know, the world's most eligible bachelor.

Lennox: Every time he smiled at a girl, the press would say, 'Prince Charles, this is the right one for you.'

♪ Williams: But the general public don't know that Charles is actually in love with a married woman, Camilla Parker Bowles.

♪ He met her at a polo match and he was immediately passionately in love with her.

He loved her practical, outdoors nature.

He was a very sensitive soul and he really needed someone we might say, to mother him and jolly him along, and she was perfect for that.

Morton: But she didn't have the aristocratic connections.

She was also married to Andrew Parker Bowles, a member of the Household Regiment.

Charles, you know, he'd asked several girls to marry him.

And they all said no.

It was the position that they said no to.

♪ And the position was a daunting one.

♪ He was the heir to the throne.

His wife would be Queen Consort.

She would be in the spotlight continually, she would be the media's chew toy.

Diana first encountered Charles when he came to Althorp House, the Spencer estate, because he was dating Sarah, Diana's older sister, at the time, and Diana showed him around the picture gallery, and she was bright and lively, and he seemed to take a shine to her.

♪ Williams: When they started dating, she really came out of nowhere.

No one knew who she was.

Diana's courtship is a baptism of fire.

So they couldn't have a chance to develop any relationship in private.

Reporter: Photographs from Diana's past were highly prized, as her relationship with Prince Charles became public.

Foreman: It's often asked, why was Diana such a perfect choice for the Royal Family?

It wasn't just one reason, there were several reasons.

Stewart Pearce: The Spencer family were of a very noble lineage and Diana was a virgin.

And so there was a certain archetypal symbology around her purity.

Foreman: Any woman of his cohort was already married.

And if she wasn't married, she was probably divorced, or she'd had a long affair with someone.

Then she needed to be at least of the same class, and she had to be willing to contemplate marrying Prince Charles.

And by that point, you've got about six people left.

Pearce: Charles liked her, Charles was amused by her... ...initially.

♪ Morton: The courtship of Charles and Diana was a master class in how to get it wrong.

Foreman: There was almost no one on Prince Charles' side who thought this was going to be a good match.

This was a thoughtful, highly educated, sensitive man, who literally had nothing in common with Diana.

Morton: Diana, being young, naïve, was besotted with Charles, who is very charming when he wants to be, and also besotted with the position, the idea of being the Queen of England.

She thought it was a great hoot.

They met 13 or 14 times before he proposed.

Reporter: In February, 1981, the waiting was over.

Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Charles and Lady Diana were engaged.

Anchor: After months of speculation, it's official.

Prince Charles is to marry Lady Diana Spencer.

♪ Lennox: When I first met Diana at Coleherne Court, which is where she shared a flat with three friends, they were ex-school girls, basically.

Virginia Pitman: She said 'I'm engaged,' and then from that moment on she didn't get a chance to say much.

Carolyn Pride: 'Cause we all sort of shrieked!

(laughter) Champagne flew pretty quick!

Lennox: They knew nothing of anything.

Reporter: How are you coping with all the press attention?

It must be quite a strain with all of us out here.

Diana: Well it is, naturally.

Lennox: The press needed Diana.

They were just full of bad news up to that stage.

And here, there was this beautiful young girl, laughing and smiling all the time.

♪ Foreman: Was it doomed from the start?

Yes!

But did the parties going into it, think it was going to fail?

No, not necessarily.

Dr. Colthurst: There was a famous moment when her sister said, 'bad luck, your picture's on the t-shirts and the mugs, you know, that's it.'

(crowd cheering) Williams: It was the wedding of the century.

The country came to a standstill.

Reporter: It was a romance the nation shared.

The wedding which Britain stopped to cheer.

A prince and a princess united in love, so willing to share publicly what they saw in each other.

Williams: The country was desperate for the fairy tale and Diana was at the centre of it.

Foreman: It was so big, that they couldn't have it at Westminster Abbey.

It had to be at St. Paul's Cathedral simply to accommodate the huge numbers of both spectators, and also people in the church itself.

Reporter: The event reportedly cost as much as 30 million pounds and they invited three and-a-half thousand guests.

Reporter: Why have you come here today?

Spectator 1: To try and get a glimpse of Diana and Charles.

Spectator 2: I think she's just the right person for him.

♪ Foreman: It was like spring was returning to the country after years of poverty and dissension and violence and strikes.

(crowd cheering) Tessy Ojo: Who didn't wish to be a princess?

Every young girl of my age at the time, wanted to be that princess that wore that beautiful wedding gown.

Frank: She was the embodiment of the nation's great desire to have this happy event and for her to become this princess.

Archbishop: I, Diana Frances.

Diana: I, Diana Frances.

Archbishop: Take thee, Charles Philip Arthur George.

Diana: Take thee, Philip Char-- Williams: It was an early sign of her independence that Diana chose to omit the word 'obey' from her vows.

Archbishop: --to love and to cherish... Diana: To love and to cherish.

Archbishop: 'Til death us do part.

Diana: 'Til death us do part.

Williams: And it really shows that we had completely underestimated her.

It's very important that she says, 'I'm not going to obey my husband, even though he'll be the King.'

Lennox: She was a very strong willed person.

Frank: She stepped into this role and she knew the enormity of it.

But I think she felt in her heart-of-hearts, that there was tragedy alongside it.

(crowd cheering) Reporter: Balmoral Castle was bought for Queen Victoria in 1852.

Prince Albert designed much of the castle, which was completed three years later, so Royal Families have been coming here for close on 150 years.

♪ Morton: Diana had grown up with the Royal Family, but she didn't know what she was getting into.

Reporter 1: How are you enjoying married life?

Diana: Highly recommended.

Reporter 2: Have you cooked her breakfast yet?

Diana: I don't eat breakfast.

Reporters: (laughter) Frank: I think it's very difficult when you go on your honeymoon with your husband and he opens his diary and out flutters a photograph of his mistress that he's thoughtfully brought with him.

So I think she had a rude awakening.

Morton: The honeymoon got off to a very poor start when she realized that Prince Charles' relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, was a lot more intense, and a lot more emotionally joined than she had thought.

Foreman: After Prince Charles and Princess Diana were married, their marital home in the country became Highgrove.

Dr. Colthurst: For Charles, it was familiar territory and it was near Camilla and it was easy for backwards and forwards.

And, of course, the more Diana didn't like Highgrove, the less she was there, and therefore the easier such meetings were.

Foreman: Highgrove became a project for Prince Charles.

He was always interested in sustainable farming, in gardening, the quiet country pursuits.

And that just wasn't Princess Diana's interest.

She liked other things.

She loved listening to music, Elton John-type music.

She was a very thoughtful person in her own way, but she was more into modern culture.

♪ Pearce: When she moved into the exalted position of being Princess of Wales, being removed from that which had always grounded her, she felt very uneasy.

(church bells sounding) Reporter: Princess Diana was the first to give birth to a Royal heir in a hospital.

Williams: The birth of William was a really important time for Diana because she was a natural mother.

She was mature.

She really started to stake her independence.

Ken Wharfe: Diana, as a mother was a very loving person, a very hands-on individual.

Dr. Colthurst: Her job was to have the children for the family, and keep her nose clean and that's it.

Frank: They did have some happy times together in those early years, especially with the children when they were young.

♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Morton: Diana went out to Australia in 1983.

A young ingénue, terrified of the media, terrified of the crowds.

Reporter: The Prince is a master of the art form, and because of his experience, he realized very quickly, it wasn't really him the people had turned out to see.

(crowd cheering) So when the crowds cheered the arrival of the Princess, he was perfectly happy to take second place.

♪ Pearce: The public were in adoration of Diana.

Dr. Colthurst: The crowd wanted to talk to her, not Prince Charles, and it wasn't really her fault.

She couldn't help that that's who they wanted to see.

♪ Frank: This whole sense of gorgeous enchantment of this beautiful lady, and the sense of joy, just captivated the public.

Foreman: She saw people as real people, and it didn't matter what class they came from, what their accent was like, what they looked like, that person at that moment, was the most important person she was talking to, and people loved her for it.

♪ Morton: It empowered her, but it also caused an awful lot of jealousy.

Prince Charles: I've come to the conclusion, that really it would have been far easier to have had two wives... (audience laughter) ...to have covered both sides of the street.

(audience laughter) And I could have walked down the middle directing the operation.

(audience laughter) Lennox: He was suddenly relegated.

His wife was on the front page and he wasn't mentioned.

Foreman: It was a surprise to Prince Charles how popular she became, compared to him.

But he'd always been a rather shy, introverted young man who liked to talk to philosophers rather than to the public.

Whereas Princess Diana was very good at that.

She had the common touch.

And for him it was much more difficult.

Morton: And after six or seven weeks of shaking every hand in Australia and New Zealand, posing for pictures, being mobbed, she came back a seasoned professional.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪ (jet engine whirring) ♪ (crowd cheering) Foreman: The British press had always had a thing for the Royal Family.

And since the Sixties, had become much less deferential towards the Royals.

Morton: You couldn't take a bad picture of Diana.

And she did have this romance with the cameras.

It was a, it was a love affair.

And the iconography of her beauty, and her charisma, was something which was apparent to everybody.

Foreman: Things really changed when Rupert Murdoch came in and bought The Sun, which is a tabloid newspaper.

He's a republican, has never liked the monarchy, and it's open season on the Royals.

Reporter: The press continue to pry into her private life to an alarming degree.

♪ Morton: Royal Family's all about image.

Prince Charles would make a speech, and nothing would be reported about it.

There would just be a big picture of Diana in a new hat or a new coat or a new dress.

And he used to get incandescent about that.

Foreman: And so you now have a perfect storm between a press baron who's happy to go after them, a public who can't get enough of them, and a press that has all the tools at its disposal: microphones, long range lenses-- Suddenly the Royal Family's without any protection.

And this became a problem for Charles and Diana.

Morton: The press saw Diana as the golden goose who laid the golden eggs.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪ ♪ (crowd cheering) Williams: The marriage really took a serious downturn after Harry was born.

Charles was disappointed, he'd hoped for a girl.

And Charles started to lose interest.

Now he had two sons.

Now the throne was secure.

Morton: It got to the point where they started to go on separate engagements.

Dr. Colthurst: I think what she probably hoped was that the arrival of the boys would help, and maybe things would just cool down a bit.

But, I think as time went on, she realized that wasn't gonna be the case.

Foreman: Once Princess Diana had her two boys, she was determined to try and give them as normal life as possible.

And give them the kind of childhood that she actually hadn't had herself.

Her upbringing hadn't been that normal.

Morton: Diana always used to say to me that they're not going to live upstairs in the nursery with the nanny.

She felt abandoned as a child, she sure as hell wasn't going to see her own children abandoned by her.

Wharfe: And that caused one of the early nannies to retire rather early, because she didn't like the way that Diana was behaving.

She thought that it was her role to bring up the children, not the Princess' role, but you were not going to convince Diana that was the right thing to do.

Foreman: She didn't want to go on long trips abroad without them.

This was the kind of thing that Prince Charles had had to go through, with the Queen and Prince Phillip going on very, very long tours and, you know, not seeing his parents for months, and she was adamant this was not going to happen to her.

Pearce: Recognizing that young ones need to be nurtured fully by their mothers, it was something that came very naturally to her.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪ ♪ ♪ (regal music) ♪ Report: America has its look-alike medieval cathedrals, it's look-alike British buses, but when it comes to Royal families, they don't have one, and constitutionally don't want one, but do they like it when they can borrow one.

(crowds cheering) ♪ ♪ Williams: When Diana went to America in 1985, it cemented her place on the world stage.

Reporter: At half time, the ten thousand spectators poured across the field for a glimpse of the Princess.

Williams: She was no longer this young, naïve girl, she was a huge celebrity, the most famous woman in the world.

Di-mania spread from Britain, across the world and then it seized America.

♪ John Travolta: I got a call from the White House to invite me to meet the British Royal Family with other celebrities.

So I went with a very humble attitude that I was an extra in a room of very important people.

Reporter: John, are you going to dance with the Princess tonight?

Travolta: If she'd like me to.

About ten o'clock at night, Nancy Reagan...tapped on my shoulder and said, 'The Princess, her fantasy... ...is to dance with you.

Would you dance with her tonight?'

And I said, 'Well, of course, uh, how does this work?'

And they said, 'Well, about midnight, I'll come and get you, and then I'll lead you over to her, and then you ask her to dance.'

And my heart starts to race, you know, and I tap her on the shoulder, and she turns around and looks at me and she had that, that, that kind of bashful dip that she did.

And she looked up at me and I said, 'Would you care to dance with me?'

And she said, 'Yes.'

You know, and I took her... ...and the whole room cleared, we danced for what felt like fifteen minutes.

Frank: She loved dancing and she brought pure joy to everyone else by doing this, for her to step out of people's expectations.

And she just had that capacity to be able to think outside of the box and act on it.

Travolta: It was a... storybook moment.

And we bowed when it was over and, you know, she was off and I was off and my carriage turned into a pumpkin.

(laughter) Williams: This is when Diana starts to think, 'What can I do with my voice?

What can I do with this platform?

What can I do with the fact that everyone wants to hear what I want to say?'

TV Anchor: The disease is abbreviated A-I-D-S and is referred to as 'AIDS.'

You've probably never heard of it, but experts say that illness is causing the biggest epidemic in this country since smallpox.

Wharfe: I remember on one occasion Diana visiting the Queen, which she did on a fairly regular basis.

When she came out of the meeting, she was rather tearful, and I said, you know, 'What's the matter, ma'am'?

And she said, 'The Queen asked me what I was doing.

And I said that I wanted to get involved in trying to find a cure for all this dreadful AIDS.'

The Queen said, 'Why do you want to get involved in this?

Why don't you get involved in something nice?'

Dr. Colthurst: Diana had lost friends close to her.

She had a lot of gay friends, and she wasn't going to have anybody stand in her way.

♪ (soft music) ♪ Pearce: The quintessence of Diana was that she loved profusely.

Firstly, there was the huge condemnation of anybody who was HIV positive or who had AIDS.

And we were seeing it as being this ghastly contagion that was going to be spread around the world.

And of course, as we know, the allegations against the gay community were absolutely vast.

Deborah Gold: There was a lot of fear and stigma around what HIV was, and a real lack of public understanding.

Lennox: People with AIDS had been treated like pariahs at that time.

People didn't want to be in the same room with them, talk to them, touch them.

Foreman: A pivotal moment in Diana's growth was when she visited AIDS patients in London.

Reporter: Her visit to the Middlesex Hospital and its AIDS Ward.

All the speculation had centred on whether she would wear gloves when shaking hands with the staff and patients on the new ward.

The Princess of Wales felt not the slightest apprehension.

Pearce: It was very natural for her to immediately go to where she felt she was needed.

Gold: There was huge press coverage of that event, and she was going around and talking to the people on the ward, touching them, holding their hand, interacting with them.

Williams: You have to remember, parents wouldn't even touch their children at that time.

And so when Diana went, this young, beautiful princess, when she went, she chatted to AIDS patients, she was talking with them, and she shook hands with the patient.

Foreman: At a time when people were frightened to have anything to do with an AIDS patient was revolutionary.

It was transformative.

Williams: This put AIDS and HIV on the front page of the newspapers.

Diana: HIV does not make people dangerous to know.

So you can shake their hands and give them a hug, heaven knows they need it."

(applause) Foreman: It revealed something about her to herself, and to the public, was that she had a big, deep heart, and she wanted to share it.

♪ (soft music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Frank: She never gave up on her marriage, actually.

She wanted to be this great team with Charles.

She wanted to have more children with Charles and he did not want to have more children.

Morton: The Royal Family all worried about Charles and Diana, because they could see that the marriage was collapsing.

Foreman: And then suddenly, Diana's great connection with the public is being used against the Royal Family.

That's not so great.

Williams: Then, the confirmation was a tape that was called Camillagate.

It was leaked to a newspaper in this country, in which Charles and Camilla were having a romantic conversation.

It was clear, they were in love with each other.

It was clear they were having an affair, and there was really no way back from that.

Pearce: He was very overt about his love for Camilla.

Frank: Diana decided to confront Camilla.

But, as she confronted Camilla, she realized that Camilla always was a kind of non-negotiable part of Charles' life, that it wasn't going to happen that she was going to back down.

that it did not make a change in that relationship.

Morton: Remember, abandonment was the theme of her life.

Diana felt that she'd married this perfect family, the Royal Family, and what had happened?

She'd married a man who was in love with somebody else.

Williams: Diana wanted to get her story out there.

There was still the romanticizing of her, this romantic, wonderful princess.

And she wants to come out there and say, my life has not been like that.

It's been isolation.

There's been exclusion.

And really the long-term suffering from being in a marriage when your husband is in love with someone else.

Morton: She just couldn't give anymore.

Her husband had gone back to what she called 'his lady,' and Diana was in this isolated position inside Kensington Palace.

She felt bereft, lonely.

♪ ♪ (dramatic music) ♪ Dr. Colthurst: She was furious with what was going on.

She was angry at the organization.

I think she wanted to explode in several directions at once.

And it was quite difficult to explain that she would not be her own best spokesman.

It was better to have a case put out there by somebody else on her behalf.

Williams: And she was determined to speak out, but she knew that if someone got wind of it, they'd have found a way to stop it and to censor her.

So, she decides it will be done via secret tapes, smuggled in and out of Kensington palace.

Morton: She contacted James, knowing that James and I were friends, and said, 'Would Andrew like an interview?'

Well, I mean, you can't make this up.

I mean, here's the most famous princess in the world, offering an interview.

And of course, I said yes.

Dr. Colthurst: The publisher, Michael O'Mara, came up with the idea that they could never meet, because she needed to retain deniability about her involvement in the book, and then said, you know, would I be prepared to ask the questions?

Morton: I think Diana wanted not only just to confess, but also to talk about her life, about her childhood, about her romance with Prince Charles.

Frank: She felt that the public had a right to know what was going on.

So, she made it happen.

Dr. Colthurst: The tape recorder was either in my pocket or in a briefcase.

So I'd cycle in, I'd say hello to the police, and then carry on and that was it.

The first time I started reading out the questions, and, fairly quickly, Diana snatched the paper from me and said, 'Look, I'll just read them direct.'

Morton: The first time I'd listened to a tape recording that Diana had made, it was like I'd entered another world, genuinely entered another world.

And I was nursing a secret.

And the secret was, was kind of a dangerous one as well, because, you know, the establishment didn't want Diana's story to come out.

They were happy to keep the myth going.

Reporter: 'We are not in the business of hyping publications.'

was the only comment from Buckingham Palace this morning, as the Princess of Wales took Prince Harry to school.

There are now just 24 hours to go before the book, which claims to expose serious rifts in her marriage, goes on sale.

Morton: Diana very nervous when the book came out, for obvious reasons.

And she'd written a note to James saying she was expecting a volcano to explode, and it duly exploded.

Reporter: The world was stunned when Andrew Morton published Diana: Her True Story.

There was a darker side to the Princess' life.

Morton: As an individual, I have been a number of these royal tours to Australia, Canada and so on, seeing Diana day after day, close up, I had never had a clue that four and five times a day, she's been sick with this eating disorder bulimia nervosa.

Frank: It's not just an eating disorder, it's rooted in your psychology, in your emotional abandonment issues.

Dr. Colthurst: It's the symptom of a disturbance, and treating the bulimia on its own, without understanding what's causing the disturbance which led to the bulimia was a pointless exercise.

Foreman: It's showing on the outside, the despair that you feel on the inside.

♪ Frank: Diana decided to talk about it, which helped so many other people.

Diana: Eating disorders, whether it be anorexia, or bulimia, show how an individual can turn the nourishment of the body into a painful attack on themselves.

And they have, at their core, a far deeper problem than mere vanity.

(audience applause) Williams: Diana talking about her bulimia, gave permission to tens of thousands of women to go to the doctor and say, 'I have bulimia.

I have this disease and I need help.'

So Diana's work in raising awareness of eating disorders really is revolutionary.

Dr. Colthurst: The support was overwhelming.

And she realized she had actually opened quite a subject.

Foreman: Overnight, it changed the conversation, it removed the stigma, it became a disease, it was acknowledged, and therefore could be named and treated.

Morton: When the book came out, she felt a sense of relief that her story was out.

And she said to James, 'For the first time in ten years, I've slept soundly through the night.'

And when she kept saying she had nothing to do with the book, they took her at face value.

It's only later, after her death, that I revealed that she'd obviously been the architect of this book.

Dr. Colthurst: Nobody overtly knew until after she died, that she'd actually helped.

It was pretty clear she might've done, but it wasn't overt, and I think that was a very important thing.

Customer 1: "Well, I've always liked Diana very much.

I'm interested in the truth.

(laughs) Customer 2: I want to see what she actually says, in her own words...I'm quite sick of people talking for her.

Frank: Sadly, I think the Royal Family saw Diana as a threat.

She was so utterly different from the way that they felt Royal life should be conducted.

They felt eclipsed, they felt undermined, and they felt threatened.

♪ (low dramatic music) ♪ Williams: So this is the Palace really confronted with everything that's happened to Diana over the years.

And it's very clear from the book, that she just wants a bit of encouragement and a bit of support, and none of that is forthcoming.

Stewart Pearce: What had been held in secret, what had been held in the height of discretion, was now completely indiscreetly expressed into the world.

And so things were beginning to change that were radical.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪ Foreman: Prince Charles and Princess Diana had come to loathe one another, and had been living separately since 1992.

And then in '96, the Queen finally said this simply can't go on anymore.

Morton: They realized that they kicked the can down the road long enough.

So the Queen wrote two notes, quite short, one to Charles, one to Diana, suggesting that they now move on and divorce.

(printing press humming) Frank: So it wasn't actually their decision in the end.

And there was a tremendous amount of back and forth with both of them doing documentaries and confessions and accusations, but it was the Queen who actually made the intervention.

Foreman: Watching the Royal Family, it was like Prince Charles and Princess Diana were the main characters in their own TV soap opera.

It was just one great big soapy drama.

PM John Major: It's very sad, both for Princess Diana and for Prince Charles and for their children.

I think everyone is very sad at the ending of the marriage.

♪ (soft music) ♪ Foreman: People often underestimate what it's like for women who are leaving a marriage, and the loss of status, and purpose that goes with it.

It's not the money, it's so much more than that.

Lennox: It was such a sea change to see the mother of the future King, out in the streets, being pursued by kids, more or less.

Morton: By divorcing Prince Charles and making her own path, it was a difficult path, but I could see in her, she was making real inroads.

Pearce: She had a vision of herself, and what she wanted to become, which she didn't feel that she was living at that time.

And she wanted me to help her develop greater presence, and so she intuitively began transforming, and growing and evolving.

(artillery fire) James Cowan: Angola had been one of these countries affected by the Cold War and the proxy wars fought there, and landmines were used indiscriminately.

And so, there are 88,000 people, who are living as victims of landmines, having lost limbs or been injured by landmines.

And there are still 1,200 minefields in Angola.

♪ ♪ Diana: Last month, I flew to Angola in South West Africa.

This was a working visit.

I wanted to support the Red Cross by highlighting its campaign to ban anti-personnel landmines.

♪ Cowan: Diana had been thinking about the landmine problem for some time.

She was involved with the British Red Cross, and the International Committee of the Red Cross wanted to focus on landmines.

♪ Foreman: After the divorce, she literally could have done anything.

She could have taken the traditional route and become chairman of some opera house or ballet, you know, any of the safe choices.

And instead, she went to Africa, to Angola, and chose landmines.

Diana: 2,000 people every month are killed or maimed by mines around the world.

That's one person every twenty minutes.

Williams: She was so courageous, and she knew what her platform could do, and I think this really shows how a woman who has suffered, wants to help suffering in others.

Diana: It is my sincere hope that by working together in the next few days, we shall focus world attention on this vital, but until now, largely neglected, issue.

(applause) Dr. Colthurst: I think Diana felt with the landmines, they've had bits blown off them.

A lot of cultures don't look after their amputees well at all.

That touched another cord for her.

She could really feel for the amputee.

Cowan: The world's eyes were upon her, as this incredible, charismatic, beautiful woman took a walk through one of the most horrific, ugly aspects of human society.

♪ The consequence was really very remarkable, because a problem that was not being given sufficient attention suddenly had the world's eyes upon it.

- Two, three, fire!

(explosion) Frank: Unfortunately, here in England, you know, the politicians accused her of meddling.

Reporter: The Princess' campaigning continued today, despite the controversy at home, she seemed taken aback by the description of her as a loose cannon.

Diana: Today I'm only trying to highlight a problem that's going on all around the world.

That's all.

Cowan: At that time, there were ministers in the Conservative government, who felt she had no constitutional right to be making highly political statements.

Wharfe: If she knew something was right, then nothing was going to persuade her to do otherwise.

Frank: They didn't want her to be this powerful woman who decided to front up her own causes.

That hit her quite hard, but it didn't stop her.

Diana: I saw it merely as a distraction, because I'm not a political figure, I am a humanitarian figure, and always have been, and always will be.

(cameras clicking) Williams: After the divorce, it was gloves off for the press.

They went for Diana, and she really rose above it.

Diana: I've had hands-on experiences before, but this working trip has been slightly different.

I've had more contact with people and there's been less formalities.

It's the type of programme I've been looking for for some time, and I'm very happy to have done and achieved what we have.

Williams: She was so courageous and brave, that she used her platform for good, no matter how much she got attacked and criticized.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪ Tessy Ojo: She went where the pain was.

She identified communities that were in pain and she went there.

Dr. Colthurst: As she developed a path and a mission, with a little bit more focus on the charities and so on and really developing the life that she was going to choose to have, then I think things picked up from there too.

Hillary Clinton: I want to welcome all of you, and particularly our guest of honour, Diana, Princess of Wales.

Pearce: Diana became a central figure in the consciousness of the people of the world.

Now, I believe that this took place because of the remarkable vulnerability that she showed from the word go.

And therefore she was adored.

Reporter: It is not the horror of landmines that is making the headlines back home, but reports of the Princess' romance with Dodi Fayed.

Williams: In 1997, Diana was confronting quite a lonely summer.

A lot of her former friends, they'd all gone to Charles' birthday party for Camilla at Highgrove, and she was quite lonely.

Frank: It was a bit galling and she needed to get out.

♪ She needed a safe space to go to with the boys, that was her primary concern.

And she met Dodi, and it kind of just happened.

Foreman: So, Dodi Fayed turns up, the son of a billionaire, Mohamed Fayed, who owns Harrods and the Ritz in Paris.

It was his father Mohamed, who invited her to their yacht.

Reporter: This is holiday time, to sail on board Al-Fayed's luxury yacht.

Time to enjoy the Riviera sun, with Princes William and Harry.

This afternoon she boarded a hundred and fifty foot cruiser, also belonging to the Harrods boss, to sail away from Saint-Tropez, to slip away from the media glare.

Williams: There's nothing more far away from a paparazzi lens than a yacht.

So Diana, I think, felt that she'd be protected there.

She really thought that with Mohamad Al-Fayed and Dodi, she would be safe.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪ ♪ (sirens sounding) Anchor: It's been reported in the last few minutes that Diana, Princess of Wales, has been seriously injured in a car crash in Paris.

Reporter: Dodi and the driver were killed outright, a bodyguard badly injured.

The Princess died in hospital, of massive chest injuries.

Foreman: Anyone who was alive on the day that Diana died remembers where they were, and what happened.

It was...the most extraordinary shock that everyone felt.

Morton: I was like everybody else, absolutely shocked.

It was like... a soap opera, where they cut it short, before they actually finished the screenplay.

Frank: I really couldn't believe it.

It was just a massive hole had opened up, and you could feel it in the whole country.

Morton: Initially, the Queen and the rest of the Royal family thought that this would be a private funeral, because Diana was no longer a member of the Royal family.

And it took a long time before they realized the outpouring of grief.

♪ Reporter: As London prepared for the arrival of millions of mourners for her funeral, the queues waiting at St. James's palace grew ever longer.

Tony Blair: I feel like-- everyone else in this country today, utterly devastated.

Bill Clinton: We liked her very much.

We admired her work for children, for people with AIDS, for the cause of ending the scourge of landmines in the world.

Nelson Mandela: She was undoubtedly one of the best ambassadors of Great Britain.

Travolta: I'll miss her, as everyone will.

We're all better for knowing her.

♪ PM Blair: Our thoughts and prayers are with Princess Diana's family, in particular her two sons, the two boys.

♪ Frank: I think what was so incredible about Diana is that everyone felt that they could relate to her.

♪ Mourner 1: I love who she was, she was a beautiful person.

It's just, it's a tragedy.

♪ Mourner 2: She was like one of us.

One of the people.

♪ Frank: She was just so relatable, so gorgeously in the moment.

I mean everyone took her into their hearts.

That's why there was such an outpouring of grief when she died, because everybody felt they genuinely loved her.

♪ (uplifting music) ♪ Pearce: Diana had an unconditional love that is extraordinarily rare in the world.

Not love for personal gain.

Love purely for the sake of love.

That was Diana.

Foreman: In the decades since Diana's death, we've been able to reassess her legacy, and come to understand what did she achieve, and what did she leave behind and what continues.

Williams: Diana's legacy comes through to her children.

Frank: She just loved being a mother, and trying to help them to be as normal as possible.

Williams: She said herself that she hoped, because of her mothering, William would be a different type of King, a more sympathetic, more empathetic King.

Wharfe: She had a very strong influence on molding their character.

So both William and Harry inherited and took over the bulk of her charitable work.

♪ Cowan: Prince Harry has been long associated with the anti-landmine movement, and he was able to see at firsthand what the effect of his mother's work had been.

Prince Harry: To walk in her footsteps is, is clearly quite emotional for me.

Without question, if she hadn't have campaigned the way that she did, 22 years ago, this could still be a minefield.

Cowan: Where once the Princess of Wales walked through a live minefield, now Prince Harry was able to walk through a cleared area, life going on all around him.

It was a really remarkable thing for him to witness.

(applause) Foreman: The very fact that there was a landmines treaty that was signed by 164 countries after her death, goes to show that it wasn't simply for show, there was a meaningful change that she helped to achieve.

It's the causes that she championed, whether it's bulimia, AIDS or landmines, she revolutionized the public conversation and the approach that came afterwards.

Morton: The world saw, towards the end, this young woman come into her own, and I think that's the irony of her death, that, she was on the cusp of making sense of her life and making sense of her future.

(audience applause) Diana: I'm supposed to be dragged off in a minute with men in white coats, so-- (audience laughter), so if it's alright with you, I thought I might postpone my nervous breakdown to a more appropriate moment.

(audience laughter) Williams: Diana was an icon.

She revolutionized what was around her.

She revolutionized the Royal Family.

She revolutionized charity, and most of all Diana revolutionized perceptions of women in the public eye, and how to be vulnerable and talking about mental health.

Prince William: We have seen time and time again that unresolved mental health problems lie at the heart of some of our greatest social challenges.

Frank: She was a role model for how to evolve out of a tight spot, a difficult situation, to never lose your sense of humour, to never lose your grace.

♪ (uplifting music) ♪ Williams: What's so striking is how much she was underestimated, how much she was overlooked.

She was a young girl when she came into the Royal Family, people dismissed her.

And yet she had the most transformative effect.

♪ ♪ Foreman: There's a famous saying by George Eliot, which is, 'It's never too late to be the person you could have been.'

♪ ♪ And that sums up Princess Diana.

For so many women, Diana's journey was their journey because, they were encountering the same societal obstructions.

'Who am I really,' that's what Diana was asking.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Announcer: In Their Own Words is available on Amazon Prime Video.

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