Tina Brown: ‘Diana Upstaged Everybody’

'I was 25 and editing Tatler magazine when Charles and Diana got together. Our staff mixed in her circles so we owned the story, getting scoops like interviews with her flatmates. But I didn’t fully process at the time just how young she was. Now, as a mother of a 30-year-old daughter, I think about her being just 19. Imagine marrying into a family that is so retrograde and stuffy at that age, and in that era. Many of the things that Meghan complained about were nothing like what Diana had to deal with. Back then, a lot of the courtiers were intolerable – now they’re far more modern.

Not only did Diana have to deal with that, but also the fact her husband had a mistress and wasn’t in love with her. When I was writing The Diana Chronicles, I felt strongly how deeply she was wronged by being the only person in the whole set-up who didn’t realise she was in an arranged marriage. That was the awful thing: Diana was a romantic teenager who thought she was marrying for love. They cast her for the role and she found herself living in a nightmare.

In 1985, I was editor of Vanity Fair when I published the first global story to describe how their marriage was going wrong. Charles and Diana were so offended by it that they went on the BBC to deny it. But the cracks were showing. When they went to the White House in November that year, and Diana danced with John Travolta, she conquered the US. She instinctively created iconic moments. She was so beautiful and so enchanting. Poor old Charles didn’t get a look-in, and he was jealous.

One of the great things about The Crown is that it shows the Diana problem, which was that she upstaged everybody. She was only doing what she was supposed to do, which was to star on behalf of the royal family. They should have been full of praise, but the royals are human and they got jealous. I remember one year when the Queen opened Parliament and Diana went with her in the carriage. She had swept her hair up into a new style, and all the press afterwards was about her new updo. Princess Margaret was absolutely furious: ‘How dare she upstage my sister!’ But it wasn’t Diana’s fault – everything she did was just wildly magnetic to the press.

Diana becoming a global celebrity completely skewed the dynamics of her relationship with Charles. He went from being genuinely proud and fond of her to being humiliated by her success. That’s what drove him back to Camilla. She was the one person who was never going to be dazzled by Diana. She was his number one supporter, best friend, lover.

It’s a very modern story in a way, about how men can feel insecure when they have a spouse who outshines them. Women since the year dot have had to put up with being in the background, when they’ve often contributed a massive amount to their husband’s success. They have to just suck it up, but Charles was not going to do that.

It’s admirable that Diana managed to fight her way out of it and turn all that pressure into something positive. She used her star power and humanity to benefit good causes, and it gave the most enormous boost to the concept of philanthropy. When she was photographed shaking the hand of an AIDS patient in hospital in 1987, it changed attitudes globally. Back then, there was a huge stigma around AIDS, and profound ignorance. She made a real difference.

Diana’s honesty about mental health issues, including her bulimia, postnatal depression and self-harm, was unheard of at the time. Her courage in talking about those things helped to destigmatise them. And it’s interesting to see how her sons have taken up the mantle of talking about mental health.

The royal family underestimated Diana because she was so young. If they’d dug a bit deeper, they would have known she came from a very troubled family. But there was this obsession with the idea that Charles had to marry a virgin. Frankly, Camilla was the perfect wife for Charles but, because she’d had a couple of boyfriends, she wasn’t considered good enough. As we’re now finding, Camilla has been the most epic success as Charles’s wife, she’s turned him around.

Emma Corrin is superb in The Crown; she’s captured completely Diana’s slightly flat, upper-class intonation. Diana probably wouldn’t have liked it, because nobody really likes the way that other people portray them. And she was more spirited than we see in The Crown, where she is portrayed as downcast very quickly.

I wonder if William will watch it. I’m sure Harry will. Well, I’m sure their wives will be watching it anyway, even if secretly on their laptops!

I don’t think Diana and Meghan are very similar. When Meghan and Harry got engaged, she was a very self-confident 36-year-old, used to the limelight. And it’s a different story. Meghan simply did not understand the royal world. She’s used to talking about her feelings and saying what she thinks, whereas that is not the way the British upper classes communicate. It’s about repressed suggestions and ironic comments. Diana understood. Her father was a courtier and she grew up in the shadow of Sandringham. It gave her fortitude because she was not intimidated. If Charles had stood behind her and been in love with her, then I think she would have found a way to deal with the royal family.'

Tina Brown is author of ‘The Diana Chronicles’

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