Diana, 7 Days

She was away abroad.

I remember getting a phone call at the time.

You know, you think it's just a parent ringing up to have a chat

and say hi.

And I think both Harry and I spoke to her

and said, you know, we were missing her and when was she back

and all that sort of stuff.

Think it was probably about tea-time for us and I was the typical

young kid, running around, playing games with my brother

and our cousins and being told,

"Mummy's on the phone, Mummy's on the phone,"

and it's like, "Right, OK, ugh," you know?

"I really want to play, I really want to play."

If I'd known that was the last time I was going to speak to her,

the conversation would've gone in a very different direction.

And I have to live with that for the rest of my life,

knowing that I was that 12-year-old boy wanting to get off the phone

and wanting to go running around and play games

rather than speak to my mum. Um...

You know?

I was in Cape Town.

My phone went and I was initially informed that Diana

had been in a car accident.

I wasn't worried by the accident to start with,

because I was reassured it was just a bump.

And of course, even a bump, if Diana was involved,

would have been huge news.

So, I thought, this makes sense.

This was going to be a little nothing,

and nice of them to let me know.

The crash happened just after midnight, French time.

The couple, Dodi al-Fayed and the Princess, had been out...

The report I'm just seeing now, the Princess' car,

which was a blue Mercedes, appeared to have

overturned in the narrow tunnel near the river embankment.

Princess Diana suffered concussion, a broken arm

and serious cuts to her thigh...

My sister Jane called again and she said,

"It's looking quite serious, you know, really serious."

And then, she was on one line to me,

but because of her husband's job as the Queen's Private Secretary,

I could hear him on another line, and I heard him go... "Oh, no."

And then Jane said, "I'm afraid that's it." You know?

It was a shock.

But then, as soon as that had registered,

I knew there were things that had to be done.

And that meant ringing Balmoral,

ringing Downing Street, making certain the people who

needed to know knew straight away what had happened.

It was a small number of people who knew.

The Royal family knew, Number 10 knew.

So you didn't have what you would have now

when everybody would know almost instantaneously

because anybody at the hospital would immediately be

on a mobile phone to a news agency and the word would spread.

There was a period of about two hours, and I was talking to

other members of my family, and learnt that she hadn't made it.

And, for these two hours, the presenters on every news channel

were saying, "injured but expected to make a full recovery",

and I have no idea why, but it made me SO angry.

Tonight's accident is a terrible tragedy.

The death of the Princess of Wales fills us all with deep shock

and with deep grief.

She was religious in putting on her seat belt.

Why didn't she put it on that night?

I'll never know.

I was a very new Prime Minister, I'd been just a few months in office.

I was up in my constituency. I was woken by the policeman.

The bell hadn't woken us. He was standing at the foot of the bed.

And it was an extraordinary shock, because I knew her.

I liked her a lot. She was an extraordinary, iconic figure.

I mean, it's hard even to fully comprehend the degree

to which she was THE most famous person in the world.

NEWSREADER: What I can now tell you is this,

that the Princess of Wales is reported to have died.

This has not been confirmed by Buckingham Palace.

Today, now, 2017, you know,

we see Prince William, Prince Harry

as people that people feel a close connection with.

They speak like normal people. They act like normal people.

People don't find them hard to relate to.

It's really important to wind back

20 years and realise she was the first member of the Royal family

that people really felt behaved and acted like a normal human being.

-RADIO:

-Even as we speak, the message about the Princess's death

is being transmitted to homes all over the country.

Yeah, and it is indeed a very, a greatly tragic moment.

It seems, it's just...

I think everybody in the studio is as appalled as everybody listening.

It's just such a terrible ending, isn't it?

Her loss was going to be a major global event.

The like of which we had not witnessed in recent British history,

so it was an extraordinary thing

and an extraordinary moment for the country.

She was a lovely character and when she decided to engage with you,

she really did. The Royal family aren't like that.

So this was a whole new ball game.

You've got status,

and a wonderful ability to engage with people

on a one-to-one basis.

She brought in a new way, really, didn't she?

She was a new kind of royal person.

And she was very, very good at it.

I mean, what she had with other people,

even people who were determined not to like her,

by the time they met her, she had this incredible charisma,

magic, that they'd love her.

People kind of wanted her shine to rub off on them.

Diana seemed, in front of everybody's eyes,

not just to grow in confidence,

um...and beauty. I mean, became, I think

everyone would agree, more and more beautiful, but she had...

you know, she could use those gifts of hers to best effect.

There was just this need to connect with people who were

suffering in some way, and I guess part of that probably

came from the fact that she did suffer as a child.

I think, also, that sort of... A feeling of pain from her,

that is quite beguiling in others.

You know, what, trying to work out why this girl is

not as happy as maybe she could be, or should be.

There was a depth that was obvious to Diana.

This is BBC Radio.

Buckingham Palace has confirmed the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

In a statement it said the Queen and Prince Philip were deeply shocked

and distressed by this terrible news.

Other members of the Royal family are being informed

of the Princess's death.

Um, disbelief. Refused to accept it.

Um...

There was no sort of sudden outpour of grief.

Of course there wasn't.

I don't think anybody in that position at that age

would be able to understand the concept

of what that actually means, going forward.

I remember just feeling completely numb, disorientated,

dizzy and you feel very, very confused.

Um...

And you keep asking yourself, "Why me?" all the time.

"Why? Why? What have I done? Why has this happened to us?"

One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is to

tell your children that your other parent has died.

How you deal with that, I don't know.

But, you know, he was there for us.

He was, he was... he was the one out of two left.

And he tried to do his best to make sure that we were protected

and looked after.

But, you know, he was going through the same grieving process as well.

Small groups of people are starting to gather outside the palace now.

A few of them have brought flowers and other tributes which they

have laid outside the main gates to the Palace.

I've just come through central London

and people are wandering around as if a bomb had dropped.

Silent, some in tears.

People are looking mesmerised.

It's a very curious event,

and death diminishes all,

as we know, but here, clearly,

was somebody who I think, particularly to younger people,

represented a slice of public life that was not like any other.

It was just such a shock to...

obviously, us, my wife and I.

You couldn't quite take it on board.

Just trying to compute it all, like the world was trying to do.

MAN WAILS

SOBBING

Tony and I, I remember one of the first conversations we had.

He said, "We're going to have to try to find a way to articulate

"what people are feeling and thinking."

He said, "This is going to produce grief

"like none of us have ever seen."

A lot of shock. It feels like she's, like,

a friend to us, even though

we don't know her, I'd never met her in my life,

know what I mean? It feels like you've lost a friend. It's very sad.

So many people felt they knew her really well.

They'd grown up with her.

They'd lived through all the triumphs, the tribulations.

Her whole life had been lived in the public eye.

There's no doubt that millions upon millions of families felt that

she was an honorary member, if you like, of their family.

From the moment that Diana got married in 1981,

the golden coaches, it was just a golden day.

And from that moment, millions and millions of people

bought into that story of the Disneyland Princess.

Here is the stuff of which fairy tales are made.

A prince and princess on their wedding day.

CHEERING

People had made a visceral connection with it,

that day in July, 1981.

A lot of people had watched it and were almost living their lives

thereafter vicariously, if you like, through that marriage

because it was such a golden moment.

Oh, she was a phenomenon. She was a phenomenon from the word go.

I don't even quite know what it is,

but there was something very, very special.

It wasn't just about the position, it wasn't just about the profile.

She seemed very vulnerable, she seemed innocent.

You know, the first time I met her,

there's very few people that I've met

and I've just gone, "Oh, my God."

The honeymoon and then the first pregnancy, the second pregnancy,

the cracks in the marriage,

and pictures, pictures, pictures, always pictures.

Just about anybody would find that there was some facet of that

multi-faceted Diana personality that appealed to them

as an individual and that they could relate to.

People saw in the Princess of Wales somebody who

reflected their desire for

an icon of beauty and youth, in a way.

But one that was flawed and had had its problems,

and so everybody could identify with her.

And they found it very hard to accept that she had died

in the most banal and brutal way that you could die,

which was in a car accident

in a concrete underpass on a Saturday night.

It didn't happen to your icon.

We are going, in fact, I believe, to Sedgefield,

the Prime Minister's constituency,

where he is about to make a statement.

I feel, like everyone else in this country today, utterly devastated.

I get asked so many times...

..was it you or Tony Blair who came up with "The People's Princess?"

I have no memory of discussing it whatsoever.

She...was a wonderful and a warm human being.

It was just this endless through-the-night conversation.

And the only reference to it in my diary is Tony and I

talking about when he should speak, what he should say,

and there's a line in my diary that says,

"We agreed it was fine to be emotional

"and it was OK to call her the People's Princess."

The people everywhere, not just here in Britain, everywhere,

they kept faith with Princess Diana.

They liked her, they loved her.

They regarded her as one of the people.

She was the People's Princess.

And that's how she will stay, how she will remain.

In our hearts and in our memories, for ever.

I think the reason we discussed about whether it was OK was

because we were sensitive to this idea that if you say,

well, if she's the People's Princess,

does that mean that the Royals aren't the People's?

News of the tragedy reached the Queen at Balmoral.

Just hours later, the grieving young princes arrived

with their father at nearby Crathie Kirk,

to attend the morning service.

At the time, you know, my grandmother wanted to protect

her two grandsons and my father, as well.

Our grandmother deliberately removed the newspapers

and things like that, so there was nothing in the house at all.

So we didn't know what was going on.

And back then, obviously, there were no smartphones

and things like that so you couldn't get your news.

And thankfully, at the time, to be honest.

We had the privacy to mourn and to kind of collect our thoughts

and to try and just have that space away from everybody.

We had no idea that the reaction to her death

would be quite so, you know, huge.

I think for Prince Charles,

he was in a most awful position throughout that week.

Because whatever he did,

he was potentially going to be criticised for it.

And his obvious priority were his two sons.

This afternoon, the Prince of Wales left Balmoral

and flew from Aberdeen to Paris to bring back the body of his ex-wife.

He was accompanied by the Princess's two sisters,

Lady Jane Fellowes and Lady Sarah McCorquodale.

I didn't have time to feel anything.

I think I felt shock, but I don't think I felt anything else.

Just love and shock.

I don't think I was capable of feeling anything else.

I think I put a barrier up.

These are the jobs that have got to be done, and just get on with it.

Time enough afterwards to point fingers

or whatever else you needed to do.

We are now seeing the Prince of Wales just leaving the hospital.

He wanted to thank the medical staff

for the apparently valiant efforts they had made

to try to save Diana's life.

The press were constantly trying to get in touch with me,

asking, I presume, for interviews and things,

24-7, which I found...

..unacceptable.

Um...

It wasn't the time then,

but they all wanted to be first.

I shared a drive with neighbours and they came and said, look,

there's a huge number of journalists outside your front gate.

And they're not, they say they won't go away

unless you make a statement.

And I thought, "Well, I'll give them a statement."

It would appear that every proprietor

and editor of every publication that has paid for intrusive

and exploitative photographs of her,

encouraging greedy and ruthless individuals

to risk everything in pursuit of Diana's image,

has blood on his hands today.

It was anger and... But apart from that, not just anger

but an incredible sense of waste, and, "What have you done?"

And I was thinking, I didn't put this in, but, to them, how stupid.

They'd killed the goose that laid their golden eggs.

When I heard she had died,

I was asked by a newspaper to write a piece.

And it actually never saw the light of day.

But I've got it somewhere.

And I know that

my kneejerk reaction to her death

was a feeling of responsibility,

for having helped to turn her

into an international...icon.

Because it got out of control, I think.

And none of us saw the danger.

I did go to photograph the coffin coming back.

And it's the only time I've ever seen the media pack be absolutely...

Nothing to say.

It was that hush, absolute hush.

Even the most hard-bitten journalist,

everybody was very quiet.

And I think none of us, kind of, it hadn't hit any of us

until that coffin came off.

And it came round and it was very close to us.

And it was just disbelief.

You kept looking at it and thinking, this is not a real...

This is not a real story. This is not Diana.

I was just standing there and ended up,

the Queen's Lord Chamberlain said to the Prime Minister,

he said, "You know, we're going to need a bit...

"We're going to need help on this."

And I think they realised this is going to be different,

for two reasons. One, she's not a Royal,

but the public view her in that way.

And two, I think they were onto this sense that this is going to provoke

a massive reaction and they might need a bit of help in navigating it.

Jane and I had been discussing on the way what was the next step,

how are we going to go forward with plans for a funeral,

what we were going to have.

And given the ages of William and Harry, Jane and I had both said

we both thought the best idea was a small, family funeral and then

an enormous memorial service to which everybody was invited.

And we left Northolt and came along the A40,

and every possible space was taken by people throwing flowers.

The central reservation, both sides, bridges.

And I think I turned to Jane and said,

"I don't think we're going to have a small family funeral, do you?"

After detailed consideration of the funeral arrangements,

Buckingham Palace announced them this morning.

On Saturday, Diana's coffin will be carried in procession to

Westminster Abbey where the funeral will take place at 11 o'clock.

It was the Queen's decision that Her Royal Highness should have

a Royal funeral.

The Princess was not a member of the Royal family,

therefore she wasn't amongst those who

I expected to have to deal with in this capacity,

but it became apparent very quickly that that was the case for her, too.

I knew at the back of my mind that the normal time between death

and funeral is something between eight and ten days.

I was set the task of arranging a funeral on the following Saturday.

And that gave me five working days.

My reaction was probably, internal, "Good Lord!"

But external, "Right, we'll do it."

Instinctively, I've always been a republican.

But it was extraordinary. I'll be frank.

It was extraordinary going off down The Mall,

being met by the Queen's Private Secretary

to go up to this meeting...

..sitting around a table with all these Royal establishment courtiers

to start to talk about what the funeral is going to look like.

We were ushered up into this room and there was this enormous table.

Um... I would say maybe seating 30.

Mahogany walls, big red carpet.

Enormous and quite silent.

There was a sense of solemnity

as soon as we entered.

There's a conference phone there,

and suddenly we've got people from Balmoral coming in.

And we're talking very quickly about what needs to be done.

There was an awful lot to do in that time.

Including rehearsals, not much time to get troops together.

In terms of getting the congregation together for the Abbey.

We had no knowledge of any list,

so we had people going through the Princess's Christmas card list,

her diaries, everything.

Her good friends came in to help us to find names so that we could

hope to get people in the Abbey that really mattered to the Princess.

And as with any funeral,

every little piece of this has to feel right.

Can't remember who it was,

but one of the Royal Household people used this thing about,

"We've got to get to the weekend and feel that there's been healing."

This morning's newspapers can expect record sales,

reflecting intense public interest in the Princess's death.

But even though there's still no firm evidence

that pursuing paparazzi caused her accident,

the media in general are being blamed for her death.

All of you, you're ashamed of yourself to even be here.

You have hounded her to death, that's what I want to say.

You've lost a lovely person for nothing! You're horrible!

The public reaction was enormous, profound,

and full of the sense of loss

and swiftly turning to a sense of anger

against parts of the media, for sure.

I could feel this situation building.

It's you, press, that killed her!

You're the scum!

You're here to pick the bones!

I think all of the media, including the BBC,

pursued for some days after Diana's death

the widely held belief that

the paparazzi had, as it were,

directly caused the accident in the tunnel in Paris.

The atmosphere in the office was one of disbelief

and also not without a certain amount of panic.

It was a very painful business to find yourself

accused of having blood on your hands in the wake of the Princess

being killed, when she's barely been put in her coffin.

Hello! magazine announced it was shredding its latest edition,

which contained a story about the Princess and Dodi Al-Fayed.

I began to feel that my friends

and my neighbours... were kind of looking at me.

I could just tell instantly this was going to be a hell of a problem.

The seclusion of Balmoral, deep in the Scottish Highlands,

is highly valued by the Royal family, and today its isolation

has allowed Prince Charles and his two sons to mourn in private.

Very sadly, a lot of my memories revolve around trying to

cheer her up, and I believe that she cried more to do with

press intrusion than anything else in her life.

The impact it was having on her, that we would then see

and feel, and... It was very difficult to understand.

She was subjected to treatment that, frankly,

nowadays people would find utterly appalling.

To begin with, the press was not dangerous.

It was quite light, it was fun. She did enjoy the press attention, yeah.

She did. She bought the papers most days.

We would laugh or see, "Oh, dear, that hasn't worked."

But it was all very new.

Is there any possibility of any announcement of your marriage

-in the near future, can you tell me?

-BOY:

-Prince Charles's girlfriend!

Can you tell me if there's any possibility?

I'm not going to say anything.

It was very innocent, you know?

There was exchanges between Diana and us.

Obviously, she didn't know how to handle us at all

and had no help, so she was just relying on her natural

ability of being a good people person.

Pretty much the whole paparazzi industry

was founded on Princess Diana.

She was a circulation gold mine.

For every paper, not just the tabloid papers,

a picture of Princess Diana on the front page,

the circulation manager would come up, he'd be opening the champagne.

He would say, "Fantastic.

"That's another 100,000 on the sale tomorrow."

And a lucky paparazzi, who'd managed to get a great picture

of the Princess, could make a year's money from one picture.

Although she was quite unsophisticated and young, she was

very quick at understanding that, actually, she could control it.

Once she got the confidence,

she knew she could use the press, very much so.

And, you know, all it would take was one little phone call,

a little tip, and she knew that the right people would be there.

I think sometimes, looking back on it, there were times perhaps that

we forgot that she was actually quite a fragile human being.

So, yes, I look back on it now

and I think that there were times that she was pursued too much.

As soon as Diana got divorced and left the umbrella of the security

and press office and everything, it absolutely changed everything.

It was like, there's no rules any more. It got very ugly.

It was horrible. You just...

I mean, for me, I didn't want to be anywhere near it.

As a parent, could I ask you to respect my children's space?

I think Diana was an agent of the breakdown of the relationship

with the press, slightly, to begin with,

because she courted them,

she tamed them, to a degree,

they then got larger, the beast got larger and larger, she lost control.

CAMERAS CLICK

We'd go looking for her to talk to her, to play, to do whatever.

She'd be crying. And when that was the case, it was to do with press.

She'd had a confrontation with photographers on the way to the gym,

on the way outside, just trying to do, you know, day-to-day stuff.

The damage, for me, was being a little boy aged eight, nine,

ten, whatever it was, wanting to protect your mother

and finding it very difficult seeing her very upset.

Every single time she went out,

there'd be a pack of people waiting for her, like a pack of dogs,

who followed her, chased her, harassed her,

called her names, spat at her, tried to get a reaction,

to get that photograph of her lashing out, get her upset.

You know, it was very hard for William and I,

knowing that there was absolutely nothing that we could do.

And one of those really, you know, sort of hard,

bad memories was on the way to a tennis lesson.

And she was so fed up of being chased by guys on motorbikes

and in cars that she stopped the car down a side street

on the way to the Harbour Club.

And she jumped out of the car and went running up to these guys and

just shouted and screamed at them while they took photographs of her.

And that lasted about five minutes,

and I just remember being stuck in the back seat with my seat belt on,

unable to turn around and trying to look in the mirror

to see what was going on.

All I could hear was screaming. And then she jumped back in the car,

and she couldn't even talk to us. She just had, you know...

Her eyes were just bawling out.

And, you know, she was...

You know, she was just constantly crying.

And I just remember William and I looked at each other

and then sort of stared out of the window

and just thought, "Is this supposed to be the way that

"it's going to be for the rest of our lives?"

It was hard.

It's been revealed that the Mercedes car in which Diana

and her friend Dodi Al-Fayed died was apparently travelling at 121mph.

News that Princess Diana's driver had been drinking

took some of the pressure off journalists and the media today.

Many had blamed them for causing her death.

It took the spotlight off the newspapers,

but I remember thinking it wouldn't take them off for very long.

What had happened was so horrible that one wanted to say to oneself,

"Well, whatever's happened, it was nothing to do with us,"

while all the time kind of knowing in your heart of hearts

that that didn't really wash.

I think one of the hardest things to come to terms with...

is the fact that the people that chased her into the tunnel

were the same people that were taking photographs of her

while she was still dying on the back seat of the car.

Um... And William and I know that,

we've been told that numerous times

by people that know that was the case.

She'd had quite a severe head injury,

but she was very much still alive on the back seat,

and those people that caused the accident...

..instead of helping, were taking photographs of her

dying on the back seat.

And then those photographs made their way back

to news desks in this country.

As they are throughout the nation,

the flags over Whitehall are at half-mast.

The Prime Minister cancelled his public engagements for today.

Campaigning for the Scottish and Welsh referendums

has been suspended.

I rang headquarters and said, "I think we should be there."

I think it was Monday morning.

I was instructed to drive to the side of the Palace,

so I drove into London, set the vehicle up

and we started giving out drinks, talking to people.

The people who went to the Palace in those early days

were the ones that really had this sense of loss,

through the media, I'm assuming.

But for some reason they felt a real connection with Lady Diana,

and so they needed to work that out, they needed to express that grief.

I think in the past, we used to process that grief in church.

And, for me, Lady Diana's death

was the first national point where actually

we didn't process it in church, we processed it at the Palace.

So those people who needed to process those emotions

actually came together at the Palace,

and that's what I experienced on that day.

The crowds grew so quickly and so big

that, after a day or two,

the only way for me to get down to these meetings,

rather than drive down the Mall, it was to walk through the crowds.

And I remember walking back one day,

and these two young couples were there,

and they talked about her as though she was like a close friend.

They talked about her as though they knew her,

er, what role she played in their lives.

I did have a feeling...

I'm not saying that people didn't feel what

they were feeling deeply,

but there was something unreal about it,

there was something just a little bit unreal about it.

-ON PHONE:

-..a long, drawn-out affair,

Diana's death was such a sudden shock.

So how did her death, then, affect you, Michael?

Well, my wife died in April, and as one of your previous callers said,

"Grown men have cried," and I shed far more tears for Diana

-than I did for my wife.

-But that's extraordinary, isn't it?

I live opposite Kensington Palace and so saw

hundreds and thousands of people going to leave flowers, and...

I loved that they loved her,

and I loved that they were wanting to demonstrate that,

and I also felt furious and I wanted them to leave her alone.

I'm standing just outside Buckingham Palace. With the Royal family

still away at Balmoral, it looks strangely forlorn and empty.

She wasn't like the Royal family.

I wouldn't even call her part of the Royal family.

I certainly wouldn't come down

for any other member of the Royal family. She was just different.

With Princess Diana's relationship that she'd had with the monarchy

and the relationship with Prince Charles, there was

going to be a risk that the country's sense of loss

turned to a sense of anger and grievance

and then turned against the monarchy,

so the first conversation with the Queen was an important conversation.

She was obviously very sad about Diana,

she was concerned about the monarchy itself,

because the Queen has a very strong instinct about public opinion

and how it plays,

and at that first conversation, we just agreed to keep closely

in touch with how we managed the affair over the next week.

I don't think anyone... Even my grandmother had never seen anything

like this before, so I think all of us were in new territory.

But for Harry and I, you know, my grandmother

and my father believed that we were better served

and better off up in Balmoral, having, you know, the walks

and the space and the peace to kind of be with the family

and not be sort of immersed or having to deal with, you know,

serious decisions or worries straight away.

-ON PHONE:

-I think it's disgraceful that William

and Harry are perhaps not being allowed to

express their grief in the best way,

and by keeping them up there like prisoners,

they're perhaps unaware of the large outpouring of grief

and love that the world has for Diana.

If you were the grandmother of a 12-year-old

and a 15-year-old whose mother had just been killed in a car crash...

She did absolutely the right thing.

If I'd been her, I'd have done that!

Why would you bring them into London?

Why don't you let them get over the shock,

or the start of the shock, in the bosom of their family?

The flagpole, as many people have noticed,

is still bare at Buckingham Palace.

Now, whatever their private feelings, many people are

questioning whether the Royal family is showing the right response

in public at this time of great national mourning.

That was certainly the feeling of many people I spoke to

in the queue waiting to pay their respects at St James's Palace.

I feel they've shot themselves in the foot,

because they just don't seem to care.

Just typical, isn't it? It's a typical reaction of the Royal

family - stick to protocol, don't worry about human emotion.

This sort of sudden outcry, what were we doing about the flag,

sort of came out of nowhere.

I hesitate to criticise the media,

but I think the press may have wanted to sort of shift the blame

a little bit from themselves.

I knew the Queen would be very strong in her views.

She didn't lower the Standard on the death of her father,

and she wouldn't lower the Standard on the death of anybody else.

Those protocols are crucial to maintain standards.

We stand on what we've inherited, tradition,

what kings and queens have passed down to their successors,

so it may only be a flag going up or down,

but it means an awful lot to them and indeed to most of us.

And one of the things you want to say to the Palace now is,

I would like one member of the Royal family to come down to St James's

-and to walk amongst them and to shake their hands.

-That...

-That feeling sort of started yesterday.

-It's time. It's time.

First of all, there was this flag situation,

and then there began to be this, "Where are the Royal family?

"Why aren't they here?"

I think it's disgraceful that they're not here in residence,

and I think most people I've been speaking to this morning

have said exactly the same thing.

And we were aware that the media were fanning those flames.

That is how they sell newspapers.

But it was fanned to such an extent that it actually hurt everybody.

It certainly hurt... I'm sure it hurt the Queen.

It certainly hurt all of us who were in the Palace at the time.

They weren't acting as the public felt that they should,

and they were - quotes - "hiding away" up in Balmoral

and "not caring" about us and how we feel.

I kept hearing this all the time!

You know, "Why don't they care about how we feel?"

You know, they must know how we're feeling,

and we'd like to know how they're feeling.

It was very difficult to work out exactly what the Queen was

thinking at this time.

I mean, I think she was resistant to anything

that struck her as false,

or struck her as, as it were,

a public relations event in the face of something

that was a profound personal tragedy.

You know, it was a case of, right,

how do we let the boys grieve in privacy, but at the same time,

when is the right time for them to put on their Prince hats

and carry out duties to mourn not just their mother

but the Princess of Wales in a very public audience?

I think it was a very hard decision for my grandmother to make.

She felt very torn between being the grandmother to William

and Harry and her Queen role, and I think she...

Again, like I said, everyone was surprised

and taken aback by the scale of what happened

and the nature of how quickly it all happened,

plus the fact that, you know, my mother, she was or had been

challenging the Royal family for many years beforehand.

Look at the very, very recent history.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana

had only been divorced for a year or so.

She'd done that interview, the "Three in the marriage" interview,

the Andrew Morton book.

You know, there'd been, you know, an awful lot of exposure of sort of

the underbelly of the Royal family, and not all of it, you know,

entirely in the Royal family's favour.

What began as rumours of a Royal rift,

you could actually see it in the body language.

You remember that iconic shot of the two of them, I think

in the back of a car together,

and they're looking different ways, and clearly this was a couple

who were no longer enjoying one another's company.

Speculation over the marriage of the Prince

and Princess of Wales dominates the popular newspapers today,

with claim and counterclaim about whether

the couple are on the verge of parting.

Both camps, Diana supporters and Charles supporters,

were pumping out quite a lot of genuine information

and quite a lot of disinformation

in what was becoming the most public royal break-up,

I guess, in modern history.

I can understand, having sometimes been in those situations

when you feel incredibly desperate and it's very unfair

and, you know, things are being said that aren't true.

The easiest thing to do is just to say...

or to go to the media yourself or, you know, open that door,

but once you've opened it you can never close it again.

Panorama doesn't usually pull in the punters at pubs,

but the Princess of Wales proved as popular as a soccer match.

PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOUT OUT

I, by this stage, was only very part time,

doing the odd engagement with her,

which actually happened to be on the night of the Panorama interview.

She wasn't at home to watch it herself.

Instead, she was facing a barrage of flash bulbs

as she arrived for a charity gala in London.

There we were in our long dresses, going off to a dinner.

So we had a five, ten-minute car journey,

and I said, "Ma'am, what's going to be in...

"What's Panorama going to be about?"

because it was going.

She said, "Don't worry, Anne, don't worry. It's going to be fine."

I thought, "Uh-oh...!"

And she said, "People told me it's fine."

And I thought, "I wonder which people those are."

You know, who was advising her,

who the people were who were saying this is good.

Her private office were left out of it.

Do you think you'll ever be Queen?

-No, I don't, no.

-Why do you think that?

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.

I don't think many people would want me to be Queen, actually.

When I say many people, I mean the establishment that I'm married into,

because they've decided that I'm a non-starter.

Rightly or wrongly, she was trying to get

everybody to look at it from this point of view,

to say what she had to say.

It was the most candid Royal interview in 1,000 years.

Why do they see you as a threat?

I think every strong woman in history has had to

walk down a similar path,

and I think it's the strength that causes the confusion and the fear.

I think, probably, she did the Panorama interview

because she felt her... she'd run out of options

and she didn't know what else to do.

She certainly never asked for my advice on it

and, I don't think, any other family member. Her call.

And there was nothing more to be done. It was done.

The Princess of Wales interview tonight achieved

what might have seemed impossible.

It painted a picture of Royal life even more lurid

than that conjured up in the newspapers.

I think she's probably devastated the Royal family. Absolutely.

Simply because she's just stripped away the mystique,

and that's what they're based on.

I don't think she set out to challenge the Queen

or establishment, or whatever, but she ended up doing so.

In today's phone poll, nearly 70,000 of you voted.

-ON PHONE:

-People keep on accusing her of being manipulative

but she was going to tell people what was happening,

and that's why the British people are supporting her now.

We can see she was badly treated

and we want to show the Royal family

that they just can't sweep her under the carpet.

I think it brought back, for a lot of people, the whole,

"Are you with Charles or are you with Diana?"

And...it goes without saying that, an awful lot of those people

who turned out on the streets, they were with Diana.

I could feel this situation building

and I remember going out on the Wednesday

and asking for the unity of the country behind the monarchy.

Because I thought it was very important that people

understood that they weren't standing apart from this

because they didn't care,

but because they were genuinely trying to protect

their children in a situation of great personal grief for them.

We want it to be something of which Princess Diana would've been proud

and, as I say, I know that those are very strongly

the views of the Royal family as well. Thank you.

But the fact that I was speaking and they weren't speaking

was itself an indication that things were out of alignment.

Journalist that I would describe, and editors that I would describe

as sympathetic to the Royal family

were phoning and saying, "This is... This is getting quite ugly."

But, also, I felt it on that walk up and down The Mall

several times a day. You felt it. You felt it.

If you've got any instinct, you felt it.

I worked my socks off for two-and-a-half days,

and I think it was the Wednesday evening, my partner

and I went down to The Mall...

..and it was extraordinary.

We walked down Constitution Hill and it was a summer's evening,

it was hot, it was getting dark,

there were thousands of people

walking to the Palace and walking away from the Palace again.

Steamy evening, the birds were singing

and people were hardly talking.

It was a really strange atmosphere

and the Palace was dark, the Palace...

there were no lights on the Palace

and there was just this massive crowd

and this mountain of flowers,

and there was a sort of electricity like you get

in the start of an electric storm,

and I said to my partner,

"It would take just one spark,

"one person to stand up in front of those gates."

And that was very perilous for the monarchy.

The Palace, yesterday, I was told, took between 6,000-7,000 calls.

Now, when I asked how many of those calls were hostile,

they weren't able to give that information.

To use Prime Minister Blair's phrase,

she was the People's Princess

and that means that there was some possession of her

amongst the people, and they had lost that,

and they wanted to express it in their various ways.

And if that meant, unfortunately, impugning other people,

that's what they did.

So I had a conversation with the Queen on the Thursday.

It was apparent right from the beginning of the conversation

that we were on exactly the same page,

in the sense that she understood that it was sensible for her

to demonstrate the closeness of her feelings

to those of the country, um, and so there wasn't really

a necessity of me to try and persuade her.

She was there already.

Suddenly, the private secretary,

who was up in Balmoral comes on and he says,

"OK, we've had a discussion up here, this is what's going to happen."

The Queen's coming back, Prince Philip's coming back,

they're going to do a walkabout here, they're going do a broadcast.

The boys are going to go here, duh-duh-duh...

And you sort of felt the tension lifting. You felt it straightaway.

And it was then that I heard Prince Philip's voice

booming out of this box in the middle of the table.

It was very painful for him, and for the Queen, I think,

to feel that their public that they had served so, you know, well

through all these years were also beginning to turn against them.

I think they were hurt, I think

they felt aggrieved and I think they eventually thought,

"Oh, well, we're hurt and aggrieved

"but we're going to have to do something."

The Queen will broadcast to the nation tomorrow,

returning to London a day earlier than planned.

And, in an unprecedented move,

the Union Jack will be flown at half-mast at Buckingham Palace

during Saturday's funeral.

We went to a service at Crathie Church, right next to Balmoral,

and there were quite a few flowers there

and there were a few people turned up.

I don't remember the service, but I sure remember coming back

in the car, stopping and getting out by the front gates at Balmoral.

I remember looking at the flowers and looking at the notes that

were left and I was very touched by it, but none of it sank in.

All I cared about was I'd lost my mother

and I didn't want to be where I was.

Looking back on it now, it was probably the last thing

I wanted to do was read what other people were saying about my mother.

Yes, it amazing, it was incredibly moving to know,

but at that point, I was still, you know, I wasn't there.

I was...I was still in shock.

I was wearing a tiny little, sort of,

strange blazer with a horrible tie,

and to read other people's outpouring of grief

was quite odd when...when you're in a position almost as though

people are expecting you to grieve in private,

and I'm thinking to myself, "Well, to whose benefit would that be?"

When we go out and do things like that,

um, in order not to completely and utterly break down,

you have to put on a bit of a game face and you have to be

quite strong about it because otherwise you're a walking mess.

And, so, Harry and I, at that age, you know,

already understood the duty family point.

You know, looking back on it,

I'm glad that I never cried in public, um...

because that was, you know, there was a fine line between work...

grieving while working and grieving in private.

Even if someone tried to get me to cry in public, I couldn't.

I probably still can't, um...and that's probably from all of that,

from whatever happened then, has changed me in that sense.

-NEWSREADER:

-The service at Crathie Church brings to a close

a day of fast-moving changes in which Buckingham Palace has

repeatedly bowed to the wishes of the people.

The Queen and other members

of the Royal family have left

Balmoral at the start

of their journey back to London to

prepare for the funeral tomorrow of Diana, Princess of Wales.

The Queen will make a live address to the nation on radio

and television at six o'clock this evening.

Because of the intensity of the public emotion

and because of their sense of loss...

..the Queen simply coming out

and making a statement as a monarch,

in a way that the monarch

normally would do in normal circumstances, wasn't going to work.

For six days, the Royal family

had contained their grief within themselves.

Prince Philip managed a wave, but for the rest of the family,

silent preparation for what was to come.

They needed to see her vulnerable as a person

and not simply vulnerable as a monarch.

And I could feel that unless she was prepared to do that,

the healing that I thought was essential

was not really going to happen.

People wanted a sign that the state,

the monarchy felt genuinely moved.

They'd had the sign from the government,

they'd had it from Blair but they hadn't had it from the Royal family.

At 2:20pm this afternoon, the one basic thing

people in the crowds here had been calling for all week took place.

The Queen came back to Buckingham Palace.

APPLAUSE

When a tragedy occurs, the Royal family will seek, in a way,

to represent the wounds that a nation feels.

The Queen can do that because she is seen as being above political party.

They almost want her, in a grandmotherly kind of way,

to be the representative

of their hopes and their fears.

I think what happened here was

because the Royal family was behaving like a family

after the death of the Princess of Wales,

there was a little bit of time before they realised that

the nation also wanted them to represent their grief.

And that is what the Queen did when she came down to London

and was there at Buckingham Palace.

One of the most extraordinary moments for me was as the Queen

and Prince Philip did that little walkabout...

..you could feel the tension lifting.

You could feel it lifting.

It was strange, it was really strange.

It must've been one of the most difficult moments

of her entire reign,

but there wasn't the slightest opposition or criticism,

merely sympathy and support.

People they spoke to in the crowd afterwards said the Queen

sometimes had tears in her eyes.

One small girl offered her some flowers and the Queen asked

if they were really for her.

When the girl's grandmother said they thought SHE needed some,

her eyes filled with tears.

She relented, and it can't have been easy.

I was surprised, um, but having said that, I was pleased,

because something had to be done to diffuse what was becoming

a very ugly situation.

Ma'am, take care of the boys.

-That's what we've been doing.

-I know you have.

Well, I think all the people have been coming here every day,

particularly hoping that she would return.

And I think now, judging by the people who were around me

and their comments, we're pleased she's back and we feel better now.

The monarchy found itself

in the most difficult position

between tradition and being condemned,

or trying to be a bit more modern

and show their emotions, like Tony Blair,

and lower the flag and come down to London early,

and... they chose the latter course.

Diana burst through the monarchy like a sort of blazing comet

and, of course, a comet has a tail, and so it's impossible

that they could be the same after she'd passed through.

I think one of the reasons she was such a powerful influence

and people really felt they knew her was that she was very much herself.

She showed herself. So she showed both her great strength

and creativity, but also she showed her vulnerability.

She very much put down that mask of a public figure.

She had such warmth.

I think she wanted to make people feel special.

She realised that she was in a unique position and that

if she could make people smile and feel better about themselves,

then her job for that day was done.

Thank you very much. Wonderful jacket!

That combination of wanting to make a difference

and being emotionally courageous powered her.

Shaking the hands of that man without gloves,

it was a game-changer in our attitude to AIDS.

How could you not be moved if you were a gay man?

If, like me, my partner Guy had just been diagnosed,

how could you not think that this woman

was doing something for you personally?

The best lesson that I learned from her is be yourself.

Be yourself in everything that you do and just give as much as you can.

The Prince of Wales and his two sons arrive to meet the crowds

at Kensington Palace, their home

until the break-up of the Prince's marriage in 1992.

When we came back down here

and there was what seemed like more than 100,000

bunches of flowers just scattered from the gates of Kensington Palace

all the way down to Kensington High Street...

What was very peculiar but obviously incredibly touching

was everybody crying.

I mean, the wailing and the crying was going on,

people wanted to touch us and everything, it was...

Again, I was 15 and Harry was 12.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

It was like nothing you could really describe. It was very unusual.

The way that people were grabbing us and, you know,

pulling into their arms and stuff, it's...

I don't blame anybody for that, of course I don't,

but it was those moments that were sort of, I don't know,

they were quite shocking.

People wanted to grab us, you know, to touch us, to hold us.

They were shouting, wailing, literally wailing at us,

throwing flowers and yelling and sobbing, breaking down.

People fainted, collapsed.

I remember people screaming, I remember people crying,

I remember people's hands that were wet because of the tears

that they'd just wiped away from their face before shaking my hand.

It was almost as though some people were crying so much, hoping...

I think it was so unusual for people to see young boys like that

not crying when everybody else was crying.

What we were doing and what was being asked of us

was verging on normal then,

but now it's like, you did what?

Looking at us then, we must have been in just this state of shock.

You know, we didn't really talk about it that much.

It was kind of like...

It was, "Right, here we go again,"

but coming back in behind closed doors,

I think there was just a lot of hunkering down going on,

a lot of just trying to survive and get through it.

Even now, I feel what they went through is beyond understanding.

I think the demands put on those two young boys

was just extraordinary.

And that is by us, the public,

filtered through, obviously, the media.

So, you know, I think we all have quite a lot to answer for

over that because we like to see them, we like to...

And we buy the newspapers to see them.

I don't know who took the decision,

but the Queen then did something unprecedented -

she made a live speech to the nation.

Even for a woman of her experience, and used to addressing the nation

and the Commonwealth once a year, there's a difference doing it live.

We had a brief conversation about this that it was

really important that this was a moment where she was able to bring

the nation behind her in a way that only she could do personally.

You know, Princess Diana died in 1997, these were modern times,

we were approaching the 21st century,

and for the people of the country, including particularly

maybe the younger generations coming up,

the old deference towards the monarchy wasn't enough

and in some cases wasn't there,

so this respect had to be renewed in a new way.

This is BBC One.

Now we go live to Buckingham Palace for a tribute from

Her Majesty the Queen.

Since last Sunday's dreadful news,

we have seen throughout Britain and around the world

an overwhelming expression of sadness at Diana's death.

That's as high as it goes.

We have all been trying in our different ways to cope.

Shhh!

It is not easy to express the sense of loss,

since the initial shock is often succeeded

by a mixture of other feelings -

disbelief, incomprehension, anger,

and concern for those who remain.

We have all felt those emotions in these last few days.

One of the private secretaries asked me

if I thought it was personal enough.

I did just make the suggestion that what it doesn't do is reflect

the fact... Yes, it was very nice about Diana

and so forth, but I think it would be helpful

if she just reminded people that she is a grandmother

and two of her grandsons have just lost their mother.

So, what I say to you now, as your Queen and as a grandmother,

I say from my heart.

First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself.

She was an exceptional and gifted human being.

In good times and bad,

she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh,

nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness.

I admired and respected her for her energy and commitment to others,

and especially for her devotion to her two boys.

I for one believe there are lessons to be drawn from her life

and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death.

May those who died rest in peace

and may we, each and every one of us,

thank God for someone who made many, many people happy.

That was a live tribute from Her Majesty the Queen.

APPLAUSE

She sounded very sincere and she looked as though

she was very moved, and I think that will satisfy everyone.

Earlier in the week she was being a grandmother to her own children,

but what people wanted was for her really

to be a grandmother to them too,

but it took a little bit of time to move from one to the other.

Preparations are continuing for

tomorrow's funeral at Westminster Abbey.

Millions of people are expected to converge on the capital

with hundreds already preparing to spend tonight outside the Abbey,

some for the second night in a row.

Coach companies are reporting thousands of bookings

and again hundreds of special services have been arranged.

This evening, shops and businesses across the country have closed

and won't reopen in the morning as a mark of respect

for the Princess of Wales.

It's something weird and strange that's happening.

It's the first time in history the whole planet,

from every country all over the world, the whole planet,

has joined together in grieving for one person.

And it's socially acceptable for men to cry.

I've cried about this, and it's partly for Diana

and it's, in a way it's for ourselves, you know.

Without any disrespect, it's like going to the movies.

This is Diana, something we're allowed to cry about. It's...

We're allowed to touch on our emotions through her.

We were compelled, my wife Chica and I, to go to London.

We were watching the television, I think, at home, and we thought,

"No, this is just...

"We don't want to be here, we need to be...

"We need to see this."

And that was the night that her coffin was moved from

one place to another and...

There in the streets, you know, they were 20 deep.

I'm six foot six, so I could sort of see what was going on.

The body of a Princess so loved by her people

leaving the sanctuary of the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace

on its way to rest one last night in Kensington Palace.

The coffin was taken, you know, went past,

and this wasn't even her funeral.

Extraordinarily sad.

I mean, sad because there were thousands and thousands of people

who were also very sad...

..but that's, you know, that's your friend.

On either side, just some of the millions who mourn.

So many people, so silent.

So sad.

So, it was...

It was a very, very, very odd time.

And seeing other people so sad,

I didn't see it as odd, I didn't think of it as odd,

I don't think any of us who knew her did,

perhaps, other than how amazing...

..utterly extraordinary that everyone thinks...

everyone's feeling the same thing.

And then, I suppose, with hindsight you look back on it and you think,

"Well, everybody did feel they knew Diana."

Is she talking now? Because they've got the light on her.

It's quite a busy scene this morning.

About half an hour ago, really, when we got the first light,

there were still lots of people curled up in their sleeping bags

and just getting up, but now,

pretty well everybody is claiming their place.

Flowers are still coming in, it's quite extraordinary.

An enormous number of people with bunches of flowers

in their hands this morning.

We saw images of people outside the Palace,

we saw images of the flowers growing.

Even for those that didn't feel that connection, they thought...

There was almost a sense of, "I'm missing out on something here.

"The rest of the nation is experiencing it in this way

"and I'm not. I think I need to go and be there and be part of that."

That's big Harrods over there, isn't it?

-With the big dome on top, yeah?

-Yeah.

There's loads of people outside there, isn't there?

Lots of flowers.

-Where's the flowers, then?

-See them outside there?

All outside over there.

She just seen me and said, "Hello, Colin,"

and then she came back later and did a walkabout.

That was the night before,

evening before her dresses exhibition opened at Christie's.

-First week of June.

-She had a lovely dress.

The reason people were there was partly because they wanted

to see a spectacle, but overwhelmingly, I think,

because they wanted to be there,

to recognise her and to recognise not only her life

but her potential, which had now gone.

Well, I think she saw her role

within the Royal family disappearing.

It was all she really knew.

She was aware of her influence,

and, I think, rather bravely,

she decided to carry on

with what she knew and knew she did well.

Her personal life was becoming more and more complicated.

I think she saw her public life

needed to be more positive

and that she was achieving something in that.

The last month of Diana's life, August 1997,

was absolutely extraordinary.

We had a nonstop switchback

of scenes, pictures, events.

On land mine duty in Africa

and then suddenly she was on a yacht in the South of France,

and she was landing in a helicopter in the garden of an astrologer

in the Midlands for a consultation.

Then she was with Mother Teresa

and then she was back on the yacht again

and then she was in Paris with Dodi,

and this whole kaleidoscope was moving faster and faster and faster.

It was this desire for understanding,

for a certain type of adoration from the press,

the public, you know,

that she was doing a good job,

she was doing a worthwhile job.

That became paramount. It always concerned me.

You know, you're giving of yourself all the time,

but what are you... what are you getting back?

In her position, I think it was very lonely.

In many ways it sort of was like a deafening silence,

being in Kensington Palace, I think. Other than her children,

which, you know, she was around her children, fine,

but if the children were at school...

I think it is isolating, quite lonely when you're on your own.

You know, particularly after she got divorced, I think,

you know, life sort of closes down on you a bit.

You sort of...

You lose some of your support, you lose some of your confidence.

It's a sad thought to think she might not have been happy.

I think she was happy within herself

but there was this elusive part of her

that happiness was slightly out of her reach, for some reason.

I think she was so many different people

all wrapped up in this one person, this one figure.

I don't think she probably knew herself

what she wanted, really.

Very complex, very complicated.

But an extraordinary phenomenon.

The gates to Kensington Palace,

waiting for the Princess to emerge.

Diana!

CRYING AND WAILING IN CROWD

It wasn't going to be a state funeral

in the way that there had been previous state funerals,

because she was this young, modern, glamorous,

fantastically famous woman

and the entire world would be watching this.

It had to be really traditional and proper.

But there had to be some acknowledgement

that she was different from other royals that had died.

And here are some of the many hundreds of people

from the charities that the Princess supported.

She was the People's Princess.

She was really involved with all these charities.

They were all involved in it.

She was really familiar with Elton John and all these celebrities.

So they were going to have to be involved in some way.

The Royal Standard over the coffin with three wreaths of lilies,

from her brother and her two sons, on top.

Nick, we've not yet seen any sign of the Princes.

There was the great discussion about whether the boys

should follow behind.

I do remember making a sort of intervention on that.

I remember feeling quite emotional about it, cos I just thought,

"How can he, 12, you know, walk behind his mother's coffin?"

Look at them standing there in front of the gate of Buckingham Palace,

a sight that no-one has seen before, because it hasn't happened before.

I think there was doubt right to the final day as to whether the boys

would feel able to do it, up to do it, whether they should do it.

The Prince of Wales.

Behind him Prince William, Prince Harry,

walking down towards The Mall.

So it does look as though they will join in the procession.

It wasn't an easy decision

and it was a sort of collective family decision to do that.

It was one of the hardest things I've ever done,

but we were overwhelmed by how many people turned out.

I mean, it was just incredible.

There is that balance between duty and family.

That's what we had to do.

It was only when I saw it on television on the Saturday

when they appeared. I literally went...

SHE GASPS

My God, you know, they've done it.

I just found it astonishing and so moving.

SOBBING

I think it was a group decision, but before I knew it,

I found myself with a suit on and with a black tie

and a white shirt, I think, and I was part of it.

Genuinely, I don't have an opinion on whether that was right or wrong.

I'm glad I was part of it.

Looking back on it now, I'm very glad I was part of it.

I think that was the hardest thing, is that walk.

It was a very long, lonely walk.

But, again, sort of the balance between me being Prince William

and having to do my bit

versus the private William who just wanted to go into a room and cry,

who'd lost his mother.

I just remember hiding behind my fringe, basically.

At the time, I had a lot of hair.

My head's down a lot because I'm hiding behind my fringe.

It was kind of like a little tiny bit of safety blanket, if you like.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but at the time,

I felt if I looked at the floor and my hair came down over my face,

no-one could see me.

At the time, it was important for me to get through the day.

Hearing people screaming in the crowds,

I think the broadcast news even today still talks about the silence.

Of course, there was a huge amount of silence.

But what I remember is every 50 yards or whatever,

certain people in the crowd just unable to contain their emotion.

Diana!

I was... That was a big thing.

SOBBING

Very alien environment.

I couldn't understand why everyone wanted to,

you know, cry as loud as they did

and show such emotion as they did

when they didn't really know our mother.

I felt... I did feel a bit protective at times about that.

I was like, "Well, you didn't even know her.

"Why and how are you so upset?"