Diana (12 page)

When Liz Tilberis, former editor of British
Vogue,
asked whether Diana had her kids with her, she replied, “Oh, no. They’re in Scotland shooting little furry things with their father.”

“I’ve told the boys, ‘Remember there is always someone in a high-rise flat who doesn’t want you to shoot Bambis.’”

William saw headlines about his father that shrieked
I NEVER LOVED HER.
“Is it true, Mummy?” he asked. She replied, “When we first married we loved each other as much as I love you now.”

“I think it’s important that they see the suffering in the world and have personal knowledge of it.”

“Both William and Harry, I take them around homelessness projects. I’ve taken William and Harry to people dying of AIDS, albeit I’ve told them it was cancer. I’ve taken the children to all sorts of areas where I’m not sure anyone of that age in this family has been before, and they have a knowledge. They may never use it, but the seed is there and I hope it will grow, because knowledge is power.”

“I want them to grow up knowing there are poor people as well as palaces.”

“I want them to experience what I already know—that they are growing up in a multiracial society in which not everyone is rich, has four holidays a year, speaks standard English, and has a Range Rover.”

On Harry learning about the world: “Through learning what I do and his father does, he has got an insight into what is coming his way. He’s not hidden upstairs with the governess.”

In response to the suggestions that Princes William and Harry were too young to be introduced to homeless shelters and AIDS wards, Diana said, “I want them to have an understanding of people’s emotions, of people’s insecurities, of people’s distress, of their hopes and dreams.”

What did Diana do on the weekends when Charles had custody of their sons? “I stay in town. If I go out, I keep my eyes down or straight ahead. Wherever I go, the press finds ways to spy, you know. Often I visit a hospice.”

“Harry is always asking me to have another baby because he is fed up with being the youngest. But I would have to marry someone who was prepared to cope with what I am.”

She felt she needed to explain to young Harry that the stunning beauties they saw in the area of Saint-Tropez were, in fact, transvestites. “He’s thirteen going on twenty.”

Responding to criticism for taking her children with her to visit Fergie’s former lover Paddy
McNally’s villa in the south of France: “They are our children. They are not the possession of the Crown or State.”