Diana

Sun 25th Jan - 7:00PM

Dubbed the 'Fairy-Tale Princess' , Diana's proved a lonely and sad life as the insecurites she felt as a child were consolidated by her hollow marriage to Prince Charles. Family and friends provide an insight into how Diana filled the void in her emotional life with her children and the charitable causes she chose to support.

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Diana Spencer
born: 01-07-1961
birth place: Sandringham, Norfolk
died: 31-08-1997

Princess Di, as she later became known to her adoring public, was born The Honourable Diana Frances Spencer, the youngest daughter of Edward John Spencer, the eighth Earl of Spencer, Viscount Althorp and Frances Spencer, Viscountess Althorp.

The couple had five children; Diana’s siblings are Elizabeth Sarah Lavinia (born 1955, now lady Sarah McCorquodale), Cynthia Jane (born 1957, now Lady Fellowes), John (died ten hours after birth, 1960) and Charles Edward Maurice (born 1964, currently the ninth Earl of Spencer). The family lived in Park House on the Sandringham estate.

By the mid 1960s strain was beginning to show in the Althorp’s marriage and in 1967, when Diana was only six-years-old, her mother ran off with Peter Shand-Kydd, the heir to a wallpaper fortune. Two years later, the Althorps divorced in April 1967.

Lord Althorp fought for and won custody of the children. A short time after the divorce, Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, novelist Barbara Cartland’s daughter, moved in with the family. The children never liked her and nicknamed her ‘Acid Raine’. In 1969, Diana’s mother married Peter Shand-Kydd, becoming The Honourable Mrs Frances Shand-Kydd, and the couple went to live on the island of Seil, Scotland.

In 1975, when Diana’s father became eighth Earl of Spencer, the family moved from Park House to the 16th century ancestral home of Althorp and the following year, Diana’s father married Raine. Diana first attended school at Riddlesworth Hall Preparatory School in Norfolk and later, at West Heath Girls’ School (which subsequently has become the New School at West Heath, a co-educational special school) in Kent.

By self-admission, she was not much of an academic and left school in 1977, at age 16, after failing all her O-level exams. It was that same year that she met Prince Charles, a friend of her sister, at a hunting party. Following that, Diana’s father sent her off to a finishing school, the Institute Alpin Videmanette, in Rougemont, Switzerland. She showed some talent as an amateur singer and was a good sportswoman. In her heart she always longed to be a ballerina but her height prevented this.

In 1979 Diana returned to London and moved into an apartment in South Kensington with three friends. She got her first job working as a part-time assistant at the Young England Kindergarten, a nursery school and day-care centre in Pimlico. The memorable photograph of the extremely shy Diana in a flimsy skirt, holding a young child, backlit by the sun, and showing the outline of her shapely legs, was taken by John Minihan during this time. Prince Charles had reached the age of 31 without finding a suitable partner and, as heir to the throne, was under pressure to do so. A list of candidates was drawn up and Diana was chosen from the shortlist. Diana met Prince Charles for the second time in 1980, when she and her family visited the Windsors during their summer holiday at Balmoral Castle, Scotland and the royal romance began.

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