On Duty With the Queen: My Time as a Buckingham Palace Press Secretary (13 page)

Not for nothing is such a moment called a watershed.

I
t is an inescapable fact that sometimes people die young. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, your race, nationality or creed, the spectre of untimely death is simply a tragic fact of life, and when such a tragedy occurs, we are never less than shocked to the core.

Just as everyone remembers where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated, or when the planes flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, so too can almost everyone recall where they were when the news broke, at 12:30am French time on August 31
^st
, 1997, that Diana, Princess of Wales, and her friend, Dodi Fayed, had been involved in a serious car accident in Paris.

I was in my apartment at Kensington Palace. Like most people at that hour, I was in bed. I had only just turned out the light and was dropping off to sleep when the high-pitched beep of my radio pager jolted me awake.

I was used to my beeper going off at all times of the day
and night; it came with the territory. With a responsibility to media organisations around the world, many of which were located in different time zones, there were often calls during anti-social hours, but I knew that the first editions of the Sunday papers had already dropped, so I was baffled as to whom could be paging me at such a late hour.

I fumbled around the bedside table for my pager and read the display telling me to call CNN in Atlanta. Given the time difference, US networks often called late, but August is generally a quiet month due to the Royal Family being on holiday. We considered it ‘silly season’ for any stories relating to the Monarchy, so a call at such a late hour this time of year was unusual. I grabbed my mobile and made the call.

‘Can you tell me about the crash in Paris?’ an American voice asked.

‘Crash?’ I asked. ‘What crash?

I tried to gather my thoughts.
What on earth were they on about? Paris? What kind of crash?

‘The one involving Princess Diana,’ he clarified.

The words hit their mark. Bang. I was suddenly wide-awake and heading for the living room to turn on the television.
What could have possibly happened?

‘I think you had better phone the duty press secretary at Buckingham Palace,’ I told the reporter.

I knew that if anything untoward had happened involving a member of the Royal Family, the duty press secretary would have been informed.

I turned on the television and switched immediately to CNN to find out for myself. Diana had been involved in
a major high-speed car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in the centre of Paris. French police had confirmed that her friend, Dodi Fayed, and the car’s driver, Henri Paul, had been pronounced dead at the scene. Diana and her bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, had been taken to hospital with serious injuries, and the members of the paparazzi who had been pursuing the car had been arrested.

It was too surreal to take in.

Diana arrived at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital at 2:06am. Despite lengthy resuscitation attempts, her internal injuries were simply too severe, and she was pronounced dead at 4:00am, French time – three-and-a-half-hours after I received the initial call from CNN. She was 36.

I was horrified, and gripped by an overwhelming sense of loss.

How could she be dead?

Could it be possible that I would no longer see her speed up the private road to Kensington Palace? No longer get a hello and a friendly wave if I happened to bump into her? It was deeply upsetting. While I knew I had to keep abreast of what was happening, I could hardly bear to watch. I also knew that I had to push my emotions to one side. I had a job to do. Within half an hour of receiving confirmation of the Princess’s death, I was at my desk in the Buckingham Palace press office.

I arrived just before 4am BST, closely followed by deputy press secretary to the Queen, Penny Russell-Smith. As Penny went to find the duty private secretary, I got on the phone to the Keeper of the Privy Purse and the
Managing Director of Royal Collection Enterprises. It was the height of the tourist season, meaning Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Holyrood House would all be open to the public, and I needed to let them know what had happened in case they wanted to remain closed for the day.

The press office phones were ringing off the hook, and it wasn’t long before the switchboard was jammed with incoming calls. We did the best we could, agreeing to a holding line that, ‘arrangements were still under discussion and that we would have more information later that morning.’ For expediency we told them that any updates would be passed along to the Press Association, whom we would inform with updates as they became available. For once, journalists and broadcasters accepted the situation. They backed off and waited along with the rest of the world.

The next task was to deal with the flagpoles atop all of the royal buildings. I phoned the superintendents at Windsor Castle and Edinburgh’s Holyrood House, as well as the factor at the Queen’s private home, Sandringham House, in Norfolk, and asked them to lower their flags to half-mast. There was no need to do the same with the government buildings, as they already had a system in place. Upon the death of any member of the Royal Family, they automatically lower the Union Flag to half-mast.

The question of what to do at Buckingham Palace was another matter. With Her Majesty in residence at Balmoral, there was no flag currently flying over the Palace. As tradition dictates, the Royal Standard only flies
there when the sovereign is in residence. It has been the case since 1837, when Queen Victoria acceded and took up residence.

Here was the conundrum; the Royal Standard is never flown at half-mast, even when the sovereign passes away. Many will be familiar with the term, ‘The King is Dead, Long Live the Queen!’ The tradition of the flag is that sentiment encapsulated.

The same rule does not apply to other royal homes. When the Queen is not in residence at Windsor Castle or Holyrood House in Edinburgh, a flag is still flown – the Union Flag and Scottish Saltire respectively.

But Buckingham Palace was a problem. Do we fly a flag at half-mast when traditionally no flag should be flown at all? Fly a Union Flag when tradition dictates the Royal Standard? Or just leave the pole glaringly bare? These were questions which, in the dawn hours of 31
^st
August, 1997 no-one seemed capable of answering.

Household from the Lord Chamberlain’s Office began to arrive around 6am. They were charged with organizing ceremonial occasions and funerals, and would ultimately be responsible for drawing up the guest list for Diana’s funeral, as well as sending out all the invitations.

Funerals for members of the Royal Family are almost always planned well in advance. With full cooperation and input from the principal concerned, decisions are made ahead of time regarding the type of arrangements they would like. This was the case for virtually every member of the Royal Family, but it seemed no-one had actually taken the time to discuss plans with Diana. While married to
Prince Charles, she was still so young that perhaps it didn’t seem like a priority, but now there was the additional issue that, as she had lost her royal title due to her divorce, she was, in theory, no longer considered a member of the Royal Family.

With no plans in place, nor a model to follow, we were left answering questions on the fly. The number one priority was deciding exactly what type of funeral Diana should have. Everything rested on the final decision. Diana, Princess of Wales, as she was now officially known, was, in effect, a private citizen. As such, she was entitled to a private citizen’s funeral – i.e. one without any input from the Royal Household. It was a judgment that ultimately lay with Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother and head of the Spencer Family, who was based in Cape Town, South Africa.

By 10am we had a verdict from the Earl. Though technically not a royal matter, he had decided that as the mother of a future king, and a globally popular public figure, his sister should have a royal funeral.

Leaving his devastated sons with their grandparents at Balmoral, Prince Charles had flown from Aberdeen to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire to meet Diana’s sisters, Lady Jane Fellowes and Lady Sarah McCorquodale. They would fly to Paris aboard a BAe 146 from No. 32 The Royal Squadron, to bring the Princess home.

From five o’clock that morning, members of the public had begun to lay flowers at the Palace gates. They came in their droves to share their grief and pay their respects,
but as the number of bouquets escalated, so too did the concerns of those responsible for the changing of the guard.

The guard commander dispatched a policeman to let us know that the proliferation of flowers outside the centre gates was a problem. Traditionally used by the outgoing guard, the gates would need to be kept unobstructed later that morning.

On a normal day that would be reasonable, but this was not a normal day.

‘I’m sorry but that’s not going to be an option,’ I told the policeman.

Within minutes, the guard commander came to see me himself. Either he was unaware of the enormity of what had happened in Paris in the early hours of that morning, or he was not quite conversant with what seemed to be unquestionably the right thing to do. It would look appalling if we were seen to be clearing the flowers out of the way. I was surprised he couldn’t see that for himself.

I told him in no uncertain terms that he would have to find a way to work around the situation. The flowers were staying.

‘That’s going to be complicated,’ he argued, before explaining just how difficult it would be to arrange. I got angry. It seemed like such an inappropriate line to take. I told him there were three other gates that could be used, and that the flowers would not be moved.

It was 10:30am. With the matter resolved, I set off for RAF Northolt to begin the process of coordinating the media for Diana’s return journey home.

The RAF had an operational plan in place for transporting a royal casket, but it was a plan that had never been rehearsed, let alone put into practice. As I drove the 15 miles from central London to the air base, I could only trust in the professionalism of the armed forces to see to it that everything progressed without a hitch.

Arriving just after 11am, I went straight into an operational meeting led by the station commander. There, I was reassured that the same protocols as written down on paper were being exercised. The time at which the Princess’s body would be released from the hospital to her family members had been sent through from Paris, and everything appeared to be in order.

One aspect the commander hadn’t planned on, and which I was all too aware of – as I was about to get in touch with the Press Association and all the networks to inform them of the schedule – was the sheer number of journalists that would be present to cover the arrival of BAe 146 and its precious cargo.

It was just as well that the RAF was on the case so quickly and efficiently, attending to every crucial detail such as where the aircraft should stop, how much space it would need to turn around and, as a consequence, where the media pen should to be situated. As dozens of people, vehicles, and equipment would be descending upon the base on what would otherwise have been a quiet Sunday, a number of accommodations had to be rushed into place. Refreshments had to be brought in and rigorous security measures had to be taken – both difficult feats given the lack of advanced notice. Finally, clearing the terminal and
apron required shifting various sets of loading steps and a couple of generators.

All the while, I stood in preparation for what would be the most important press briefing of my career.

The sadness in the still summer air that Sunday was palpable. A convoy of vehicles carrying military, security and broadcasting personnel began arriving at the allotted hour. For a time, all transports would be held in a secure area before being permitted on to the airfield proper.

The RAF had made a hangar available for my briefing to the media. As reporters and photographers arrived, there was none of the usual lighthearted banter. No shouting, no laughter and no noisy clatter of equipment.

Among the some 300 members of the press in attendance, I saw a sea of familiar faces: James Whitaker and Kent Gavin of
The Mirror,
Arthur Edwards from
The Sun,
Ian Jones from
The Telegraph
and John Stillwell from the Press Association. Also present were freelance photographers Tim Graham, Jane Fincher, Anwar Hussein and Robin Nunn, as well as Brian Hanrahan and Nicholas Witchell from the BBC, to name but a few. I had known them all for many years. Their faces all bore the same stunned and sad expression.

They all knew each other, too. It’s not called a press ‘pack’ for nothing. Although they quietly conversed, everyone seemed diligently focused on getting through the next few hours as professionally – and reverently – as possible.

The relationship between a royal correspondent and a member of the Royal Family is a personal one. Here was a
crowd which had covered every intimate aspect of Diana’s adult life. From her marriage and the birth of her two sons, to countless royal tours and her ultimate divorce and its aftermath, they had witnessed the Princess’s every high and low. Breaking news on this type of scale is the ‘Holy Grail’ to reporters, but none of them ever imagined that they would be covering her death.

I borrowed a photographer’s ladder and climbed to the top step.

‘We know why we’re here, don’t we?’ I began.

The press briefing went without incident. Professionalism was the order of the day and the questions that would normally have been fired from all angles were conspicuously absent. It was clear that no-one had yet come to terms with the events of the day. All seemed quite clear about the ground rules for the homecoming. There was to be no littering of film boxes, no noise, no shouting or jockeying for position, and a blanket ban on motorized cameras.