Princess Diana would be 'alive today' if it wasn't for this betrayal
Princess Diana’s famous line, "There were three of us in this marriage," has echoed through decades, but the late People’s Princess was decieved into giving that tell-all interview.
Investigative journalist Andy Webb has spent nearly 20 years trying to find out the extent of deception done by BBC journalist Martin Bashir.
In his new book, Dianarama: Deception, Entrapment, Cover-Up—The Betrayal of Princess Diana, Webb reveals for the first time exactly what lies Bashir told Diana and her brother Charles Spencer to get the Princess to do the bombshell Panorama interview.
Per Webb, Bashir fabricated bank receipts to imply that Diana’s former private secretary, Patrick Jephson, nd a senior aide to Prince Charles, and other palace staff members took money from her husband to spy on her. He showed the said receipts to Spencer, which is how he reached Diana.
"She was in a state of justified anxiety," Jephson told People. "It is not paranoia if you have reasonable grounds to believe that they are out to get you."
Diana’s close friend Rosa Monckton added, "She was frail, and that made her susceptible."
After seeing the receipts, Spencer arranged a meeting between Diana and Bashir, and the journalist, whom the Princess thought credible (since he worked for a reputed publication), showed her forged documents suggesting that her kids’ nanny, Tiggy Legge‑Bourke, had an abortion paid by Charles, implying that the two were having an affair.
This was the last straw for Diana, who was already heartbroken over Charles’ affair with the now-Queen Camilla.
So she agreed to the interview, and Bashir, along with a producer and a cameraman, entered the palace under the guise of sound system guys.
According to Webb, Diana and Webb spent 90 minutes preparing for the interview in the palace kitchen.
The resulting interview shook the palace, with Diana talking openly about Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles and her own struggle with bulimia. She also confirmed her own affair with James Hewitt.
"It was a performance. The smoothness, the facility, the fluidity — at no point did Diana appear flustered," Webb remarked.
"Her life became untethered," he added of the impact of Bashir’s lies. "It was frenzied between the interview and her death."
"Her life would have followed a different path if she’d been warned," Webb declared. "She might plausibly still be alive today — a grandmother at 64, enjoying her five grandchildren. The consequences were lethal."
In the aftermath of Diana’s bombshell tell-all, Queen Elizabeth ordered her and Charles to get divorced.
The lies fabricated by Bashir led Princess Diana away from the royals and their protection before her death in August 1997. Not trusting official security, the mom-of-two relied on her then-boyfriend Dodi Fayed’s protection. The couple died in a car crash caused by the driver’s drunk driving amid a paparazzi chase in Paris.
