Diana told her sons to be 'true to each other' says expert

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The story was recounted in ITV’s Diana’s Decades, the second episode of which airs at 9pm tonight, explores the princess’ influence on the late 20th century and how Diana’s life inspired social change. July 1 saw Diana’s sons Prince William and Harry set aside recent differences and unveil a statue of their mother on what would have been her 60th birthday. The sculpture, made by Ian Rank-Broadley, was created in Princess Diana’s honour and placed in the Sunken Garden of Kensington Palace, a place Diana sought solace before her tragic death in 1997. 

The design appears to be inspired by Diana’s official Christmas card released in 1993, her first sent after her separation with Prince Charles, in which the princess wore the same outfit as she smiled at her two young sons.

The brothers said “every day, we wish she were still with us” before the Duke of Sussex made a hasty exit.

Diana was engaged to the Prince of Wales in 1981 while working as a nursery teacher, and the couple married on July 29 1981 at St Paul’s Cathedral in front of a global television audience of 750 million people.

However, the pair separated in 1992 after their fractured relationship became known to the public and subsequently divorced on account of their incompatibility and extramarital affairs in 1996, a year before the Princess of Wales’ untimely death in a Paris car crash.

At the start of Diana’s blossoming relationship with Prince Charles the future princess was accused by sections of the media of having had sexual relations with Queen’s son.

Royal protocol at the time dictated that any bride of a future King must be a virgin.

Her response was to give her first ever interview in which she “virtue signalled” to journalist and neighbour Danaë Brook, claiming she was a virgin, as published in the Daily Mail in November 1980.

Upon Brook asking a teenage Diana “why she thinks so much attention was being directed to her now”, she responded: “Because I haven’t got a background; a background of leaping in and out of bed with people.

“That’s what everyone else seems to have.

“I mean I haven’t got a chance to have a background like that, I’m only 19!”

Charles’ previous love interests had included Davina Sheffield, the 24-year-old granddaughter of famous industrialist Lord McGowan, and a cousin of Samantha Sheffield, the wife of former Prime Minister David Cameron.

However, their couple’s relationship unravelled after one reporter duped Sheffield’s ex-boyfriend into suggesting that she was not a virgin.

Royal experts claim Charles was devastated and believe it was the same reason courtiers rejected Camilla as a suitable bride.

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Similarly, Diana’s older sister Lady Sarah Spencer had a fleeting romance with Charles in 1977 when the pair were both in their twenties, but the relationship ended abruptly after she gave an interview to a tabloid claiming that she had dated “thousands of men”.

Indeed, in Diana’s Decades, Ms Brook admits believing Diana had been preferred on account of her virginity.

She said: “She was blushing when she talked about whether or not she had had affairs and she was in a way trying to tell me that the reason she thought she was being favoured was that she had not had affairs with other people.

“So, she was clearly conveying to me that not only was she a virgin but that she was expected to be.”
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