Princess Diana's Life After Her Divorce From Charles | Princess of Wales | Real Royalty

On a day like thousands of others, Diana, Princess of Wales, came out of her palace to see and be seen. It was a ritual, a formula, an unchanging routine, and what made it so special was her sense of style and fashion, her warmth and kindness. This was her role, her work, the reason for her inimitable performance, and the cause of the overwhelming media attention that claimed her as its own. If ever she doubted the sense of it all, she found her answer in the happiness she gave the sick and afflicted. But a year after her divorce and the loss of the title Her Royal Highness, Diana was ready to leave all this behind. The catalyst was Dodi Al-Fayed, 42-year-old playboy son of Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed. Diana, as a guest of the Al-Fayed family aboard their luxurious yacht, the Johnny Curl, had fallen in love with Dodi. And she said, Elsa, I adore him, not even naming him. I adore him. I can't tell you for the first time in my life someone has looked after me so wonderfully. I feel that he's interested in me. I feel, I can't tell you how good they are to me, to my morale. I mean, she was enthusiastic. I said, are you going to marry him? She said, I can't answer you, Elsa, I'm coming to see you either Thursday or Saturday. Saturday she was dead. For 15 years, Diana lived in Kensington Palace. With mostly just her staff for company, she had tried to create a family home. She surrounded herself with mementos of her Spencer family ancestry, her fabled but flawed marriage, and above all, of her two precious sons, constant reminders of her broken dreams. I think they were instrumental, especially at the time of the separation and the divorce. I think as all children do, not wanting to alienate either side, and okay, in some respects they were slightly the go-betweens, and yet they always were very careful not to upset Diana by mentioning things they knew would upset her, and they always said, Daddy loves you. Charles was truly her Prince Charming. He was the one that she was always in reference to throughout her life, even towards the end. And even any other relationship would always be kind of compared to or contrasted with her relationship with Charles. He was her reference point. Diana and Charles shared the custody of the boys, and in July 1997, she took them on holiday with Dodie's family aboard the Jonicle. Following her divorce, Diana's life centred around her sons. But the children, don't forget, she took them on the boat, and they had a wonderful time. Not probably William. William was not so happy, but the little one was thrilled, all the games, all the things. And it was probably to accustom them to the situation. And when I asked her, are you going to marry him? And what's your children's reaction? She said, Elza, I rang up William. So it was the answer. And he said, Mommy, I want you to be happy. Diana would have never married Dodie without the consent of the two children, and Prince William more than that, because she always said that Prince William was her anchor. And she admired the boy enormously, and she loved the other one very much, Prince Harry. But she always said, Prince Harry is like a Spencer. I don't have worries about him. But I think that the future king, Prince William, has the sense and sensibility of Diana. As heir to the throne, William and his brother Harry carry with them the traditions of the Royal House of Windsor. Diana knew that any stepfather would have a very delicate role to fill. She also recognised that her sons were very much part of the Windsor household. I'm sure she wouldn't have married somebody that they absolutely detested, but I think she would have done her best to sort of bridge any gaps. And she had already mentioned to me that she thought the Alfired family provided rather a nice context for William and Harry, that there was this sense of family and sense of warmth, and that Mohammed Alfired was quite fatherly towards them. In the early years of family life, Diana felt at home in the country. When her marriage broke up, she lost the country home Highgrove and the family life that had been her childhood ambition. Like their mother, William and Harry became products of a broken home. Diana compensated by taking a dominant role in her children's lives. She was concerned about the role of monarchy, about the paparazzi and how that might disturb her boys, and she was also very concerned that they weren't going to grow up spoiled or sort of too much within that tradition. And she used to love taking them to see the homeless and wear the jeans and just go down to brass tacks. I mean, she was terribly concerned that they should see that side of life. And she drummed into them the most amazing good manners, which she herself had, absolutely impeccable, which is just such an asset and something I think she found rather lacking within the royal family. Following her unhappy experiences within the royal family, Diana shaped the boys in her own image and likeness. In the words of her brother, Earl Spencer, Diana wanted their souls to sing freely. She would really want them to lean on each other and to remember as well together the times they had with their mother. With her sons away at boarding school, Diana had to fill many long and lonely hours at Kensington Palace. Her friend was the telephone. She really did have the hotline to all and sundry. Diana regularly invited friends to lunch, often greeting them herself in the forecourt. Security and protocol prevented people from just dropping in. Isolated by her position as a princess, people came by invitation only to dine at Kensington Palace. The food there, as I said, was both beautiful, delicious and incredibly healthy. I can remember one summer there was sort of like an orange sorbet with beautiful nasturtium flowers all around the outside of these crystal plates. She always had stunning flowers on the table, of course. And the food, lots of soufflés, cheese soufflés, spinach soufflés, chocolate soufflés, sometimes very naughty ones, but mainly it was sort of elegant food that she liked. I remember also once asking her if she could choose a single item. If she sort of was locked away or sort of cast aside on a desert island, what would she take with her? And she said, oh, my juicer. She said immediately. And I thought, what a strange thing to say. And then she went into the whole business of, you know, look at this, you know, we can have 20 cucumbers blended down into this thing and it's fantastic for your skin. And her skin was absolutely terrific. So it obviously worked. But that's the thing she swore by. Diana's day began at dawn. She slept badly. After many restless nights, she relied on exercise to face the pressures ahead. Before most people had arrived at work, Diana had already driven the short distance from Kensington Palace to Buckingham Palace to swim 20 lengths in the private pool there. Then it was on to the gym for a strenuous workout, often with a personal trainer. In a quest for maximum fitness, she experimented with many exercise techniques. Health was something which fascinated her all her life. She adored swimming. She was a real fish. And she said that really relaxed her. She was an absolute fiend for the gym. She said that gave her energy to begin with. Also, she played a lot of tennis, which she said got rid of her anger when she was feeling very frustrated. So she recognized that exercise was terribly important for sort of releasing her feelings in a way. Those feelings arose from the broken promises and the betrayal of her youth. At 19, as Lady Diana Spencer, she had no idea of the way ahead. Marriage to Prince Charles was the culmination of her teenage dreams. She was to be the Princess of Wales and future Queen of England. Well, the day after the princess's engagement was announced, her mother, Mrs Shanky, brought her into our shop. And there was a great deal of excitement. And her mother wanted to help her choose her trousseau. So we showed her our new spring collection, which she was very excited about. And she asked us to also design for her some very specific things. And the first outfit she chose from us was, in fact, a navy blue sailor suit, which then appeared on the official first picture together with the Queen and Prince Charles. She had been previously photographed just with Prince Charles on his own, announcing the engagement. But this was the first official picture with the Queen. There was a tremendous change in the way the princess dressed over the years. Initially, when she first became known to the general public, she hadn't learnt what photographed well, how things reacted sitting in a car, standing, windy days. All those things have to be taken into consideration when you make clothes for a member of the royal family. She was quick to learn. She made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, but she grew up fast. Once she learnt the basic rules of royal dressing, she made them her own, and she learnt to use the styles that were current in fashion in absolutely the right way. From the start, Diana's face became instantly recognisable. Her youthful good looks were seized upon by the professionals for magazines and souvenirs. The photographers and make-up artists recognised her potential as a great beauty. Well, the first thing that struck me was the colour of her eyes. They were such a beautiful blue, so clear. But I thought I couldn't find a colour that would complement the eyes, so what I did was I used a contrasting colour. I did a brown, basically a brown eye make-up, which brought out the blue of the eyes. To really emphasise the make-up, I used a coloured pencil, a blue pencil, to match the colour of her eyes. Along the bottom rim, above the bottom lashes, which just emphasised the whites and brought out the blue of her eyes. I used navy blue mascara because I find it's very flattering on people with blue eyes, and it doesn't look as hard as black, especially in a photograph. I wanted to get this blue across, you see, so I sort of had this haze of blue, which I achieved with the navy blue mascara. And then using a darker blusher under the cheekbones to push them in, sort of following the shape. Basically, if you smile, you lift up the cheek pads and you leave that colour, leave that area alone, and you apply the blusher underneath and that sinks in that area there. We had a hairdresser on the shoot, but he didn't have to do very much to it, apart from just run his fingers through the fringe to lift it off the eyes so I could get to the eyes to make them up. Blue became her favourite colour in clothes and jewels. Garrard, the Crown Jewellers, was asked to create Diana's engagement ring. They prepared a selection of magnificent gems for the young bride to choose from. In Garrard's workshops, skilled craftsmen used their expertise to make the most famous engagement ring in the world. I think it was a very romantic gesture for Charles and Diana to choose that huge sapphire and diamond cluster, which suited her fantastically well because of her wonderful blue eyes and the size, I think, was just right. It was also a very traditional ring. I mean, the sapphire and diamond cluster is the most popular combination or it was the most popular combination at the time, in the 80s. And it helped her make her mark as a princess, as a very bejewelled and beautiful princess. For her going-away outfit, Diana's choice was a deliberate contrast to her extravagant fairytale wedding gown. One of the things she particularly wanted to have was an outfit that actually had a straight skirt. She felt that was very grown-up, very sophisticated. She was very specific about the colour. She loved a corally shade and she asked us to design an outfit that had a little jacket. So, in fact, it was a dress and a jacket. And she was worried about what kind of a day the wedding would be. So we designed, in fact, two jackets, one with a short sleeve and one with a long sleeve. And as it happened, the day of the wedding was a gloriously sunny day and she wore the short-sleeved jacket. A few months later, Diana was expecting her first child and her adoring public were overwhelmed. Her fashion designer set to work on the creation of a stylish maternity wardrobe. This was the coat she wore on the day her pregnancy was announced. The fabric for that particular coat was a multi-coloured tweed in a lot of very bright colours, which she loved the texture of. When we showed her a pattern of the particular fabric, she said, oh, that's great, that'll make a wonderful coat and I'd love it to have some kind of fringing around the collar. In spite of her pregnancy, many of Diana's days were still devoted to tedious public duties, but she was still expected to look like a princess wearing appropriate outfits. When it was officially announced that the Princess of Wales was pregnant, she came in to see us and we designed for her a group of coats, day dresses and long evening dresses that were very specific. And the turquoise coat was specially designed for the Princess of Wales to wear at Windsor during Christmas. And it was in turquoise velour and it had multi-coloured little flowers embroidered around the yoke of it. It was rather romantic and slightly peasant in mood. Four royal generations celebrated the christening of Prince William, born in June 1982. The Princess of Wales asked us to design an outfit for the christening of Prince William. And the christening was held at Buckingham Palace and we in fact designed for her a pink prince silk dress and little tie, bolero jacket, which she then later wore in Australia. Diana's first major tour in 1983 lasted six weeks. She said she was a different person by the end of it. She began to feel more liberated from the stuffiness of British royal court. Two years later, on her second Australian tour, Diana experimented with royal heirlooms. Queen Mary's emeralds were a wedding gift from the Queen and Diana added her own sense of style with an exotic twist. Again, Diana was very inventive, very original in the way she used these beautiful emeralds, these historic stones. And she had great courage, she wasn't in awe of them. And she took the Cambridge emeralds and turned them into, again, a choker, a fairly narrow choker, which she also wore, again, as a bandeau, very 20s style. It was a very young and exciting look and she wore the bandeau around her head during the tour of Australia when she took to the floor, swept off by Prince Charles. And again, it's a very memorable image of the young Princess of Wales. In America in 1986, Diana wore her most fabulous jewels to dine and dance at the White House with President and Mrs Reagan. She had cleverly adapted her beautiful sapphire brooch, a wedding present from the Queen Mother, into a stunningly elegant necklace. The huge, again, the dramatic, sapphire and diamond cluster, which was a present to her from Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, is the most spectacular piece of jewellery. And at the beginning, she wore that huge sapphire and diamond cluster in a rather conventional way, a rather traditional way. And then, as her style developed, she began to impose her own personality, her own style, to wear her jewellery in very new and fresh and original ways. And it became one of her signature pieces, particularly towards the end of her life, when she began to wear those spectacularly sexy evening gowns with just one huge piece of jewellery. Among the gems amassed by Diana, the £2 million wedding gift from the Saudi royal family was the most staggering in quantity, beauty and value. One of the most important of her wedding gifts came from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and it was a whole suite of jewels. But her favourite piece from this suite was a necklace, a necklace of diamonds on which was hung a huge Burmese sapphire surrounded in a much more modern style with baguette diamonds in a setting that we call a ballerina setting. The Saudi suite was adapted to suit Diana's taste. She made a choker from some of the gems. The most dramatic change she made to that set was to create for herself a choker with the sapphires on a band of velvet, which she wore not only as a choker but also as a bandeau around her head, around her forehead, very 20s style. And this was something that she did, it was great fun, she did it on several occasions. And again, very much made her mark through her jewels as the new and dazzling Princess of Wales. During an official visit to Germany in November 1986, Diana wore a fabulous set of jewels, a gift from the Sultan of Oman comprising a modern diamond necklace and matching earrings. It was known as the Crescent set. Worth around £1 million it became one of Diana's favourites and she wore it with both historic and contemporary jewels. Diana was very clever in mixing old and new, as I said this was a very contemporary design and she wore it very well with the Spencer family tiara or with the Love Knot tiara. And so she created a very special, very royal, very regal look for herself by combining the old and the new in this way. Diana's most important royal heirloom was the Queen Mary's Lover's Knot tiara given to her as a wedding present by the Queen. It emphasised Diana's regal position. She used her own personality to make the tiara part of her image. And the Lover's Knot tiara, which was a wedding present to her from Her Majesty the Queen, I think has created some of the most dramatic images of Diana that we will all remember and cherish. It is too much a part of Diana's legend. I don't think anyone could wear that again, so it's difficult to imagine what will happen to them. She loved to surprise so she loved that element of wearing something that took all the press and the media by surprise. And she loved clothes that looked sexy on her. I think she was able to wear very stylish things when the occasion was right. And I think that young people probably, in each different age of the princess related very much to the certain things that she did. She loved to wear things like patterned stockings and saucy sweaters that had funny motifs on. And of course the royals do have two very specific wardrobes. They are functional clothes that are seen by the public and then they have a private wardrobe. And in her so-called private life, which wasn't very private as far as the media was concerned, she enjoyed wearing very casual fun fashion clothes that made up the wardrobe of any young girl of her generation. In her off-duty moments, Diana enjoyed the early days of motherhood. Unlike previous royal heirs, her boys were not educated at home with private tutors. School runs became part of everyday life. By now, Diana had matured. She'd grown decisive about her clothes and her image. She liked to put the dress on, look at herself in it and that was it. She never fiddled. She never changed things. She left it entirely up to you. She was very professional in the fact that she would listen to what you said and go along with it. She could wear almost any colour and the spectrum was enormous. She looked very good in pastel colours and she could wear strong colours extremely well. For Sandringham at Christmas, the princess wore a coat dress in purple tweed with a white and purple striped collar. The princess loved blue, but she loved red and in fact, she loved colour and she had a very wide spectrum of colours that suited her, which not a lot of women do have, because she had fair hair, but skin that really reflected most colours. She looked wonderful in colour. Diana was very interested in colours and she went through a long period where she felt only comfortable wearing black and she would say to me, I just can't really wear any other colour at the moment. It's just an introverted colour. She'd kind of gone into herself. She'd withdrawn from public life and I think she felt very contained in black and then we saw her later on towards the end of her life just blossoming in these incredibly vibrant colours. The last time I saw her, which was on July the 30th, I had lunch with her and she was wearing the most stunning Versace tulip neck dress in sort of shocking pink and she just looked fantastic. So she was very colourful towards the end of her life. Diana displayed her most adventurous styles and daring clothes during her regular visits to America. In the early days, it was her hairstyles that really caught the attention of the fashion editors. Generally, women grow into their hair. I mean, I think during the sort of 18, 19, 20 age group you're finding out what your hair does and doesn't do and most of us were allowed in the 20s to experiment but the princess was not allowed that because obviously the media attention was so huge. So I suppose she very sensibly got herself organised with hairdressers who could deal with the way she wanted it. But that is what happened to her hair as far as I can see is it's all to do with relation to the neck and as she became more aware that she could expose her neck, so the hair started to come up and get shorter and shorter and shorter and as her confidence grew, she was able to deal with much shorter hair and the princess very soon came round to thinking, well, you know, maybe I've got this nice thing here in the jawline and the chokers and the bit and if I get it goes up, up, up. Diana quickly learned that carefully chosen accessories added a crucial finishing touch that could make or break an outfit. In the 1980s Diana had more than 75 hats in her wardrobe. I think in the early stages she wore them in the way English women wear hats to weddings, plonked on the head with the veil pulled over for the fluff, the feather. And she, in very very very fast, we found her wearing them where they should be worn, which is across here. I mean, despite the fact that the photographers probably couldn't get into the eyes or couldn't see anything but she really, almost immediately, maybe two years into being Princess of Wales and having to wear them she suddenly realised she had to wear them the way they should be worn. Because she has great shoulders and terrific posture, she looks marvellous with those, you know, very broad hats. And once you wear those hats you actually begin to like wearing them. With her natural elegance and grace Diana grew to enjoy wearing wide brimmed hats complementing her formal outfits. Generations of royal ladies have loved pearls. They bring light to the face and a touch of glamour to any outfit. Diana added costume jewellery as well as real pearls to her collection. I think it's hard to talk about Diana's jewels or any Princess of Wales jewels without talking about pearls. She wasn't frightened by the heritage of pearls in royal jewels. She wasn't frightened by protocol to experiment with wearing pearls in different ways. But they're so bound up with the legend of royalty and particularly with the Princess of Wales that again they became part of her trademark in the 1980s. And there's one memorable occasion when again Diana using her famous wit and her great sense of humour which we know about she wore a long rope of beautiful sumptuous pearls just knotted very casually down the back of a dress with a V. Diana looked to an earlier Princess of Wales for inspiration, Princess Alexandra wife of King Edward VII. She was paying a very pretty compliment to the former Princess of Wales, to Princess Alexandra who had actually been a fashion leader in much the same way as Diana was to become. Alexandra had made the choker very much her own and I think it was very witty and very charming of Diana to choose the Edwardian choker or Queen Alexandra's choker and again it was a phenomenal success. I mean it launched a million chokers and everyone started wearing Edwardian chokers and that was really the start of her huge fashion and jewellery influence. A regular part of Diana's day involved shopping in Chelsea, the fashionable district of London. One of her favourite stores, Butler & Wilson sells costume jewellery. Diana mingled easily with other shoppers who were unaware that a princess was shopping next to them. She was also relaxed and funny and would always start laughing when they realised who it was and she just was so great about it and would tell them what she thought about it. She was always very easy with the staff always had a great sense of humour and enjoyed shopping. We've seen a lot of very famous people and they're always a foot smaller or they're not as beautiful as what you imagine. With her she was a reverse, she was a foot taller than what you imagined. She actually glowed so she had wonderful piercing blue eyes and she was extraordinary so whenever she was wearing anything it always enhanced it. On one occasion Diana bought a fashionable jewelled snake to wear at a pop concert. She went for very classic things but then she would try something like the snake, she would wear things that were quite adventurous but she always bought very classic things too that you would see her wearing all the time. She bought a little pair of earrings that were French glass earrings black French glass earrings, she wore them all the time they were five pounds. So it wasn't intrinsic things, it was because it went she wore things because it actually fitted with what she was wearing. Another famous pair of earrings that she wore all the time were silver earrings just a plain gold so she accessorised herself. She would try things from the very simple to the very exciting things, a big star necklace or a wonderful star pinned on the back of her hair. Costume jewellery was easy to wear but formal occasions often demanded a tiara which presented its own problems. It's a long time to put on a tiara, you need a lot of help with it it's heavy, you have to have your hair done. Diana complained that it gave her a headache and a neck ache and I think at times when she had to prepare for her evenings out very early in the day, she said that she had to wear it all through nursery tea with her boys which must have been a little bit uncomfortable. The demands of the job meant that Diana's day wear was constantly updated but she kept hold of some particular favourites. The Princess of Wales asked us to design a printed silk dress she said, I want one that children will relate to, they love bright colours and I want to be able to wear this as a working dress to visit hospitals and generally just an easy dress that I can put on that is very much a function dress and she seemed to like this particular dress because she wore it on many many occasions over quite a few years and the press of course picked this up and did make a lot of comments about it. Over the years Diana evolved beyond the decorative princess of her youth into a mature woman concerned with more serious caring issues. She devoted much of her time to the problems of sick and handicapped children who always responded to her tender touch. No other member of the royal family had Diana's special empathy with children. Friends recall her ability to relate to children and her caring side. I think she had a touch for that, she had a touch for children from day one she had a knack for how to treat children. I think that she always had a tendency for love as I said and people in need. Obviously the disaster if we can call of her marriage helped her to accentuate the work in charity because the emptiness she find at home the fulfilment she find towards the people. In August 1982 Diana attended the wedding of her good friend and former flatmate Carolyn Pride to William Bartholomew. She kept strong links with old friends who knew her as Lady Diana Spencer in the days before her extraordinary and troubled life as the Princess of Wales. These friends knew a side of Diana that the public did not see. She felt she wanted to go and visit some of the down and outs under the arches at Charing Cross and it wasn't picked up by the press because it was the sort of thing that she didn't want publicity for she didn't think that they would want her there if they knew she was coming and she felt very much she wanted to put herself over in her own right and that's why she went and as far as I know the press never picked it up. How will Diana's friends and former flatmates remember her? I'll remember her firstly as a friend and then I'll remember her as a princess as we all will. I will also remember her as a very loyal, mature steadfast, strong person. She had the most incredible level of compassion and she was not afraid of illness or sickness or death and the other thing was about Diana was that she felt particularly with a terminally ill that it was very honest and that there was nothing left to lose and so people lost their shyness so she could really talk to them and she was quite remarkable and it was her intuition that guided her on every front and one might say the only time she actually lost her intuition was getting in that car on that fateful night with Dodie. One of Diana's closest friends was Rosa Monckton. In December 1993 Rosa asked Diana to turn on the Christmas lights in London's Bond Street where she runs the famous jewellery shop Tiffany. She recalls the extent of Diana's loyal friendship where she supplied endless comfort and support. As a friend she was a complete stalwart. She stood by me through some very difficult times and it's a compassion not not just for her friends but for other people and it was a compassion that not a compassion that politicians have that is switched on and off it was a genuine compassion that welled up from her heart. Diana was godmother to Rosa's daughter Domenica born with Down's Syndrome Rosa remembers Diana's kindness. She was absolutely extraordinary. She was again just stood by me, supported me let me rant and rave let me go through all the things I needed to do about not being able to cope and she said listen I'm going to be there for her for you forever and of course she's not. Diana enjoyed regular holidays abroad with her girlfriends, travelling to exotic locations around the world for some rest and relaxation. She had an extensive circle of friends but her friendships weren't without their ups and downs. She had a lot of friends I mean and can you imagine the amount of people wanting to be her friends so she was spoilt for choice. She could spot a fake a mile off or somebody who just wanted to know her because of who she was that's something she was also careful to teach her boys about and she had her school friends, her friends that she shared the flat with before she married into the royal family. She also as her life developed, as her charity work developed too, she began to include people from all sorts of walks of life and she had a tremendous gift for friendship as well she could strike this rapport with somebody and then she would follow it through, she would make sure that she called the person. She had a lot of energy, she was dynamic in terms of friendship. She wouldn't wait for someone to get in touch with her, she would make all the running and she would make all the overtures she was a very good friend in that respect but she did also fall out with people, a lot of people and when she felt that she'd outgrown them, that was that When you used to say to Diana Diana, I'm sorry I've seen this and this and this, it happened this to me very recently and I think you're making a mistake towards having a friendship with this person and if she didn't like it, she would not call you for two or three weeks and then something would you have a call from her or an invitation or why she would through a third person say why Roberto has not come to this dinner party of these two and the person would say because he's offended with you and then she would come back to you she was very she was not, people say because she was not stable, it's not that, it's because she wanted to know as many interesting people as she could that's the reason she became the queen of popularity and also she would become annoyed when she knew you were right but she didn't want to listen to you she was a very stubborn lady Diana's stubbornness led her to ignore the warning signs of her own obsession with bodily perfection she identified with ballet dancers and actively supported the London City Ballet. Diana suffered from the eating disorder bulimia nervosa but kept her condition a secret Well when she went to see Suzy Orbach, the psychotherapist who specializes in eating disorders, she really began to get to grips with the psychological mechanism behind the bulimia and I think that's when she really got the insights into her early family life, her childhood, about her mother leaving, about how that created a hunger inside her, how that sort of became translated into a food addiction almost and also her desire for control. Eating disorders are very much about control and Diana was very self-disciplined and wanted to be in control of what was happening so her body was the first thing that she wanted to be in charge of One of Diana's on-off relationships was with her sister-in-law, Sarah, Duchess of York Despite being close friends since their youth, their relationship turned sour. In fact they weren't even on speaking terms in the final few months of Diana's life and I think it was really all symptomatic of this bulimia, it's all part of it wanting to have this friendship devouring the person and then that's it throw it all up, we don't want that anymore Diana had speech coaching which increased her confidence At one stage she even joked about press reports of her eating disorders I'm supposed to have my head down the loo for most of the day I'm supposed to be dragged off in a minute with men in white coats so if it's alright with you I thought I might postpone my nervous breakdown to a more appropriate moment To conquer her bulimia and depression Diana treated her body with a variety of unconventional and alternative therapies Diana had an incredibly curious mind about all sorts of alternative remedies, there was virtually nothing that she wouldn't try I think actually some of the therapists were sort of horrified because they would think that only their regime should be taken in isolation and a lot of these therapies actually contradicted each other so it created a bit of a chaos actually in Diana's body to tell you the truth She had fads as well but certainly things like acupuncture were terribly important to her throughout her life and this also has a spiritual dimension she even took her boys to see her acupuncturist and she used acupuncture for insomnia Free from the constraints of royal family life, Diana relied on an inner circle of trustworthy friends to organise her social activities. During a private visit to Rome in 1996 the Italian press swooped on their guest. Following her elder sister Sarah, Diana ran the gauntlet closely shadowed by her friend Roberto Deverick Frenzied scenes abroad were sometimes part of these visits. Somehow Diana kept her dignity and remained unruffled This trip to Rome was organised by Roberto Deverick. He recalls that memorable night Last year in July almost a year before she died and we went on a trip to a big gala at the Palazzo Farnese at the French Embassy in Rome and it was a very extraordinary lavish party. She was overwhelmed with the lavishness of the whole thing and in the way out she said let's go and say hello. And I said Diana these are the people who cook for you and she said well tell them that was a delicious dinner. Pity they didn't give me more pasta and she gave the hands to each of them and hold their hands and said I love Italian food Now, she didn't need to do that. There were no cameras there there were no paparazzis She did it from the heart. She made everybody wait five minutes but can you imagine for those two women she made their life and that was the touch. Diana was always welcome in America where her hosts valued her presence to help raise funds for their pet charities She appreciated recognition for her achievements and her charity work and in 1995 she was presented with a humanitarian of the year award by statesman Henry Kissinger She was tremendously fond of people like Kissinger. Adored sitting next to him at dinner. They got on like a house on fire. You see this is the thing that Diana appreciated. Somebody who could not be so withdrawn with her or shy of her but somebody who could sort of just connect with her In the final year of her life Diana grew more serious The battle against landmines brought a new direction for her Her trip to Angola in January 1997 publicised the suffering of landmine victims all around the world Despite criticism from politicians at home Diana continued her efforts and ignored suggestions that she had become a loose cannon She wanted to show the world the reality of landmines I think she was trying to make a big contrast from the days of the royal state tours when she would be dressed up with the hats and the outfits and the ladies and waiting and I think she just reveled in the fact that we're coming into the sort of into the 90s and this feeling of dressing down, of being simple and of really getting on with the job. But she was still incredibly chic During her life Diana's role as the people's princess focused the world's attention on many forgotten causes Committed to her landmine mission she had become a serene, confident woman, ready for the next stage of her life It was at a polo match in July 1988 that Diana's life was destined to change forever She was invited to present the prizes by the event sponsor Mohamed Al Fayed On this occasion she was introduced to his son Dodi Nine years later they fell in love In the romantic atmosphere of the south of France they enjoyed a brief summer of love On the yacht the Jonicle, Diana planned a new life I think Dodi Fayad is, it was the premier example of a person like Diana would have You seek for love, you seek for recognition the more you knock the doors the worse it becomes and I think Dodi Fayad has been the fireworks into a gloomy period of Diana Diana had finally found the love she had sought since childhood Her last evening with Dodi was spent at the Ritz Hotel in Paris I knew that he was so much in love with Diana that at the hotel that same night before they died he met a cousin of his called Hassini and that man told a friend of mine he told him what are you doing with Princess Diana he said no, I'm very serious he said are you he said I'm marrying her on the 24th of October Their lives ended in tragedy for Diana the bright day was done She leaves behind a lifetime of memories Night had fallen forever on the world's most adored princess an unforgettable chapter in British history had tragically come to an end What would Diana have made of the unforgettable scenes at her funeral I think she would have been so touched I'm sure that those would have been the words she would use completely overwhelmed by the level because she never believed that people loved her I mean she was the queen of hearts and yet love was something that she was in search of she never really realized the extent to which people loved her