Curse of the Spencers

-Diana, the global icon who captured the hearts of a nation.

-She's here now.

-But behind the dazzling princess was a girl haunted by a cursed childhood.

-Diana, till her dying day, thought that she was the child that they didn't want around, that she was the unwanted child.

-In this film, we explore the tragic story of Diana's parents and her upbringing, revealing how a litany of tragedies from her past influenced her royal future.

-It really was a case of history repeating itself.

-From her mother's devastating loss of a baby boy... [ Baby crying ] -She was never allowed to hold her first son.

-...to the damage wreaked by her parents' bitter divorce... -That was a seminal moment for Diana, and she felt a profound and enduring sense of abandonment.

-...from the arrival of a controlling stepmother... -Diana said to her face, "I hate you.

I hate you for everything you've done to my family."

-...to the death of an earl, a father she loved.

-Suddenly it wasn't the Princess of Wales.

It was a woman that was really upset and distressed.

-This is the story of Diana and a family whose lives were littered with pain and tragedy told by those who knew them.

-She was a prisoner in her own home.

-Diana, Princess of Wales, has been seriously injured.

-The daughter that was between life and death going out of her mind.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Late summer, 1981, the wedding of the century.

The fairy-tale princess who married her prince.

-Isn't it fairy tale?

-But as nearly a billion people watched her every move, very few were aware of the story beneath the glittering facade.

-The whole world was focused on this magical princess, and nobody really took much notice of the Spencer family.

In every film, there's a backstory, and her background had made her who she was.

-Diana was embarking on a relationship that was destined to come crashing down in full view of the public.

-I, Diana Frances... -I, Diana Frances... -...just like her parents' marriage 30 years before.

The story of Diana's parents, Frances and Johnnie Spencer, began in the aristocratic circles of 1950s London.

-Wonderful.

-Just as Prince Charles was the most eligible bachelor of the 1970s aristocracy, so Johnnie Spencer was the catch of the county.

-He was a dashing viscount.

He'd been to Eton and he was part of the royal entourage.

-Mothers looking for husbands for their daughters would have put Johnnie pretty well at the top of the list.

-But making a suitable match wasn't just about falling in love.

It was a cutthroat business.

-Women of that stock -- there is nothing they like better than planning for a match not made in heaven, made in the drawing rooms of the landed aristocracy.

-It was in this fiercely competitive world that Viscount Spencer first fell in love, but not with Diana's mother.

The focus of his attentions was Lady Anne Coke, an earl's daughter and future maid of honor at the queen's coronation.

She has a great coming-out party.

She meets Johnnie.

Very quickly, he's down on bended knee.

-The engagement was kept secret, but behind the scenes, not everyone was enthusiastic about the match.

-Jack Spencer, Johnnie's father.

I think today people would say he didn't suffer fools gladly and those fools would include his son and heir Johnnie, who found him, I think, quite a terrifying figure.

-With Johnnie nearing 30, his father was impatient for him to produce a male heir.

So the news of his son's engagement should have made him happy.

But instead, he opposed the match.

-Johnnie's father found her just totally unsuitable.

He absolutely was determined that Johnnie shouldn't have anything to do with her.

-And the earl wasn't the only obstacle to the match.

Other powerful forces were at play.

Lady Anne happened to be a lodger of Lady Ruth Fermoy, the aristocrat who would become Diana's grandmother.

And Lady Fermoy had ambitions for her own daughter, Frances.

-Diana's maternal grandmother, Ruth Fermoy, after having her children, she then devoted herself to royal service.

She became one of the Queen Mother's women of the bedchamber.

That was a very, very powerful friendship.

-When Lady Fermoy found out that Anne was seeing Viscount Spencer, she seized the opportunity to push her own daughter, Frances, to the fore.

-What do you do if you're an ambitious mother and you hear that your pipsqueak of a lodger is marrying the most eligible man in England?

You get your daughter, Frances, aged 15, out of her boarding school, into the drawing room to be present when Johnnie's there with his girlfriend, Anne.

-It was at this genteel meeting that the destiny of three generations of women who would go on to indelibly shape the British monarchy was set in motion.

-Is it true love at first sight?

Certainly something.

There was some frisson of some sort because Anne doesn't ever get Johnnie down the aisle and Frances does.

-In the end, Viscount Spencer had bowed to family pressure.

-He might not get on with his father, but he certainly wasn't going to create some huge family schism.

-Within four years of their first meeting, Johnnie had proposed to Frances, and in 1954, their wedding was the talk of the town.

-Westminster Abbey was certainly a perfect setting for the wedding of the year.

-Frances had made it.

She'd snagged an earl, which is the ideal -- ideal for every nice young girl.

-The wedding of Viscount Althorp and his bride, Frances Roche, was attended by the American ambassador, Mr. Winthrop Aldrich.

And now the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret arrive for the great occasion.

-Frances' mother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy.

She'd made it.

Not only was she one of the most senior ladies-in-waiting to the Queen Mother, but her daughter now had married the catch of the county.

-For the queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, it was the first big social engagement since their return to this country.

-The royal family turned out for this because they know the young Lord Althorp.

He's part of the court and their friends are royal friends.

So it's very much an aristocratic gathering.

-Finally, the bride herself, in a gown of white embroidered with Diamante and sequins.

-As Diana's mother entered the abbey, a sea of faces turned to get a glimpse of the blushing bride.

-Royal Scots Greys made an arch of swords for Viscount Althorp and his bride as they came out.

-And she looked very pretty, very young and very pretty.

[ Bells pealing ] -Three decades later, history was about to repeat itself with tragic consequences.

Just as Diana's mother, Frances, was steered into meeting her viscount, her daughter met her prince.

She, too, was only a teenager.

Charles was 12 years her senior, and he, like Johnnie Spencer, had already been in love.

The prince met Camilla Parker Bowles in the 1970s, and they seemed ideally suited.

But just as Viscount Spencer had faced family pressure not to marry Lady Anne, so it's claimed Charles' choice of Camilla was met with some disapproval.

-His great uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was absolutely shocked that he was thinking of her in a serious way.

-He was brought up on the Mountbatten rulebook, which was some girls are for fun and some girls, ideally young and virginal, are for breeding.

And Camilla fell into the former, not the latter.

-Lord Mountbatten arranged for Charles to go off on a long sea trip.

He was in the Navy, and he hoped that during the eight months that he would be away, he would forget all about her.

-He went off to sea in the Royal Navy, and she felt she wanted a secure future.

And so she -- she married Andrew Parker Bowles.

-With Camilla out of the picture, a more suitable match urgently had to be found.

Charles had already dated Diana's sister Sarah.

But in 1980, his attentions turned to Diana when they met at a weekend organized by a mutual friend.

And just as when Viscount Spencer met Frances, this time it seemed Charles couldn't have found a more perfect match.

-Diana would make the family thought of very highly, bring a lot of prestige to them.

And they knew that Diana was pure.

-Just like her mother before her, Diana was deemed to be perfect wife material.

-She somehow was seen as a sort of cream of Englishness coming from this ancient family but working in West London.

There was a girl-next-door quality about her.

-Less than a year after starting their courtship, Diana and Charles would walk down the aisle 30 years after Diana's mother and father had done the same.

As the blushing brides face the crowds, their toughest job was yet to come.

They would have to produce a male heir.

For Frances, the need to have a son would lead to the ultimate heartbreak and change all of their lives forever.

-[ Groans, panting ] -When the baby was born, tragically, he only survived for 10 hours.

-I think it was devastating.

I don't think the pain of that ever left her.

-Princess Diana was a global icon, loved by the world.

But although millions followed her every move, behind the confident woman lay memories of a difficult childhood.

Before she was even born, her parents suffered a terrible tragedy that was to shape all of their lives.

When the newlywed Viscount and Viscountess Spencer drove home from their honeymoon, Frances was already pregnant.

-Frances, who's a bright girl, is realizing that Johnnie is sort of worryingly beholden to this legacy that he's expected to fulfill, to become the eighth earl, to deliver the heir, to do what the Spencer clan has always done.

-The Spencers' ancestral seat was Althorp in Northamptonshire, which Johnnie would eventually inherit.

But in 1954, it was still home to his gruff and domineering father.

-Within any dynastic institution, be it a family business or an aristocratic family with big estates, big, big issues in terms of who inherits what.

The imperative is to produce an heir.

I mean, that's absolutely crucial.

And Jack Spencer, he had one son, John.

He had to get it right.

He didn't want the line going off to a distant cousin.

-In March 1955, Frances had her first child.

It was a girl, Sarah Spencer, Diana's older sister.

And two years later, another daughter followed, Cynthia Jane.

-Once she'd produced two girls for Johnnie, he was really demanding a boy.

-The necessity to produce a male heir for Frances was something which ate away at her soul and the whole family.

Her mother, Jack, her husband, Johnnie, all thought there was something wrong with her.

-Finally, Frances got pregnant again and hopes for a boy were high.

On the 12th of January 1960, she had a son, John Spencer.

[ Baby cries ] -When the baby was born, and Frances and then Johnnie were told that it was a little boy, they were absolutely over the moon.

They were so happy.

-But their happiness was short lived.

-There were breathing difficulties, and I think they sort of whipped him away to try and save him.

She regretted not having to hold him longer without a doubt.

But I don't know what -- There may have been good medical reasons why that was the case.

-10 hours later, her son John died.

Frances asked to be able to hold him, but her request was denied.

-She minded enormously that she was never allowed to hold or see her first son.

And I think that almost any woman who's lost a baby or can even imagine losing a baby would understand that sentiment.

What struck me was just how the crib was wheeled away, and the baby clothes that were to be were packaged up.

-She always saw herself as a mother of five children.

You know, the world may have not readily recognized that she had this child that she'd lost, but she never forgot.

I don't think the pain of that ever left her.

-Johnnie didn't want to talk about it, and I think he forbid Frances to talk about it either.

So they couldn't actually make amends or make it clear or cry and then feel a bit better or comfort each other.

-Whilst Frances was still recovering, her mother and her husband were determined to find out not only why John had died, but why she was unable to have a boy.

-She was sent to various clinics, prodded and poked in the most intimate of areas by gynecologists, doctors, and all the time the sense of guilt that she was some kind of a failure, which, of course, she wasn't, because as we now know, the sex of a child is defined by the male, not the female.

-It was in this fraught atmosphere that Frances conceived again.

And on the 1st of July, 1961, Diana was born, a third girl.

-And there was widespread dismay because they were all anxious that it would be a baby boy and Diana, till her dying day, thought that she was the unwanted child.

-In 1964, the long-awaited male Spencer heir arrived with the birth of Charles.

But it was too late for Frances and Johnnie's marriage.

The damage was done.

-Frances gave birth to a boy, Charles, who was very healthy and she was absolutely thrilled.

Johnnie was thrilled.

But the marriage was already in a very bad way.

[ Indistinct arguing ] He would shout at her and scream at her.

And little Diana used to look through the banister and she could see him being really horrible and making her mother cry.

-Nearly 20 years after Diana had witnessed the painful impact of her mother's struggle to have a male heir, she, like Frances, fell pregnant in the first months of her marriage and within a year gave birth to her first child, a baby boy.

For Frances, it was a moment for celebration.

-Mid-morning, and the princess' sister and her mother arrived.

With typical discretion, they slipped quietly into the hospital.

-Frances is utterly overjoyed.

She's worried about the relationship between Charles and Diana.

She's worried about the vulnerability of her daughter.

-She spoke to me as she left, and it was clear that she was well pleased with what she'd seen in the hospital.

How did Princess Diana look when you saw her?

-She looked radiant, absolutely radiant.

-There must have been a sense of great relief on Frances' part that her daughter might not have to go through the constant ups and downs of childbirth because her very first child was a boy.

William had secured the line to the throne, and anything that came afterwards was a bonus.

-My grandson is everything his father said last night.

A lovely baby.

-And how's the prince?

-Very happy.

-So the fact that Diana was able to do that in her very first pregnancy, Frances felt would take off a lot of pressure on her in the future.

-Earl Spencer.

Good morning, sir.

Can you tell us how...?

-Good morning.

-How is she?

-Very well indeed, thank you.

Looks beautiful.

Lovely baby, too.

Really super baby.

You know, it's good news.

-Two years later, Diana had her second boy.

With an heir and another healthy son, Diana had fulfilled her royal duties.

But if Frances hoped having two boys would ensure her daughter's marriage would succeed where her own had failed, she was wrong.

-At the entrance to Kensington Palace, the prince and princess and their baby arrived from the hospital at speed.

-Well, we only have the Diana version of events that Charles came in and saw that it was a boy and that he'd got reddish, sandy, Spencer-colored hair and is supposed to have said, "Oh, it's a boy."

And it's sort of with disappointment and promptly left.

-Then less than an hour later, Prince Charles left to play polo, something most new fathers would hardly dare to suggest.

-In fact, having two boys, rather than saving Charles and Diana's marriage, only made things worse.

-Frances, her mother, was talking to Prince Charles and he said, oh, he'd wished that baby had been a girl and not a boy because he always wanted a girl.

And Frances snapped at him.

"You should be grateful that you've just got a healthy child."

-It was an insensitivity that infuriated Frances.

She knew only too well that the loss of her son and the pressures she'd endured to have a boy had eaten away at her marriage.

Nearly two decades earlier, in 1967, three years after the birth of her youngest son, Diana's mother began an affair.

-Frances got so bored with her husband that she decided that she would go to London and join dinner parties and have a nice time because she was fed up with it.

So she went to various dinners and on one of them, she met Peter Shand Kydd.

-Peter Shand Kydd was the heir to a wallpaper company.

He and Frances met when both couples were still married to their respective partners.

And it wasn't long before the two started an affair.

-After the tensions of the past five years, time with Peter came as a welcomed relief.

-I think he was everything that Spencer wasn't.

He was -- He was outgoing.

He was larger than life.

He was an enthusiast.

-But the affair didn't stay secret.

And when Johnnie Spencer found out about his wife and Peter, things escalated very quickly.

-When Johnnie discovered that his wife was having an affair, he was furious, not just for himself so much, but for the family name.

He did not want the Spencer name dragged through the mud.

-Frances decided to leave Johnnie.

Whilst her two eldest daughters were at boarding school, she took Diana and Charles with her to London.

-Well, I think she'd reached the end of putting up with what she felt was a marriage that had a lot of turmoil in it.

She'd found somebody else who offered her a different, happier life.

-But if Johnnie and Frances had hoped for a low-profile separation to avoid a scandal, events took a turn for the worse.

Peter Shand Kydd left his wife, and Frances was named publicly as the other woman in their divorce.

Suddenly the state of the Spencer marriage was public knowledge and matters were about to come to a head.

December 1967, and a Christmas that neither Diana or her mother would ever forget.

Over the holiday, Frances and the children returned to the family home for a brief visit so they could be together with their father to celebrate.

-The idea was that she would come back and all the children would be together with their parents at Park House.

[ Indistinct arguing ] Unfortunately, the relationship between Frances and Johnnie was so terrible that they couldn't hide their dislike of each other.

-During the holiday, Frances took the opportunity to ask Johnnie for a divorce.

-He knew how shameful it was for a courtier like him who looked up to the royal family for good behavior to have a divorce on his lap.

And Johnnie was absolutely livid with her.

[ Indistinct arguing ] -As Frances prepared to return to London, Johnnie refused to let her take the children with her.

She had no choice but to leave them behind.

-She was absolutely shocked and heartbroken.

And I think Johnnie did it out of spite.

And he was just furious that she'd brought the name of the family down so much.

-Her mother leaving was a moment that haunted Diana for the rest of her life.

-She was sat on the stone step, clinging to a balustrade.

Her mother crunched across the gravel, got into a car.

Luggage was loaded into the boot of the car and she drove off.

As Diana felt, out of her life forever.

So that was a seminal moment for Diana, a moment that lived with her not just through her childhood, but well into her adult life.

And she felt a profound and enduring sense of abandonment.

-The experience left Diana determined never to repeat her parents' mistakes, and she saw firsthand the devastation it wreaked on her father.

-Johnnie's reaction to Frances leaving was to become more isolated.

He would occupy one wing of the house, leave Charles and Diana in the other wing.

As far as Johnnie was concerned, as far as the Norfolk set were concerned, her mother was now known as a bolter, someone who had left the family.

And this myth of the bolter stayed with Diana throughout her life.

-But Frances wasn't going to let matters lie.

A custody trial was about to unfold that would shake high society and lead to a devastating betrayal.

-When you're rejected not just by your ex-husband, but by your own kith and kin, the woman who gave birth to you, that's painful.

-When Diana was a child, her parents' marriage broke down and her mother left the family home.

It was a moment that lived with Diana into her adult life.

Not long after Diana's mother, Frances, had been forced to leave her children, she filed for custody, and the court case that followed would reveal just how ruthless an aristocracy under attack could be.

-So she's publicly, legally, the adulterer.

So she's the baddie versus Johnnie's goody in terms of the perception and legal binding of this case.

-The aim, I think, of Johnnie's in court was to prove that he could look after them and that his wife could not.

He got a load of top aristocrats who appeared in court and put him forward as the man who should have the children, and that Frances shouldn't.

-And Johnnie's final victory was secured by the ultimate betrayal.

The woman who'd first brought Johnnie and Frances together now served the final blow in ripping their family apart.

-The clincher is when Lady Fermoy, Frances' mother, Diana's grandmother, speaks out against her own daughter and recommends the children should stay with her son-in-law, Johnnie.

-What was shocking was that Lady Fermoy criticized her daughter and she said that she felt that Johnnie would be a much better father than her own daughter would be as a mother.

She was horrified that she'd had an affair.

-The judge decided in favor of Johnnie.

When she heard the verdict, Frances collapsed in court.

-Frances was accused of being a bolter, and she felt that reputation was totally undeserved.

And I think with total justification.

She always said that the children were taken from her, not the other way around.

-Within two years, Frances had lost her children, become a social pariah and been betrayed by her own mother.

-Frances was deemed to be the bolter, the woman who had left her husband, left her children and gone off with another man.

As a child, Diana didn't understand what a bolter was.

As Diana became an adult and understood the nuances of marriage, she realized that her mother had been cruelly castigated and that there was wrong on both sides.

And when she and Prince Charles were separated, a newspaper talked about Diana being a bolter just like her mother.

She was deeply hurt by it, deeply upset because she knew that her mother wasn't a bolter.

She understood from, as an adult, that her mother had been forced to give up the custody of the children.

-23 years after her mother's divorce from Viscount Spencer, Diana's marriage to Charles had broken down.

-You know, she was fully aware of the relationship with Camilla and, you know, naively believed that they'd all go away and we'll live happily ever after.

But, of course, that didn't happen.

-It is announced from Buckingham Palace that with regret, the Prince and Princess of Wales have decided to separate.

-The separation marked the start of a 4-year, very public media-relations war.

-From the moment of the Prince and Princess of Wales' separation, they began lobbying grenades, if you like, at each other.

-In 1995, Diana decided to do an interview with Panorama presenter Martin Bashir.

-She didn't tell me.

She certainly didn't tell her mother.

-Frances, like more than 20 million others, watched the interview at home.

-Diana, during the Panorama interview, was quite explicit.

She said that she'd been through the divorce as a child and she didn't want to go through it again.

-As her daughter bared her soul, not in a courtroom, but in the full glare of the world's media, Frances may well have feared what royal retribution might follow.

-Frances Shand Kydd watched the Panorama interview from her Scottish redoubt.

And I think that what would have been going through her own mind is that life imitates life.

She was watching her daughter's experience reflecting her own experience.

-And like her mother, one of Diana's fears was the potential of losing her children.

-I think she had a genuine fear that the royal family might try and extract the children, if you like, from the marriage and make Charles the sole custodian of the boys.

-The savage irony is that Diana found herself reliving her mother's trauma because the one thing that she was terrified of was William and Harry being taken away from her, from her losing custody.

-Within a month of giving the interview, Diana received a letter from the queen.

-The queen wrote to Charles and Diana and said, "Really, this is it.

I think that you need to start talking about divorce because I think that the Panorama interview" made the fact that they were still married and separated really not tenable.

-Even though now we know that this was a dreadful interview that had been gathered in the most duplicitous way by Bashir of the BBC, at the time, it -- That overused phrase "bombshell."

But I mean, that's what it was.

This situation was no longer sustainable, to use a modern word.

And so the queen very reluctantly decided this -- this marriage has to end.

-30 years apart, both Diana and her mother had fought against the establishment in different ways.

But perhaps Frances realized this time her daughter wouldn't lose.

-She was sort of thrilled at the way that Diana sort of freed herself as she saw it from the shackles of royalty and from being a member of the royal family and striking out on her own.

-She was not going to be cowed and told what to do and how to behave.

And you see that in Frances as well, someone who was determined to live life and lead life on her own terms.

-After the trauma of Frances' divorce and custody trial, she escaped the claustrophobia of establishment London.

She'd married Peter Shand Kydd, and they traveled to the remote island of Cille in Scotland to start a new life.

-It was a small island with a bridge that literally went over the Atlantic, but space and she could breathe.

And people treated her as she was.

She was treated as one of the community and she was loved and valued for that.

And she said she found herself in Scotland.

-Over the years, Diana came to love the visits to see her mother on this remote island.

-It was real swallows and Amazons country.

You know, I mean, the kids loved it and there was nothing grand about where Frances lived.

It was barely any furniture there, but it was fun.

And Diana liked it because of the isolation and the fact that we managed to escape the media there.

-When Diana's marriage broke down, Frances was very clear where her loyalties lay.

-Frances would say, like any mother would say, you know, "How's it going?"

And, of course, the inevitable discussion came up about Diana's relationship with her husband, the Prince of Wales.

And, you know, Frances was quite critical of the prince the way that he was treating her daughter.

So Frances was, in essence, the perfect person to be alongside Diana, to advise her.

You know, an incredible ally.

-But if visits to see her mother were happy times for Diana, her trips to see her father at Althorp couldn't be more different with the arrival of a very unwelcome stepmother.

Diana was 15 years old when in 1976, her family life was rocked once more, this time with the arrival of an imposing and strong-willed stepmother, Raine Spencer.

-Raine was a force of nature, and she was definitely a woman who knew her mind.

-I think it is important that wives should go abroad with their husbands.

Also, I do genuinely feel they can make a contribution to business.

-Johnnie had met Raine three years earlier at a cocktail party.

-Johnnie was very low when they met, and here was someone who was so alive.

You know, you'd think she was plugged in somewhere really.

And she did everything she could to look after him.

-But when he introduced her to his children, they weren't so entranced.

-They'd had their father for eight years, all to themselves after the divorce, and Raine sort of took him away.

Diana used to sing, Raine, Raine, go away."

But she never said the second sentence, which is "Come again another day."

[ Camera shutter clicking ] -But it was at the wedding of Diana's brother that Diana's anger towards her stepmother finally exploded over Raine's treatment of her own mother, Frances.

-You nervous?

-Very nervous.

-Charles Spencer's wedding -- Diana's brother was at Althorp House and he wanted his family there, but it did throw up all sorts of complications.

The domestic disharmony between Lord Spencer's first wife and his current wife just added to the whole drama of the event.

-Frances attended the wedding alone.

Just over a year before, she and Peter Shand Kydd had parted ways, their marriage unable to survive the media scrutiny that being Diana's mother and stepfather brought.

-Well, it must have been an ordeal for her in many ways to sit in that church alongside the woman who had married the man she had married herself 30 years earlier.

-During the wedding rehearsal, tensions came to a head.

-Raine steadfastly refused to address a single word to Frances, and Frances sat there not addressing a word to Raine.

Diana was livid because of what Diana perceived to be Raine's hostility towards her own mother, Frances.

Diana confronted her and shouted at her and pushed her and pushed her so violently that Raine stumbled and fell down a flight of stairs.

-I think she felt very protective towards her mother, one, coming on her own and, two, being sort of left as an outcast.

-Frances later said that in all her life, she couldn't remember ever an occasion where anyone had ever stood up for her quite the way that Diana did.

-Diana's relationship with Raine was strained, but in 1992, a shared tragedy began to bring them together when Diana's beloved father, Earl Spencer, died.

And as Diana grieved, her attitude towards her stepmother began to shift.

-Official funeral procession made the short journey from Althorp House to church.

-One of the things about the Spencer family is there's lots of powerful women.

So I think that once Johnnie dies, there's no fighting over him.

-The Princess of Wales head bowed throughout, hid behind sisters and friends.

-As Diana faced the breakdown of her own marriage, Raine became not just a stepmother, but a valued and impartial friend.

-Diana wrote her a letter and Raine responded, and they became very close in the last year or so of her life.

-One of the problems that Diana had was that -- was that her comings and goings would often be reported.

I think that Raine was probably somebody that didn't repeat things that Diana said.

-And there was another reason Diana's relationship with Raine grew stronger.

Her bond with her own mother was about to implode.

-Diana's reaction was one of fury, absolute fury.

She was angry beyond words at what her mother had done.

-She's here now.

-August 1996, Diana and Charles' marriage was officially over.

But unlike her mother, Frances, who fled the scandal of her marriage breakdown to Scotland, Diana became the focus of even greater scrutiny.

And whilst she was keen to avoid the media glare, little did she know her mother was about to thrust her even more firmly into it.

In May 1997, Frances agreed to do an interview and photo shoot for "Hello!"

magazine.

-They'd offered to pay a very large sum of money for a church project she was promoting.

And she said, "Yes, okay, I'll do it."

-In the article, Frances opened up about her daughter having her royal title removed.

-Frances said it was wonderful that she lost her HRH title and that she could be herself and have her own true identity.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Diana's reaction to her mother's interview was fury, absolute fury.

She was enraged at what her mother had done, betraying, in her eyes, family secrets, talking about her.

-But for Diana, her mother's decision to talk so publicly was a betrayal of trust.

-There were a series of increasingly angry phone calls until eventually Diana put the phone down on her mother.

I never spoke to her again.

-In the final months of Diana's life, Frances could only watch her daughter from afar.

-I think Frances had written, but the letters were returned unopened.

I mean, for goodness sake, nobody knew that Diana was going to die.

[ Telephone ringing ] -When Frances was first alerted, it was roughly the same time as officials at Balmoral.

[ Ringing continues ] About 2:00, and she was asleep in her cottage in Seale.

-And a friend had rung her... [ Ringing continues ] ...saying had she seen the television?

-Diana, Princess of Wales, has been seriously injured in a car accident in Paris.

[ Ringing continues ] -Her phone was besieged by media.

-Incident happened just after... -She was a prisoner in her own home with a daughter that was between life and death... [ Reporters speaking indistinctly ] ...going out of her mind.

[ Ringing continues ] -Then she was contacted by a courtier from Balmoral and told that her daughter had indeed died in the car crash, but asked her not to say anything until it had been officially announced.

And that was gonna be an hour later.

And that for Frances was, we can only presume, was the longest hour of her life.

– At 6 minutes past 5: 00, the world learned of the death of Frances' daughter.

-...from Paris for a short time.

And now there is confirmation that Diana, Princess of Wales, has died.

She died at 4: 00 a.m. after going into cardiac arrest.

[ Ringing continues ] [ Bell tolling ] -Diana's mother, Mrs. Shand Kydd, on the left, and her daughter Lady Sarah on the right.

-When Frances and her daughters, Jane and Sarah, arrived at Westminster Abbey, it was almost like the wheel had come full circle.

She had married there, and now she was coming back again almost with the same cast of characters.

-There's Mrs. Shand Kydd... [ Organ music playing ] ...who gave the world such a great, great statement when she heard of her daughter's death.

"I thank God for the gift of Diana and for all her loving and giving.

I give her back to Him with my love, pride and admiration to rest in peace."

-Even though Frances and Diana weren't speaking before her death, there's reason to believe Diana never meant to leave their relationship so broken.

-Diana made Frances executor of her will, and that made her responsible for guardianship of William and Harry.

-The mother, once accused of abandoning her children by the aristocracy, was now left with the responsibility of Diana's boys.

-At the end of the day, of all the people Diana wanted to look after her children, it was her own mother.

You can't say more than that, can you?

-Throughout Diana's life, she seemed to have followed in her mother's footsteps.

But after her death, the pattern was reversed.

Frances now devoted herself to charity work regularly helping disabled children travel on pilgrimage to the Catholic shrine at Lourdes.

-I think Diana has sort of shown her a path, and she realized, as Diana had done many years earlier, that she might as well use this fame that had come to her to do good with it.

And she did spend the remainder of her life doing just that.

-Frances died at the age of 68.

At her funeral, just as at Diana's, Charles Spencer gave the eulogy.

Of Frances and Diana, he said there were the usual tensions between a mother and daughter who were so alike.

Throughout Diana's life, her family history had shaped the decisions she made and the woman she was.

From witnessing her parents' unhappy marriage and bitter divorce and learning of her mother's treatment at the hands of the aristocracy to the arrival of a stepmother she loathed but learned to love.

And at the end of it all, despite their tempestuous relationship, it was Diana and her mother who shared the closest of bonds.

-I just want to finish on the whole aspect of your favorite memories of her.

-I think they were, um... when she wasn't known by the world because I, as her mother, need some part of her.

I made her.

She grew beneath my heart.

And so those memories that I have, which no one else knows about, are the most precious.

And don't ask me what they are, because I ain't gonna tell you.

[ Laughter ]