20151107

DIANA

Former Royal Navy officer Patrick Jephson was Diana's first and only Private Secretary (1988-1996). "When Charles and Diana came down the steps of St Paul's Cathedral, I'm sure I wasn't the only monarchists who thought, 'Well, phew, thanks goodness, that the future of the Monarchy saved!'" he recounted. Aside from being the "biggest media event ever", the "Wedding of the (20th) Century" was regarded "a once-in-a-lifetime thing to see" and "the most spectacular State ceremony since the Queen's coronation". 

As of 2005, the Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana was ranked the 7th most watched TV event of all time in Great Britain, attracting some 28.4 million viewers in July 1981. In the U.S., Tom Brokaw of 'Today' noted at the time, "We'll be devoting as much time if not more to the wedding itself on the day as we did to the Columbia Space Shuttle (April 1981), more time in fact, I believe, in a single block than we did in the inauguration of the President of United States (January 1981) and the return of the Iranian hostages (January 1981)." In total, some 750 million people in 50 countries around the world watched Diana married Prince Charles, some 55 million alone in the U.S. and in Australia some 75% of the households with TV sets were counted watching the wedding.

In 1983, Diana mentioned, "We had a 6-week tour - 4 weeks in Australia and 2 weeks in New Zealand - and by the end, when we flew back from New Zealand, I was a different person." Andrew Morton reported, "In a country of 17 million people (in 1983), around one million actually traveled to see them as they journeyed from city to city. No-one in the Royal entourage . . . had ever experienced this kind of adulation . . . Ultimately, the success of that gruelling tour marked a turning point in her Royal life. She went out a girl, she returned home a woman."

Patrick made the observation, "When they were working together as Royal professionals, they were a world-beating double act. It's easy to forget, that, actually the majority of the time Diana devoted to her charity work, she didn't go into glamorous high-profile causes at all. These were not fluffy easy charities to support, yet Diana devoted enormous energy to helping them. Whatever briefing I arranged for her she would work on very hard and she would make sure that she was extremely well informed."

Born on the 1st of July 1961, the Honourable Diana Frances Spencer was propelled from obscurity to the front pages to eventually becoming the most famous and photographed woman in the world when it was announced she would be marrying Prince Charles in a fairy-tale marriage that had captured the imagination of the world. However Diana was "the Princess who proved fairy tale rarely comes true."

In July 1992, the public would to learn of their marriage breakdown from the Andrew Morton's 158-page book, 'Diana: Her True Story', which instantly topped the New York Times Best-Seller list on the first week of its release. In Chapter 7, Andrew wrote, "(Mara and Lorenzo Berni) encouraged Diana's interest in astrology, tarot cards and other realms of alternative metaphysics such as clairvoyance and hypnotism. It is something of a tradition in the Royal family.

"Author John Dale has traced what he calls the 'psychic bloodline of the Royal family' back to the days of Queen Victoria. Over the years, claims Dale, numerous members of the Royal family, including the Queen Mother, the Queen and Prince Philip have attended seances and other investigations into the paranormal . . . When she first began investigating the possibilities of the spiritual world, Diana was very open, almost too open, to belief. She was so much at sea in her world that she clutched at any prediction . . . As her confidence in herself has grown, particularly over the last few months (in 1991), she has started to see these methods of self-analysis and forecast as tools and guides rather than a lifeline to grab onto. She finds astrology interesting, occasionally relevant and reassuring, but in no way at all the dominant motivation of her life."

On reflection, Patrick remarked, "In a way it didn't matter to me whether she has helped Morton or not. I carefully didn’t ask her. I mean there are some questions it’s much better not to ask. Ignorance can be real bliss. I certainly couldn’t continue to do my job if I had asked or if she had told me. My job was to promote her interest, to enable her to do the best job she possibly could as a Royal Princess. But what intrigue me at the time was that in the reaction to the Morton book there was enormous criticism of the fact that it has been written. That seems to have mattered far more than that some of the book might have actually be true."

9:40pm (U.K. Time) November 20, 1995: The Diana one-on-one "startlingly frank interview" on BBC had been described as one of the most talked-about broadcast of the year with the most talked-about woman in the world, a "historic program". One observer remarked, "Nothing like this has happened before. Nothing like this has happened since." In the U.K., 23 million Britons watched the "People's Princess" lamented, "We had struggled to keep it going, but obviously we'd both run out of steam . . . Here was a situation which hadn't ever happened before in history in the sense that the media were everywhere. And here was a fairy story that everybody wanted to work . . . What had been hidden - or rather what we thought had been hidden - then became out in the open and was spoken about on a daily basis, and the pressure was for us to sort ourselves out in some way."

An estimated 36 million American viewers in 53 million TV homes watched Diana on the Friday of that week on the 'Turning Point' program with Barbara Walters. "I'll fight to the end, because I believe that I have a role to fulfil, " Diana told her supporters. "I'm sure many, many people doubt me. And I want to reassure all those people . . . that I'd never let them down. The people that matter to me - the man on the street."

In main streets America in 1996, "Diana was the star who wouldn't fade". One historian offered, "(Diana is) almost like a mirror. You can see what you want to see in her. That explains why she appeals...across the board." In an interview shortly after Diana's death, Hillary Rodham Clinton made the observation, "Her position of course gave her entrée that many would not have. But she could not have pulled it off. It could not have survived the test of authenticity both in person and across the television screen if it had not been real."

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