Just like the woman herself, the writing of Diana, Princess of Wales, displays
both charm and vulnerability. “Heaven knows where on earth I begin to thank
you for the most magical six days on the ocean waves!” she wrote to her
friend Dodi Fayed after a trip together in 1997. “It is a bit of ‘Oh my God’
situation!!”
It certainly is – with double exclamation marks. Last week that and other
personal letters from Diana to Dodi and the royal family were revealed for
the first time, adding yet another twist to the enduring drama of her death.
In one letter, written three weeks before the car crash that killed her and
Dodi in Paris in 1997, she gushed about the holiday they had enjoyed: “This
comes with all the love in the world and as always a million thanks for
bringing such joy into this particular chick’s life.” The word million is
underlined, as if flashing one of her brilliant smiles. Her signature peeps
out coyly from beneath two kisses at the bottom of the page.
What is one to make of it all? Depending on your point of view, the letters
either give an extraordinary insight into her love for Dodi or they tell us
virtually nothing about how and why she died.
To Mohamed al-Fayed, the father of Dodi, the choice is clear. He released the
letters in the hope of bolstering his claim that Diana was murdered by MI6
on the orders of the Duke of Edinburgh because she was pregnant by Dodi and
was about to marry him. Other letters released by Buckingham Palace at the
same time were intended to give the opposite impression. They revealed how
Diana had written to the Duke of Edinburgh, addressing him with apparent
affection as “Pa”.
After weeks in which the inquest has proceeded with what one American observer
called “bone-aching tedium”, sparks suddenly flew. The headlines blared:
“Revealed: intimate letters between Diana and Philip”, followed by “Diana’s
letters of love to Dodi”. A beautiful model appeared claiming that she, not
Diana, had been engaged to marry Dodi, and one of Diana’s close friends was
reduced to tears while giving evidence in court.
For the ordinary loyal subject in the Clapham Ford Focus, it’s all mighty
confusing. What has the inquest revealed? Was Diana in love? With whom? Was
she at war with Prince Philip? And will the inquest ever achieve anything?
The first letters to emerge were those between Diana and Philip. They were
written in June and July 1992, when Diana’s marriage was breaking up and her
tribulations were already public.
In one Diana began: “Dearest Pa, I was so pleased to receive your letter, and
particularly so to read that you are desperately anxious to help.”
In another she wrote: “Dearest Pa, I was particularly touched by your most
recent letter which proved to me, if I did not already know it, that you
really do care.”
To Sarah Bradford, biographer of the Queen, the apparent friendly relations
between Diana and Philip come as no surprise. “I knew about the Duke of
Edinburgh letters, the kind of tone they were and how nice,” said Bradford
yesterday. “They were not what they [had previously been] made out to be –
horrible.
“Pa is what she called him. Ma and Pa. Their relationship was generally pretty
cordial. It wasn’t wonderful, given all the difficulties. But he was very
nice to her. She was a pretty girl; he liked pretty girls.”
Hugo Vickers, another royal biographer, agreed: “The letters reveal that he
was supportive and he was doing everything possible for Prince Charles and
the princess to continue their marriage.”
While the letters may be superficially cordial, however, they must be seen in
the context of their time and Diana’s mindset, according to Andrew Morton,
her confidant and biographer.
“When Diana got the first letter [from the duke], she was so upset she rang a
mutual friend, who contacted me. She wanted to know the name of a solicitor
to help her draft a response,” he said. “Five solicitors’ names were put
into the frame.
“What people have to understand is there’s a difference between how she
perceived the letter in the context of the time and the contents as
expressed some 15 years later.
“In the context of the time, she was being attacked by Prince Charles and his
supporters. She felt under siege by his family, she felt alone and
vulnerable.
“She had lived for 10 years knowing she was at the centre of a conspiracy to
lie to her about Prince Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.”
Morton argues that Diana was upset and startled by the first letter from
Philip, but that they became more amicable as time wore on. Whether or not
the duke could be amicable while still plotting to have MI6 bump off Diana
is a matter for the inquest to decide.
In the hearing last week, the main line of attack advanced by Fayed’s lawyer
was that Diana had been so in love with Dodi that they were planning to get
married. Another letter revealed that Diana had given Dodi a pair of
cufflinks that she had received from her father.
She wrote: “Darling Dodi, these cufflinks were the very last gift that I
received from the man I loved the most in the world – My Father – They are
given to you as I know how much joy it would give him to know they are in
such safe and special hands . . . Fondest love, from, Diana.”
Michael Mansfield QC, acting for Fayed, argued that the letters reflected a
deep relationship: “She was treating this relationship with Dodi as a
serious matter, wasn’t she? It doesn’t suggest it was little more than a
fling after a couple of days.”
Mansfield was cross-examining Rosa Monckton, who had been a friend of Diana.
Although Monckton conceded that the letters showed Diana’s affection for
Dodi, she said the princess “tended to speak and write in an extravagant
way”. It is a point echoed by others who knew the princess.
Robert Lacey, another royal biographer, said: “I think they are very
affectionate thank-you letters with someone she has started a relationship
with. Diana always wrote thank-you letters – she was brought up to do that.”
Morton agreed. “I’ve read lots of her letters over the years,” he said. “It’s
always lots of love and fond wishes and touchy-feely. She was taught by her
father always to send a thank-you note immediately.”
Did Diana’s gift and missives to Dodi go beyond such courtesy into the
territory of overwhelming passion? That, again, is something the inquest
must decide.
Certainly some emotions boiled over last week. Monckton’s daughter, who has
Down’s syndrome, has been ill recently, according to friends.
“She’s not been at all well. When she gets something, she gets it badly,” said
a friend. “Rosa’s been up night after night. She was totally exhausted.”
In court Monckton found herself bombarded with accusations from Mansfield that
the princess had not told her the truth about Dodi.
He suggested that Diana may have concealed her love for Dodi because Monckton
disapproved of him.
As Mansfield bored on, it all became too much for the exhausted Monckton; she
burst into tears. “Diana was a very good friend of mine for six years,” she
said as she wept. “She was godmother to my handicapped daughter and was by
my side when I buried my other daughter. She was a very true and close
friend.”
However, she added: “That doesn’t preclude her from not telling me certain
things. You don’t tell people everything the whole time.”
To complicate matters further, the inquest also heard that both central
characters had other love interests. Diana, the jury was told, had been
obsessed by her broken love affair with Hasnat Khan, a heart surgeon.
“She spent a lot more time talking about Hasnat than Dodi,” Monckton
testified. “She was really missing Hasnat. She had hoped they could have a future
together and she wanted to marry him.”
Meanwhile, a former model called Kelly Fisher testified that Dodi had planned
to marry her, not Diana.
Fisher, 39, said she and Dodi had had a whirlwind romance in 1997 and that he
had given her a diamond and sapphire engagement ring only weeks before he
was photographed kissing Diana.
The Fayed camp has denied this and last week Fisher fired back: “Why would I
sit here 10 years later, when I have a completely new life, and lie about
being engaged to someone?”
In the decade since Diana died, detectives in France and Britain have pored
over every detail of her death. Books have been written, documentaries made.
Lord Stevens, former commissioner of the Metropolitan police, delivered a
report, at a cost of £3.7m, concluding that Diana’s death was an accident.
Now Lord Justice Scott Baker is presiding over the inquest, which he opened
with a masterful address summing up what was known of events. So far little
new has emerged.
With the inquest likely to cost millions more, parties on both sides must hope
that something new surfaces that reveals who loved who and when and why they
died.
Or whether it was, after all, just an accident.
Additional reporting: Abul Taher
