Andrew Morton on the big mistake the King made over Diana row

The Sunday Showdown is still to come today, me and Bridget Philipson going head-to-head at the Liver Building in Liverpool. But first, a little royal treat. We speak to Andrew Morton, Princess Diana's unofficial biographer, who tells us that King Charles may have made a mistake by slapping down Earl Spencer's book. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominey. And me, Tim Stanley. Andrew Morton, it's wonderful to speak to you on The Daily Tea after a flurry of royal headlines to perhaps rival the period in which you wrote your seminal book on Diana in 1992. And at the time, Andrew, the palace dismissed your claims as fiction, only for history to prove you right, which I think puts into context Earl Spencer's book quite nicely. Now, he claimed, among other things, that the king turned round to him at the time of Diana's death and said, we'll forget her soon enough. Do you think the king actually said that? It's an extraordinary thing for King Charles to have said, we'll forget her soon enough, when the whole world is talking about her. It doesn't ring true to me. And what also doesn't ring true is that it doesn't ring true to me. This whole business of, he was elated like a lottery winner. At that time, he was gently introducing Camilla into the public realm. And that was put back by probably five or six years. So given the fact that you could say that King Charles was thinking about himself, what he was thinking about was the fact that all his plans were disrupted, that's a really good point. Yeah, it wasn't convenient to him and his project to rehabilitate Camilla. Yes. For Diana to then die. And then as a consequence, Camilla become public enemy number one. It was possibly the worst thing that could have happened to him because everything was going quite smoothly. Camilla's 50th birthday party had been held at Highgrove. Diana was now out of his life. She had, as far as he was concerned, a boyfriend, Dodi Fayyad. So things were kind of going on their separate paths. And this brought them back together in the worst possible way. Andrew, it's occurred to me when thinking about this controversy that when I've known people lose someone, even someone they were very close to, they have conflicting emotions which spill out. And sometimes they can say very surprising things, but they can have contradictory feelings which are true at the same time. So my question to you is, in the case of Charles, is it possible that there was a conflict between the two of them? There was some part of him that thought, I'm relieved. She's no longer in my life, while at the same time feeling shock and horror and grief. And Spencer just caught him at the moment when he was articulating one dimension of how he felt. I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, the surveys say that a lot of people burst into laughter when they're told about the death of a loved one. Because it's just kind of a hysterical response. So grief has many, many forms. And yes, it's a bit like when Prince Charles on the engagement talked about whatever love means. I'm sure he thought he was doing one of his clever asides about the nature of love. Really, he was insulting Diana and making himself a hostage to fortune. That's the thing about King Charles is that those people who work with him and deal with him say that he can come out with the most extraordinary things. Yes. He's a bit like his late father in that regard, you know, just shooting from the hip sometimes or sometimes just saying stuff to fill gaps in conversations because everybody's always standing on ceremony. Andrew, what. What I think would be really important for King Charles' side, for the, as it were, the pro-Charles side, is for other witnesses to come forward who were there at that time. Now, the first person he called was Camilla Parker Bowles. So she's now the Queen. I mean, I doubt that she's ever going to go on the record about this. Second person he called was Mark Boland, his assistant private secretary, who was deemed, was described as blackish. By William and Harry, because he was so devious. I'd like to hear what he has to say, because he will have caught the Prince at his most vulnerable. And what does he have to say about it? Let's drill down on this rather than just skirting over it. Get some of the witnesses who were there. Robin Jambrin, Lord Jambrin, the Queen's later private secretary. He was the one who broke the news. To them. Charles Spencer is a witness to history in this real seminal week in British life and death. And I think it's beholden to some of these big players to come forward and give their witness because we're left at the moment with Charles Spencer and, of course, other people who worked for Prince Charles or who worked for Spencer. Sure. I mean, you're a witness to history and how close you became to Diana and writing her true story. What can you tell us about the true nature of her relationship with her brother? Because it was often reported, for instance, that she pleaded with him to provide her with accommodation at Althorp, the family seat in Northamptonshire. And he refused. And then some people then calculated, well, that then pushed her into the arms of the Alphiards. Well, there's a there's an element of that. And he deals with that incident quite thoroughly in the book where he talks about initially offering the garden from the garden house to Diana, Diana, nudging him for it. And then the police reporting back to say that it's too close to a road. It's it's not really suitable for the princess and the two boys, both in line to the throne. And so that was knocked on the head. But in his narrative, he says that he offered her a more substantial place on the on the Althorp estate. And she, for some reason, refused to take it. I remember that in that whole episode very well, indeed, because she was talking to us on a regular basis at that time. And we were talking about where could she possibly live in the country to entertain William and Harry? Where could she buy a country estate? And she looked at places in in Wales, in Wiltshire. And finally, she she came up with the obvious idea. Why don't I live? Why don't I have a country place on the Althorp estate? And so and she was bitterly, bitterly disappointed by Charles's response, wrote him a letter. He returned it unopened, wrote him another one, returned it unopened. And it was some months before they were reconciled. And when you actually look at her relationship with members of the Spencer family, there's a lot of up and down there. I mean, towards the end of her life, she stopped speaking to her mother, because she gave an interview with Hello magazine. And, you know, people like Fergie hadn't spoken to her for a year. She was a great one for falling out with people. Andrew, this is a sensitive subject, but in the book, Earl Spencer claims that she contemplated taking her own life at Beachy Head. Now, when she spoke to you, she brought up self-harm and bulimia. Do you recognise that description of Diana's state of mind at that time? Not the state of mind at that time. Certainly, well, indeed. It depends what you mean by at that time. In the initial years and months and years of her life inside the royal family, she felt despair. She called it, what she called, described to me as the dark ages. She threw herself down the stairs whilst pregnant with Prince William at Sandringham. Other people who were there, other witnesses, and this is why it's important, have said she tripped and fell. So she may have exaggerated that in her own mind. Nobody will ever know, because it's, it's all about motivation. And going to Beachy Head with the purpose of throwing herself off the top of the cliff, that may have, may well have occurred to her because she had some very dark moments. She did find being near water, being by the sea, very soothing and very calming. In his book, Earl Spencer also reveals that Diana felt revulsion towards Muhammad Al-Fayed and claims that he sexually harassed her. Given your closeness to Diana, did you speak to her around the time of her relationship with Dodie Fyod and her growing friendship with the family? No, I didn't. Actually, I was out of the country at the time. But the Diana that you encountered when you wrote her true story, was this somebody that was desperately seeking love elsewhere? Because, again, the Earl Spencer book has thrown up lots of questions about were Charles and Diana ever truly in love? And then it's also, of course, thrown up questions about her own adulterous behavior. There's a lot of focus on Charles's relationship with Camilla. But the Diana you encountered, I mean, from reading the book myself, was a romantic, did want the fairy tale to be achieved for herself, did want to find happiness with someone else. Yeah, it very much depends on what point that you start from. I mean, famously, Diana, when she was walking down. The Isle at St. Paul's Cathedral, looked over at Camilla and thought to herself, I hope all that is finished with. So I think she had hope brimming in her heart. I asked some of her friends who agreed to be interviewed, was she in love with the man or was she in love with the position? And they all came back, man. And I think there's little doubt in the fact that she was in love with Prince Charles. And for his part, in his own way, he was in love with her for a time. And that period was by there, by Diana's own estimation, during the time that she was pregnant with Prince Harry. Yes. And she took a lover, James Hewitt. And when I asked James to be interviewed, he politely refused. When I asked Diana about her relationship with James Hewitt, she said that. That he was her riding instructor. So I was left with no place to go. And that's a gap in the book. Charles has taken the unusual step of responding directly to Earl Spencer's allegations. And you wrote in The Times that both men might come to regret ignoring Queen Elizabeth II's golden rule of never complain and never explain. What do you mean by that? Do you really think Charles made a strategic error in commenting? I think on the big calls, Charles gets it wrong. And let me just go through them. When Jonathan Dimbleby brought out his biography, contained in it, in the interview, he admitted on primetime television his adultery. He didn't need to do, there was no need for him to do that. So he did that. More recently, when Prince Harry returned to Britain, he released a statement. Didn't need to do it. Similarly, with Spencer's book. Within, what, an hour or so, he'd issued a statement. And I would have thought that sensible courtiers would have said to him, hang fast, sir, because it's only a book. These things will pass. But I think it's a sign of how angry he was that this statement was written almost contemporaneously. And in a way, it's a statement written for an audience of one. And that's. That's King Charles. And if he'd let the ball come onto the bat, let the whole thing pan out, as the palace normally does with books, you find that you chip away and you find a mistake. I mean, you had Piers Morgan on the show yesterday. And, you know, that's a gift. That's a gift from heaven for Prince Charles, for King Charles. And he will be thinking, what sword shall I use to knight Piers Morgan? Yes, no, that's right. Arise, Sir Piers. What a thought. Andrew, what is your analysis of King Charles, having spoken at such great length with his ex-wife, about their marriage? I mean, what's your assessment of the man? Well, he's someone who was. As someone. Someone who used to work for him said, if he had a five-pound note for the church service, a polo pony saddled, his watercolors ready, he was a happy man. So he was a bachelor by inclination who was obliged to marry. And, you know, his relationship with Diana initially was quite distant. She called him Sir until they married. She had very little to do with him on his own. And there was always the Parker Wells there, all the other friends surrounding her. On the honeymoon, he was reading Van der Post, his great mentor, spiritual guide and guru. So it got off to a fairly shaky start. But he always expected, and it's in the book, that. Anybody. Anybody he married was going to be a companion, basically someone to support him. What really affected him, because he was used to being the star of the show, was the fact that Diana was the star of the show. She was the one that people turned out to see. I was on that famous tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983, and it was almost painful where people would groan on walkabouts when Charles came to their side. And they would cheer wildly when it was Diana. No, I think you've got to be a fairly hardy character to be able to not feel a degree of the bite of jealousy there. Yeah. And Prince Charles, as he was then, certainly did. That's another reason to debunk the, we'll forget her soon enough. If anybody knew the star quality of Diana, if anyone knew her kind of everlasting charisma. I mean, I appreciate she was. Diana was immortalised because of her premature death, but she was an icon of the 20th century. So the idea that Charles, of all people, would turn around and say, oh, well, she's easily forgotten, doesn't really ring true, Tim. No, I agree with you. And that's the problem. That's why you need more witnesses. That's why you need the Mark Bolands of this world to state what they remember from this seminal week in British history. A week that has produced this memoir, which, having read it, I find some of it very touching and very moving. And it brought back an awful lot of the feelings and the atmosphere of that famous week, that infamous week in British life and death. Well, as someone who has done more than anyone to help us to understand Diana through your own writing, does this. Does the book change the way anyone sees Diana? Does it bring new light to her character? Do you think it will contribute to people's understanding of her? Yes, I think it will do. I mean, for great men and great women, there's always basically a three-card trick. There's the official guide, the official biography, the unofficial biography, and the memoir. And this falls into the latter category. It's a memoir, very lovingly written. Memoir by her brother, which gives you an insight into her childhood. And this is where I've part company with Charles Spencer. He talks about the childhood being very happy and, you know, almost like something out of an Enid Blyton book. The childhood she said to me, told me about, was very unhappy with parents divorcing, lots of nannies, some of who weren't very. And basic loneliness and emptiness. So, it pays you money. But it does, in terms of the way he describes it, it brings that period of her life very much to life. Andrew Morton, thank you very much indeed for joining us on today's Daily Tea. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.