The Story of Diana

One of the reasons I want to talk now

is because I think after 20 years,

somebody shifts from being

a contemporary person to one of history, actually.

And Diana deserves a place in history.

And I think that It's important for people who are under 35,

who probably won't remember her at all...

...to remember that this was a special person...

...and not just a beautiful one.

It's very difficult to explain

the global phenomena that was Diana, Princess of Wales.

Diana! Diana! Diana!

She was more than a celebrity.

She was a global presence.

With Diana,

when she walked into a room,

it just was like a magnet.

You couldn't stop looking at her.

She looked like she had stepped out of a storybook.

I think, as a girl, it was just my dream come true.

She had so many gifts,

but I think it was relating to people on their level.

It brought her very close to all of us.

She shook our hands! Aah! It was great!

She had something that made people want to be her.

She was everywhere.

Throughout the world.

It was staggering.

It was Diana all the time.

The media and Diana needed each other.

They fed off of each other.

Diana!

She invented a whole new form of celebrity.

She was like pure heroin for the press.

She put the beating heart inside the Royal family.

She's this beautiful rebel.

Diana!

This fairy tale turned to soap opera.

Do you think Mrs. Parker‐Bowles

was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage?

She was a complex person.

She was unlike any other woman

in that she had enormous power...

...the power of the world's attention.

"Of all the ironies about Diana,

perhaps the greatest was this ‐‐

a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting

was, in the end, the most hunted person in the modern world."

That is fairly disgusting stuff.

They weren't really paparazzi.

I called them, at the time, "stalker‐azzi."

The cops are working out how they can get her out

without us taking a picture.

You know, all the media that hounded Diana

was feeding an insatiable beast,

and that was the public.

It's kind of amazing to look back

in the 80's and the 90's,

because now we're so accustomed to this 24‐hour news cycle.

The TMZ and the Instagrams and social medias

and the Kardashians and everybody's famous.

But back then, there was none of that.

It was all about Princess Diana.

The public always feels

a real connection

with celebrities and public figures

who they watch grow and evolve.

And we certainly watched Diana

from this very shy young woman

who was marrying the prince

to being this global powerhouse superstar.

We watched an incredible evolution over those 17 years.

It is, of course, truly tragic

that she's not here.

Well, I‐I do regret not ‐‐

I mean, I wish I could have done more to protect her.

This is the person I grew up with.

Well, we're pretty basic, really.

We're sheep farmers a long time ago who struck it lucky.

So the Spencers are not royalty.

They're an aristocratic family.

Spencers had all these wonderful relations,

like George Washington.

Winston Churchill, the great prime minister ‐‐

he was a a Spencer.

They're a very, very important family.

My family were quite outward‐thinking.

One of my ancestors was against slavery before his time.

Other members of my family were pro‐American independence

when that was thought to be treacherous.

Ladies of the Spencer family

have been very charitable and glamorous.

And, in many ways, Diana is the sort of ‐‐

the coming together of so many strands

of this family.

Spencers rubbed shoulders with the Royal family.

Diana was not a commoner.

She was actually born on the Sandringham Estate,

where the Spencers rented a house from the Royal family.

My earliest memories of her,

she always had a sort of natural star quality.

She could strike a pose

in clothes that she had borrowed from my eldest sister.

When Diana's a little girl,

she starts to realize how people fall in love with her.

She was one of those children that goes into the room

and everyone is charmed by her.

It would be wrong

to think of Diana as a saintly child.

I mean, she was quite naughty.

Never with malice, you know ‐‐

just sort of pushing the boundaries.

Well, my mother and Diana are actually quite alike.

They were both glamorous,

very quick‐witted,

and great fun.

She inherited from my father this very great gift

for understanding people

and caring about things that mattered.

Every time I think of her,

I think of this little girl, you know, back then.

She always tried to do the right thing.

And I think after my mother left,

she used to help around the house,

and she'd check the curtains were closed at night

and she took on a sort of semi‐maternal role

around the household, I think.

Divorce has been a part of the American culture

for a very long time.

The English had a way of just burying their head in the sand.

If a marriage didn't work, you just quietly got on with it.

At some social occasions,

such as horse racing at Royal Ascot,

where the queen was present,

if you were a divorcée,

you weren't allowed in the royal enclosure.

So an actual divorce was a very big deal,

and, of course, there was a scandal attached

because my mother had actually run off with someone else.

It was the subject of an extraordinary court case.

And people used to talk about her mother as a bolter

and be, you know, really disapproving of her.

I remember being told she had gone away on holiday...

...so maybe there was an expectation she might come back.

Nobody really told Diana why her mother had left.

She was 6 years old. What ‐‐ What could she ‐‐

What could she possibly have comprehended?

She used to sit on the doorstep

and wait for her to come back.

I think there was a period

where she felt very isolated.

And it was tough for her,

which is a terribly sad thought,

but she never healed.

This is one of the saddest things about Diana,

because her two older sisters were away in boarding school,

and Diana's father sunk into a fairly deep depression.

She had a series of nannies,

but none of them gave her

what she really needed.

She lacked a consistent source of support and love.

It was really the two of us growing up together alone.

Dancing was something she'd always adored.

She was a natural performer.

She took her exams at boarding school,

and there are pictures of her en pointe.

She got rather a long way with it.

She was sadly too tall