Excerpt from Diana by Phil Craig, Tim Clayton, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

They took it out of context! This is the most common complaint about journalists. An incident, a memory, one portion of a half remembered conversation lifted out of the jumble and contradiction of real experience and used to make a telling point in a television programme or a book. 'Look at me! Look at me!' -- who hasn't shouted that at the top of a diving board? But childhood stories like this have been used to build up a picture of the young Diana as an attention-seeker, a prima donna in the making.

Diana was thirty when she told Andrew Morton that she had a very unhappy childhood. By then she was fluent in the language of psychotherapy, and the rooting of later troubles in childhood trauma. She herself is the sole source of the received impression that her early life was lonely and sad. But Diana didn't tell the story straight. She took herself out of context, exaggerating for effect when constructing a story of her early life that made her out to be more unusual and disturbed than she actually was.

There were, no doubt, unhappy moments as the children were shuffled between parents, but most remember Diana as a cheerful, tree-climbing tomboy: a bit overindulged, a bit lackadaisical at schoolwork, but otherwise unremarkable. A nice upper-class little English girl with good manners, neat handwriting and a deep affection for guinea-pigs; a girl who got excited about picnics on the beach and standing on a diving board. Like thousands of others, destined to move smoothly from boarding school to finishing school, a secretarial course, maybe some cooking and a stint in a ski chalet, and then marriage to a well-bred young man from a good county family.


Diana loved to read romantic novels and Barbara Cartland was her favourite author. Nanny Mary Clarke thought she had a very simple vision of the future:

What Diana really wanted to do when she grew up was very simple, it was a dream shared by many little girls, to marry someone who really loved her and who she really loved and to have lots of children. Diana had in mind anything from four to six children and just to have a normal happy life. It was immaterial to her who the person that she married was, the important factor was that he should really love her and she love him because otherwise the marriage would end in divorce.

She wanted to be a ballet dancer, but at twelve years old Diana was already five foot nine and far too tall. Lady Fermoy had been a concert pianist and her sister Sarah was also a talented musician, but though she played a lot at home, Diana was not as good.

In 1973 Diana changed schools, following her sisters to West Heath, a small private boarding school for about 120 girls in Sevenoaks in Kent, surrounded by charming countryside and set in its own beautiful grounds. Its fees were very high, its facilities were magnificent, and its goals were not primarily academic.

During her first term at West Heath, Diana was, by her own admission, something of a bully. At least one of her smaller contemporaries claims to have suffered at her hands. In her second term she was treated to some of her own medicine, being picked on by some older girls, and then she settled down into boisterous popularity as the leader of a small gang in her class of about fifteen.

Diana was daring -- she mounted nocturnal raids on the school kitchens and enjoyed midnight swims. The headmistress almost expelled her for wandering about the school after lights-out. Her teachers soon discovered that she had difficulty concentrating for any length of time. Penny Walker, Diana's music teacher, felt that this was due to a number of factors, one being troubles at home:

Her mind, you often felt, was elsewhere. Her sisters were fairly good academically. Sarah was a brilliant pianist. Jane wasn't far behind. So she had a lot to live up to. She also came late to the school, which is always a disadvantage. Friendships are already formed, everybody knows the staff already. They've already started on their course of work. So she had that to cope with as well.