In Their Own Words

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Reporter

"We are not in the business "of hyping publications," was the only comment from Buckingham Palace this morning as the Princess of Wales took Prince Harry to school. There are now just 24 hours to go before the book, which claims to expose serious rifts in her marriage, goes on sale. Diana was very nervous when the book came out, for obvious reasons, and she'd written a note to James saying she was expecting a volcano to explode and it duly exploded. (dramatic music) -

Reporter

The world was stunned when Andrew Morton published "Diana: Her True Story." There was a darker side to the princess' life. As an individual, had been on a number of these royal tours, to Australia, Canada, and so, seen Diana day after day close up. I had never had a clue that four and five times a day she's being sick with this eating disorder, bulimia nervosa. It's not just an eating disorder, it's rooted in your psychology, in your emotional abandonment issues. It is a symptom of a disturbance and treating the bulimia on its own without understanding what's causing the disturbance which led to the bulimia is a pointless exercise. It's showing on the outside the despair that you feel on the inside. (dramatic music) Diana decided to talk about it, which helped so many other people. Eating disorders, whether it be anorexia or bulimia, show how an individual can turn the nourishment of the body into a painful attack on themselves, and they have at their core a far deeper problem than mere vanity. (audience applauds) Diana talking about her bulimia gave permission to tens of thousands of women to go to the doctor and say, "I have bulimia. "I have this disease and I need help." So Diana's work in raising awareness of eating disorders really is revolutionary. The support was overwhelming and she realized she had actually opened quite a subject. Overnight, it changed the conversation, it removed the stigma, it became a disease that was acknowledged and therefore could be named and treated. When the book came out, she felt a sense of relief that her story was out and she said to James, "For the first time in 10 years, "I've slept soundly through the night." (powerful music) And when she kept saying she had nothing to do with the book, they took her at face value. It was only later, after her death, that I revealed that she'd obviously been the architect of this book. Nobody overtly knew until after she died that she'd actually helped. It was pretty clear that she might have done, but it wasn't overt and I think that was a very important thing. Well, I've always liked Diana very much, so I'm interested in the truth. (laughs) I want to see what she actually says in her own words. I'm quite sick of people talking for her. Sadly, I think the royal family saw Diana as a threat. She was so utterly different from the way that they felt royal life should be conducted. They felt eclipsed, they felt undermined, and they felt threatened. (tense music) So this is the palace really confronted with everything that's happened to Diana over the years and it's very clear from the book that just wanted a bit of encouragement and a bit of support and none of that is forthcoming. What had been held in secret, what had been held in the height of discretion was now completely indiscreetly expressed into the world. And so things were beginning to change that were radical. (audience applauding) (dramatic orchestral music) Prince Charles and Princess Diana had come to loathe one another and had been living separately since 1992. And then in '96, the queen finally said this simply can't go on anymore. They realized that they'd kicked the can down the road long enough. So the queen wrote two notes, quite short, one to Charles, one to Diana, suggesting that they now move on and divorce. So it wasn't actually their decision in the end and there was a tremendous amount of back and forth with both of them, doing documentaries and confessions and accusations, but it was the queen who actually made the intervention. Watching the royal family, it was like Prince Charles and Princess Diana were the main characters in their own TV soap opera. It was just one great big soapy drama. It's very sad, both for Princess Diana and for Prince Charles and for their children. I think everyone is very sad at the ending of the marriage. (dramatic orchestral music)