Princess Diana Talked About Her Failing Marriage To Charles & His Affair With Camilla In Secret Audio Tapes

Princess Diana recorded secret tapes of herself talking about her failed marriage to Prince Charles, freshly released transcripts of the tapes reveal. The transcripts were released by author Andrew Morton, popular for penning the 1992 book about Lady Diana, Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words. According to Morton, Diana has agreed to making the recordings because her marriage to Prince Charles was falling apart and she didn’t want the world to think it was her fault.

Diana was aware that Morton was working on a book about her, which is why she chose to make recordings for her. Since Morton, a larger-than-life figure at 6 feet 4 inches tall, was already a well-known figure among the royal palace staff, he had to use a proxy, in the form of his friend Dr. James Colthurst, to conduct the interview. In total, Colthurst recorded six tapes of Princess Diana talking about her failing marriage to Prince Charles. The sessions took place in Diana’s sitting room at Kensington Palace. Dr. James remembered his first secret session with Lady Di as follows:

“Diana was dressed quite casually in jeans and a blue shirt. Before we began, she took the phone off the hook and closed the door. Whenever we were interrupted by someone knocking, she removed the body microphone and hid it in cushions on her sofa.”

The transcripts of Diana’s secret audio tapes were published in the Daily Mail. Diana reportedly considered the experience as being cathartic.

Diana said that when she first became suspicious of Camilla, she didn’t confront him.

“Shall I be nice (and leave him alone so he can talk to her in private) or shall I just sit here?’ So I thought I’d be nice, so I left them to it. It just broke my heart, that.”

But when it was too much, she finally confronted Charles, but she was dismissed by the prince.

“I once heard him on the telephone in his bath on his hand-held set, saying: ‘Whatever happens, I will always love you.’ I told him afterwards that I had listened at the door, and we had a filthy row.”

Diana says she also tried talking to Queen Elizabeth about the whole thing, but it was like talking to a “blank wall.” She realized that she had to take some drastic step here or else she would be damned to a lifetime of misery and dishonesty. She first considered running off to Australia with her two sons, but then realized that such an action would catch the ire of the public, who would fail to see her side of the story. Furthermore, she was also fearful of being locked away by the royals, who could claim that she had gone mentally ill and was hysterical. Thus, it was then and there that she realized the public needed to hear her side of the story. So she agreed to reveal the secrets of her sad marriage to Andrew Morton. In another part of the recordings, Lady Di also revealed that her bulimia started just weeks after her engagement to Charles, after the Prince made “chubby” comments about her waistline.

When Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words was first published back in 1992, its author Andrew Morton was scrutinized by a lot of royal sympathizers. One MP had even suggested at the time that they should consider locking Morton in the Tower of London. Morton, however, defended himself by saying that Diana had agreed to it and she wanted him to write about her personal life. Andrew Morton has always held that the revelations from his book helped Diana receive the sort of support from the public that she always deserved.

“Ironically, a biography written and produced with Diana’s enthusiastic co-operation was being piously boycotted on the suspicion that it was a pack of lies. But it soon became apparent that the book really was, as it claimed, Diana’s own true story.

“And the Princess quickly began to receive the kind of support that always meant so much to her.”

Prince Charles was dating Diana’s older sister Sarah when he first met her. Diana was 16 at the time, and Charles 29. Then, during his 30th birthday celebration at Buckingham Palace, Charles is said to have seduced Diana. The pair got married in 1981. Their marriage, however, began falling apart when Charles rekindled his old relationship with Camilla. Charles and Diana got divorced in 1996 and Lady Diana was tragically killed in a car accident in Paris a year after the divorce.

[Featured Image by Herman Knippertz/AP Images]