Diana (17 page)

She later remembered: “Anything good I ever did nobody ever said a thing, never said, ‘Well done,’ or ‘Was it OK?’ But if I tripped up, which invariably I did, because I was new at the game, a ton of bricks came down on me.”

“I was just pushed into the fire, but I have to say my upbringing was able to handle that. It wasn’t as though I was picked out like
My Fair Lady
and told to get on with it. I did know how to react. When I first arrived on the scene I’d always put my head down. Now that I interpret it, it did look sulky. [But] I’ve never sulked. I’ve been terrified out of my tiny little mind.”

She later recalled her reaction to being suddenly addressed as “Your Royal Highness.” “I was twenty years old, for goodness sake!”

She told Dickie Arbiter, a journalist: “I certainly feel that since I’ve come into public life I perhaps need a little more guidance. I know that my grandmother has got all the answers, purely because she’s been through some of the experiences herself, and it’s so important to listen to someone older. We, the younger ones, always think we know better, but we don’t—we have to go through experiences to learn the ups and downs of life, and it’s an enormous help to have a grandparent around who will say it in the nicest way.”

“I felt compelled to perform—to do my engagements and not let people down. And they supported me, although they weren’t aware how much it carried me through.”

On her schedule: “Imagine having to go to a wedding every day of your life—as the bride. Well, that’s a bit what it’s like.”

On adapting to the royal way of life: “I don’t think anyone can tell you what’s going to happen until you go through the experience yourself. My husband’s taught me all I know. I did [find it difficult to adapt], purely because there was so much attention on me when I first arrived on the scene and I wanted to get my act together, so to speak, and I had so many people watching me, the pressure was enormous. But as years go on it gets better. I’m still learning all the time.”

“I don’t suffer jet lag when I’m coming home east to west. But it really affects me going the other way, west to east. I was fine coming home, but on the way out to Korea I took three sleeping tablets and I still couldn’t close my eyes. I was like a
zombie when I arrived in Seoul. I was like this [demonstrating her clenched fists and a robotic stare to journalist Arthur Edwards].”

In February 1987, on a royal tour in Vancouver, she collapsed. “I was simply exhausted. It was boiling hot. We hadn’t eaten all day because it was a buffet lunch and whenever I put a fork near my mouth, someone else was brought up to me to be introduced.”

During a visit to the Turning Point charity for alcoholics in London, she remarked: “I don’t drink at all, but I understand the pressures. I am constantly offered drinks at parties and social functions, and I know how difficult it is to resist. Contrary to some reports in sensational newspapers, I can assure you that I have not been drinking and I am not about to become an alcoholic. Everything is geared toward drinking. Whenever I switch on the television soap operas, they seem to center around pub life. In
EastEnders
[a British
soap opera], the whole theme is drink and pubs. When I go out for a social thing, I don’t drink, and people find that peculiar.”

“I have had to learn to rise above criticism. But the irony is that it’s been useful in giving me a strength which I did not think I had. That’s not to say criticism hasn’t hurt me.”