Diana (18 page)

One fellow, spotting Diana at lunch, asked if she’d ever been told she looked awfully like the Princess of Wales. “Oh, I know, it’s such a bore—we get mistaken for each other all the time.”

In the considerable wake of newspaper reports about “the tormented mind of a princess” and allegations about her bulimia, Diana put the matter to rest in a speech to charity workers. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are very lucky to have your patron here today. I am supposed to have my head down
the loo for most of the day…. I am supposed to be dragged off the minute I leave here by men in white coats. If it is all right with you, I thought I would postpone my nervous breakdown to a more appropriate moment.”

Reflecting, in 1995: “[Charles and I] were a very good team in public; albeit what was going on in private, we were a good team.”

“Being a princess is not all it’s cracked up to be.”

On the millions of women who dreamed of changing places with her: “They don’t know how lucky they are.”

She told journalist and friend Arthur Edwards: “From now on, it’s a strictly hands-on approach. I want to become more involved with the Red
Cross, for example. No more glitz. Arthur, you don’t know how much I hate the glitz. I hate all those premieres, but I have to do some.”

In November 1993, addressing a mental-health conference in London, Diana seemed to be describing her own emotional state: “There seems to be a growing feeling of … emptiness in people’s lives. Deep within us all is a need to care and be cared for … yet many people, in their attempt to build a life … lose touch with their own sense of belonging and of being a part of something greater than themselves.”

Explaining her semiretirement in December 1993: “I wanted to give one hundred and ten percent to my work, and I could only give fifty. I was constantly tired, exhausted, because the pressure was just, it was so cruel. So I thought the only way to do it was to stand up and make a speech and extract myself before I started disappointing and not carrying out my work. It was my decision to
make that speech because I owed it to the public to say that, you know, ‘Thank you. I’m disappearing for a bit, but I’ll come back.’”

After the semiretirement speech: “I did a lot of work, well, underground, without any media attention, so I never really stopped doing it. I just didn’t do every day out and about, I just couldn’t do it. You know, the campaign at that point was being successful, but it did surprise the people who were causing the grief—it did surprise them when I took myself out of the game.”

Pointing to an outsized medal on her jacket, she told a group of photographers in a Klosters café: “I have awarded it to myself for services to my country, because no one else will.”

In 1994, she said to royal reporter James Whitaker, “Would you come to my funeral were I to die? Why would you want to?”

On Patrick Demarchelier’s famous informal photographic portraits of her for
Vogue:
“Every photo of me is taken because I am the Princess of Wales, not because I am Diana. I wanted some pictures of the real me, photographed naturally, and not because I am married to Prince Charles. I like what [Patrick] did. I hope everyone else does.”