The real story behind the photos that laid bare Diana's despair: For 12 years he guarded the most intimate secrets of Charles, Diana (and Camilla). Now, their former press officer reveals all
Dickie Arbiter shares his first-hand account of the
deterioration of Prince Charles and Princess Diana's marriage, including
the couple's infamous tour of India. Diana snubbed a kiss on the cheek
from the Prince of Wales at a prize-giving ceremony after a polo match,
but had only hours earlier refused to be seen with him at all, Mr
Arbiter told the Mail. He also revealed that he first became aware of
Charles' growing relationship wi
The real story behind the photos that laid bare Diana's despair: For 12 years he guarded the most intimate secrets of Charles, Diana (and Camilla). Now, in a new memoir, their former press officer reveals all
As a
royal correspondent in the early days of their marriage, I witnessed
many an occasion when Charles couldn’t keep his hands off Diana.
He
would often rest his hand on her forearm, and every now and then give
her bottom a light pat when they were out and about on engagements. To
suggest they were never in love is pure conjecture.
But
by the beginning of the Nineties, nine years after their marriage and
shortly after I started working for them as their press officer, it was
abundantly clear all was not well within their relationship.
Nothing
had been said on the subject, and nothing would be — by their staff, at
least. But their living arrangements had begun to hint strongly at a
marital rift.
That kiss: Princess Diana turns away
as Prince Charles leans in to kiss her on the cheek at a prize-giving
ceremony following a polo match in Jaipur, India in 1992
The
Princess was spending all her time at Kensington Palace, while Prince
Charles was usually to be found at Highgrove, more than 100 miles away
in Gloucestershire. Even if he had engagements that needed him to be in
London, he would still return to his country retreat whenever he
possibly could.
If
they were due to appear at an event in the capital together, Charles
and Diana would arrive and depart as a couple. But on the way home, the
royal car would often make a stop at St James’s Palace, where a separate
vehicle would be waiting to take the Prince on to wherever he was
going. Diana, meanwhile, would continue home to Kensington Palace.
It was a performance, but a necessary one to avoid giving any hint that trouble was afoot.
Performances
were something I knew all about. By the time I began working for the
Royal Family in 1988 (I retired in 2000), I had been an actor and
broadcaster for many years.
Standing
in front of the cameras in my new role as spokesman for Charles and
Diana would have come very easily to me. But it was greatly frowned upon
by the Palace — as I discovered to my cost one day in June 1990.
I
had been at Highgrove with the Prince of Wales while he filmed a TV
documentary marking the 15th anniversary of the Prince’s Trust. When
he’d finished, he hurried off to play polo in Cirencester.
Around
an hour later I heard Charles was on his way to hospital with a broken
arm. Leaving my lunch half-eaten, I rushed to join him.
That
evening, with what little information I had, I stepped outside the
hospital to brief the journalists and cameramen, who had by then
assembled in their droves.
Deadlines
for the evening news bulletins were rapidly approaching and the
reporters in front of me were desperate for something to put on the air.
Though I’d put out an earlier bulletin for them in the usual way, I
made an executive decision to give this particular statement to them on
camera.
It
was short and succinct. I explained where and how the arm was broken,
detailed the treatment that had been administered and offered assurances
that HRH would be back in the saddle soon.
I
then returned to pay a final visit to the Prince, who was settling in
for what his doctors anticipated would be a two-day stay.
He
had seen my briefing and was gracious enough to thank me for doing as
he would have wished without having to ask. That being my job, I thought
nothing more of it.
Meanwhile,
what was potentially a much bigger news story was unfolding. HRH had a
visitor — a Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles. Where she had sprung from I had
no idea, but Charles was clearly pleased to see her.
Camilla Parker Bowles visited the
Prince of Wales after he broke his arm during a separate polo match in
Cirencester in 1990, former royal press officer Dickie Arbiter reveals
Though
he was still woozy from the anaesthetic, he was less agitated in her
company. She didn’t stay long — just long enough to make sure he was
comfortable and to assure him that she was close by if needed.
It was my first real glimpse into the grim reality of the Wales’s marital situation.
I
wasn’t privy to Charles and Camilla’s meetings, but had I been, and had
I ventured an opinion about the potential for exposure, I’d have been
told in no uncertain terms to get lost.
I never gave her presence much thought. The senior members of the Royal Household knew well enough what was going on.
If the worst came to pass and news got out, we would batten down the hatches and ride out the storm.
When
the Prince left hospital, he and Diana put on an impressive display of
unity, but in reality they were anything but. I sensed difficult times
lay ahead.
Nonetheless,
I returned to London feeling buoyant. The Prince’s arm would heal, the
media was satisfied and best of all there had been no leaks hinting at
the much larger fracture — the state of the royal marriage.
My principle feeling, in fact, was one of profound relief that no one had cottoned on to the bigger picture.
I
was surprised, therefore, when the following morning, after the daily
meeting of Palace press officers, I was asked by my boss, Charles Anson,
to stay behind. I had a feeling I was about to get a good dressing
down. The question was: why?
My
sin proved to be the on-camera briefing I had given outside the
hospital. It was not the royal way to speak on camera and I shouldn’t
have taken it upon myself to do so.
No
Buckingham Palace press officer had ever spoken on camera before. Our
role was to brief the correspondents off the record. Full stop.
I
was more than a little irritated. I had done my job professionally and
to the Prince’s satisfaction. I was almost 50 years old and yet I’d been
treated as if I was new to the game.
I
kept my thoughts to myself, but after leaving Anson’s office, I put in a
call to the Prince of Wales. It was an impulsive act, something I’d
never done before. But given that Charles had thanked me, I felt the
situation needed to be rectified.
In
the grand scheme of things it was a minor transgression, especially
given the much bigger crisis that had been avoided with reference to Mrs
Parker Bowles.
I
felt cheered and vindicated my little knee-jerk act of petulance paid
off. At the morning meeting the following day, Charles Anson explained
that HRH had called to say how pleased he was with the way I’d handled
the broken arm incident. Despite this, however, there was no change in
Palace policy.
The
royal communications strategy was stuck in the Dark Ages, but I toed
the line from then on. I was on staff and one simply didn’t break the
rules.
Breaking apart: The strain shows as Charles and Diana attend a war memorial service in 1992
Prince
Charles had visited India as a single man of 32 in 1980. Sitting on a
stone bench in front of the Taj Mahal, the iconic symbol of love, he had
vowed to return one day with the woman he loved.
Twelve
years later, his comments were uppermost in our minds as we began to
plan for the Prince and Princess of Wales’s joint tour to the country.
The
ripples of concern about their marriage had escalated into much bigger
waves, and I was beginning to suspect the worst. I was particularly
concerned about Diana. She wasn’t good in hot, humid environments.
More worrying, however, was that she was obviously in a great deal of emotional pain and I feared for her stamina.
Tour
programmes are tricky to plan at the best of times, but particularly
when there are two royals in the mix and a large area of ground needs to
be covered.
In
the case of the Prince and Princess, the biggest media draw at the
time, there was only one way to achieve all that was required
diplomatically: separate itineraries.
This
caused disappointment in some quarters and required a spot of creative
thinking, not least in the matter of the trip to the Taj Mahal.
The
idea of the couple going there together had been discussed at length
during the recce and a joint visit would have given the world’s media
the money shot.
But
at the time Diana was scheduled to be in Agra, Charles was committed to
a business leaders’ forum 1,200 miles away in Bangalore, where he was
due to give the only keynote address of the tour.
A conundrum in the extreme.
Charles,
who had once vowed, ‘One day I would like to bring my bride here,’ was
not going to be where we needed him most — seated next to his wife on a
bench in front of the bloody Taj Mahal!
A
rumbling of media interest could be heard the minute the schedule was
made public. Before their Royal Highnesses had even set foot on the
plane, newspaper headlines announced: ‘Di to visit Taj Mahal on her
own.’
Invitations
had already gone out for the conference in Bangalore and we had
received acceptance from British and Indian delegates across the board.
Accounting
for travel time between cities and his commitment to the forum, His
Royal Highness had no interest in changing the arrangements. We were
left with no alternative but to bite the bullet. I was told not to
broach the subject further with the Prince, and the programme was set in
place.
Perhaps
he simply felt it would have been hypocritical to go, and no doubt he
was tired of the whole charade. Under the circumstances it would have
been excruciating for them both. They no longer had the will to care.
Public reaction was as expected. The media worldwide had a field day
with the images of Diana, a lone figure on that infamous bench just
three days before Valentine’s Day.
Prince Charles turned down the
opportunity to visit the Taj Mahal with Princess Diana, leaving her to
sit on the bench in front of the mausoleum by herself
Based
in Bangalore, where I was supporting the Prince at his business
meeting, I could only observe the events in Agra with mounting gloom.
Our
worst fears were being realised several hundred miles away. One
reporter asked the Princess what she had thought of the magnificent
tomb. She paused for a few seconds, choosing her words carefully, and
then fired her first public shot across the Prince’s bow.
‘It was a healing experience ... very healing.’
Keen for her to elaborate, he asked: ‘What do you mean, exactly?’
It
was a question that would reward him well. After another pause, the
Princess replied, with a gleam in her eye: ‘Work it out for yourself.’
I
could imagine the delight with which he heard those words. Not only did
the media have their pictures, they now had their story to go with
them.
In saying what she did, Diana had effectively given the worldwide media carte blanche to write whatever they damn well pleased.
A
resolute silence would have been the less inflammatory choice, but I
appreciated her frustration had been pushed to the limit and I couldn’t
help but sympathise with her.
The
Prince could have used the visit to the Taj Mahal to make a positive
statement about his marriage and, in turn, quell the ever-present
rumours.
Instead,
his unwavering refusal to accompany her made it clear to his wife and
the world at large that he no longer cared what people thought.
Later,
he did publicly admit he had got it wrong, claiming some people might
have thought him a fool for not joining her. ‘A wiser man,’ he
reflected, ‘probably would have done so.’
But
he was never going to change his mind, however robustly we tried to
make him. It would have been a sham, and I think he decided that
whatever the repercussions, he was no longer prepared to play the game.
If
the world’s media thought the debacle at the Taj Mahal would prove to
be the scoop of the century, they hadn’t banked on the gift they were
about to receive on the eve of Valentine’s Day.
Dickie Arbiter, pictured in 1986, worked in the royal press office from 1988 until 2000
The
royal couple had been geographically reunited in the ancient city of
Jaipur, where the Prince was asked to play in an exhibition polo match.
Buoyed by the invitation after so much angst and negative press, he was
visibly looking forward to it.
The same could not be said for Diana. An exhibition match requires an official prize-giving at its conclusion.
It
was understood that the Princess would present the prizes, and it was
also assumed that, win or lose, she would kiss her husband. Diana,
however, was in no mood to be an accessory to the day’s events.
During a break for lunch, word came through that the Princess had no intention of attending the polo.
The
tour’s private secretary Peter Westmacott and I went to see her in an
effort to persuade her of the wisdom of doing otherwise.
‘I
don’t want to go,’ she argued. ‘And I have no intention of doing so.’
Her steely expression told us she wasn’t going to budge. This left Peter
and me metaphorically rolling up our sleeves; we had a job on our hands
— Diana simply had to attend the polo.
‘Ma’am,
think how it’ll look,’ we began. ‘Think how it’ll seem to our hosts and
the Indian people. Think how it’ll make you look and how the media will
respond. Speculation will be rampant.’
We
did not receive the desired response. ‘You think I even care?’ she
raged. ‘You really think I even care any more? Because I don’t!
‘I’m
at the point where I don’t care what they think, much less what they
write in the papers. I’m not going to present the prizes and that’s
that!’
But
that couldn’t be that. Were she to skip the prize-giving, she would not
only be offending her hosts, but the Indian people as a whole.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of spectators were pouring into the grounds
to watch the match.
We
stepped it up a notch. There were two teams of players eagerly
anticipating the opportunity to play for her and who deserved the
privilege of shaking her hand at the end of the match. This was the
royal tour ethos.
We changed tack again, restating how the snub to the Indian people would be perceived.
Not
to be forgotten, the next stop on the Princess’s itinerary was Mother
Teresa’s mission in Calcutta. The last thing Diana needed if she
persisted in her refusal to go to the polo was to know that she had
upset her gracious hosts.
It was a game of one-upmanship and I felt sorry for her.
Diana refused to attend the
prize-giving ceremony in Jaipur, but was convinced to change her mind by
Mr Arbiter and private secretary Peter Westmacott
Was
the presentation of these prizes really so important as to cause so
much distress? Of course not. But we practised the emotional blackmail
anyway because, in the clear light of day, making the right professional
choice mattered to Diana, which is why she finally agreed to go.
The
Prince scored three of his winning team’s four goals, which seemed to
please everyone present bar one. As the crowd surged on to the pitch, my
gaze moved to the royal enclosure where the teams were lining up for
the prize-giving.
Prince
Charles’s expression said it all. His face was flushed with the glow of
victory. By contrast, the Princess looked as though she’d rather be
anywhere else.
Perhaps
it was her transparent body language that caused the Prince to commit
the ultimate faux pas. Instead of leaning in for the requisite kiss
after receiving his prize, he turned and walked away.
Realising
his mistake, he hastily returned and, with an uncertain crowd looking
on, moved to kiss his wife’s cheek. Incensed, the Princess swivelled her
head so that the kiss landed near her ear.
The crowd, as well as those of us accompanying the royal couple, could only cringe.
The Prince had clearly been intentionally humiliated, and we knew he’d be furious.
More importantly from our point of view, the Princess had given the media a picture that said it all.
When
Ken Wharfe, the Princess’s protection officer, later asked Diana why
she had behaved as she did, she replied: ‘I’m not about to pander to
him! Why the bloody hell should I?
‘If
he wants to make a fool out of me with that woman, he deserves it. But I
am not about to make a fool of myself so that all his friends can laugh
at me.’
I could understand her reasoning, but that was not how the Prince and his staff saw it.
‘She
is nothing but a spoilt schoolgirl,’ one of his household told me. He
went on to accuse her of calculated, childish petulance.
I
defended her position — the only one, it would seem, willing to do so —
but my argument fell on deaf ears. The Prince’s aide simply shrugged
his shoulders. ‘Surely she could put on a show just once,’ he said.
The
royal couple went their separate ways again soon afterwards — the
Prince to Nepal and Diana to Calcutta, leaving those of us in the press
office to handle damage control.
We could never have guessed to what previously unheard of depths this very public break-up was about to sink.
Dickie
Arbiter;s story has been extracted from 'On Duty With The Queen: My
Time As A Buckingham Palace Press Officer', which will be published by
Blink on October 1.
copy http://www.dailymail.co.uk
th Camilla Parker Bowles when she
visited him in hospital after he broke his arm in 1990.
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