COPYRIGHT

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

Copyright © 2017 Prospect Media Ltd

Cover photograph © Tim Graham / Getty Images

Patrick Jephson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 978-0-00-825929-7

Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780008260125

Version: 2017-07-17

PRAISE FOR SHADOWS OF A PRINCESS

‘The most indelible, authentic word-portrait ever painted of the People’s Princess’

Daily Mail

‘Jephson’s revelations are important. They are a stark corrective to the baroque fantasies constructed around the Princess immediately after her death’

Evening Standard

DEDICATION

For Mary Jo, with love and thanks

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Introduction to the 2017 Edition

Preface

PART ONE – IN

ONE Over the Top

TWO In the Pink

THREE Under the Thumb

FOUR Double Up

FIVE Double Take

SIX Toychest

SEVEN Gameplay

EIGHT Jump at Shadows

NINE Hot and Cold

TEN Roses

ELEVEN Guns

TWELVE Sphinx

THIRTEEN Truth or Dare

PART TWO – OUT

FOURTEEN Horribilissimus

FIFTEEN Payback

SIXTEEN Solo

SEVENTEEN Topple

EIGHTEEN Plummet

NINETEEN Under the Wire

TWENTY Over the Hills

Epilogue

Picture Section

Picture Credits

Index

About the Author

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION TO THE 2017 EDITION

You may sometimes wonder why Princess Diana still casts such a long shadow over Britain’s thousand-year-old ruling dynasty. Like me, you may welcome it as a gentle reminder that her story remains relevant, an enduring example of the good things royalty can achieve, as well as a warning of the price it can exact. Or, like some others, you may feel her shadow upon you as an irritation, since it points to the inconvenient reality of Diana’s popular and it seems permanent place among the most admired names of recent history. A few in this second group would have us believe that Diana and her admirers are classic examples of the modern fashion for emotional incontinence – a betrayal of the traditional British stiff upper lip: that in reality she was flawed and frail, a symbol of weakness not strength, and so whoever replaces her in the national shop window must now be more deserving of our interest and approval.

Yet twenty years after her death, the memory of Princess Diana is still obviously alive and well. The world’s media are once again graced by her image and by tributes to how much she achieved in her tragically short life. The causes she championed – from mental health, old age and homelessness to AIDS, addiction and leprosy – are living tributes to her effectiveness as a globally admired force for good; and her greatest living legacies, her sons, are inviting us to remember her with gratitude and affection. In their words: ‘The time is right to remember her positive impact’, and their tributes to her – symbolized by the commissioning of a statue at Kensington Palace – strike a chord with ordinary people of all ages all over the world.

Like many she felt ill-prepared and untrained for the role in which she found herself. Alone in a tradition-bound environment in which her successes seemed to count for little and her errors for a lot, she believed she had been left to sink or swim. And but for her sons, her private life offered no consolation, with a husband who, it appeared to many observers, saw her as a rival to be feared rather than a companion to be cherished. Instead his energy, time and attention were devoted to the older, more experienced wife of a former courtier who, like many of their secretive social circle, seemed impervious to the vulnerable princess’s anguish.

No wonder Diana suffered from chronic self-doubt, poor self-image and a persistent eating disorder. Through her eyes, there was no comfort in the trappings and privileges of palace life, let alone the adoration of a world that praised her for virtues she never truly felt she possessed. She looked to her in-laws and the palace hierarchy for advice and support and too often found that goodwill on both sides couldn’t stop relations descending from misunderstanding to mistrust, and worse.

Of course, Diana was not perfect, and never claimed to be. As I had good reason to know, she could be a capricious employer who rightly expected a royal standard of perfection from her small and at times beleaguered support staff – just as she demanded it from herself. But though there were days when I wished I could have had a more conventional boss, I never doubted that she was well worth the toil, sweat and occasional tears. Her gutsy response to such a daunting array of misfortunes had won my lasting admiration, just as it earned her a deserved place in the hearts of millions around the world.

Finding herself in what amounted to a professional, personal and marital trap, she would have been forgiven for surrendering to despair. She could have looked into the future and seen herself as just a pitiable bystander, exiled to the shadows as her husband’s mistress claimed not just her place in his home and household but also eventually on the throne as joint head of state.

Instead, Diana discovered in herself reserves of strength and determination – at times even reckless defiance – to frustrate those who would have consigned her to the life of a royal cast-off. The hurt and indignation that might have destroyed her she chose to recycle as energy to power her life as a princess with a new purpose. As early as 1989, with her first solo overseas tour, when she went to New York and publicly identified herself with the plight of HIV-positive mothers and babies, she recognized that her predicament could be turned to good for outcasts everywhere – the lepers (real and metaphorical) who found in the glamorous figure from the fairy-tale world of palaces and gold coaches an unlikely but increasingly effective advocate.

I would sometimes ask her about her motives for diverting her brand of royalty into such unfamiliar and emotionally demanding new directions. ‘Don’t you see, Patrick,’ she would answer, ‘I can talk to them because I am one of them.’

And so she was: an outsider whom many insecure insiders wished they could control and, when they failed, wished they could airbrush out of the Windsor universe. Their chosen weapon was a vile diagnosis that she had a clinical personality disorder, a slur then systematically spread by royal spin doctors, and still whispered to this day by royal toadies. It would be hard to imagine a more cowardly attack on a woman who had already acknowledged her experience of conditions such as bulimia – an example of refreshingly sane self-knowledge now emulated by Prince Harry, to deserved universal applause.

Instead, they can reflect on the sight of her sons and daughter-in-law continuing her work of inclusion for those with minds in need of healing, or who for other reasons find themselves exiled from society. Perhaps now her detractors will recognize that the princess’s achievements deserve to be remembered happily and often; that they cast a welcome light on her children’s determination, like her, to find new ways to put their royal status to good use for good causes that might otherwise be overlooked.

Remembering Diana gladly is more than just legitimate and timely: it’s also required therapy for the future health of the monarchy, as the focus of national unity and symbol of the best British values. It’s not just about the need to learn from the past to avoid future mistakes, though that neglected skill should be second nature to royal advisers. It’s a principle even more fundamental to the long-term purpose and viability of the ancient royal experiment. It can be summed up in one word – a word traditionally synonymous with the British Crown, exemplified by Elizabeth II’s lifetime of service.

The word is decency.

Yet in some corners of the royal establishment, two decades of spin doctors and a naive fondness for the slippery arts of news management have put the word and the idea at risk. With his coronation plans already the subject of unfriendly speculation, especially on the divisive issue of Queen Camilla, Elizabeth’s successor faces an acceptability hurdle that some courtiers may be slow to recognize. A little perspective from recent history might guide them.

Diana alive was a decency test for the Windsors, which some of them failed; this book gives one close-up view of that failure, especially my part in it. But that failure need not lead to another: a Diana who lives on in the hearts of her admirers worldwide is a test tomorrow’s monarchy can yet pass. Success, as her sons have shown, only needs royal people to rediscover the authentic, uncontrived decency that hallmarked the monarchy’s finest hours in the twentieth century, and which is still its best hope for what may be even more testing times in the twenty-first and beyond.

Leaving aside such lofty thoughts, back in 1987 when this story starts there was no doubt in my mind that Charles and Diana were the best thing to happen to the monarchy in my lifetime. The perfect royal superstar double act. And so they were. Try to keep that image in mind as you read what follows, and draw your own conclusions about what might have been …

Patrick Jephson

PREFACE

For more than seven years, from 1988 to 1996, I shadowed the Princess of Wales. As her private secretary – her closest adviser – I was with her throughout the events leading up to her separation from Prince Charles. I helped her carve out a new life as an independent Princess on the world stage. I watched her struggle with enemies from outside as well as others, more murky, that threatened her from within.

As the darkness finally gathered around her, our paths parted. By then she was standing in her own light, obscuring the way ahead for herself and for many who would have acknowledged her as a global force for good.

Since her death in 1997 I have come to question the credentials of some of the self-appointed guardians of her thoughts, motives and values. It seemed to me that history was recording an image which bore little resemblance to the Princess I knew better than most.

It is common sense, not treason, to believe that the truth will do her no harm now. Neglecting the truth will profit only those who seek to gain, personally, financially or constitutionally, from letting the weeds of misrepresentation slowly overgrow her memory.

Of the many others who shared those years with me, I ask forbearance where their recollections differ from mine. Of the many more who did not, I ask nothing but an open mind. What follows, so far as it lies in my power, is the truth.

Patrick Jephson

PART ONE

IN

ONE

OVER THE TOP

The Princess of Wales was watching the man with unusual intensity. She leaned forward in her chair, anxious not to miss any of the action she had just been promised. Her eyes widened with anticipation.

The man obviously did not know he was being watched, but he was ill at ease, definitely shifty. He seemed to be waiting for someone, and was losing patience. He took a few paces to the left, then a few to the right. He scratched his tangled, dirty hair and looked anxiously up and down the street. I did not like the look of him.

Then a second man appeared, dodging between a couple of pedestrians. If anything, the newcomer was even more nervous. He looked jumpy and his arms made strange twitching movements as he spoke rapidly into the other man’s ear. They seemed to be making some kind of deal because I saw money changing hands, but I could not hear what they said. Suddenly they were walking off together, slipping into a deserted alleyway next to the station. Still they did not know they were being watched.

What happened next made the Princess shriek with a kind of thrilled horror. As we watched, with a final furtive look around, the first man loosened his jeans and crouched forward. There was a look of fixed concentration on his face. For five seconds he did not move. I had just realized he was defecating when his hand disappeared down the seat of his pants and emerged a few seconds later clutching a small package. Quickly he passed it to the other man, clearly his customer. Then, without a backward glance, the pusher adjusted his belt and returned to his position on the street.

The police officer stretched across the Princess and switched off the video with a click. Her hands were still clutched theatrically to her face, the shock of what she had seen still obvious in her eyes as she peeped from between her fingers. She caught my glance and giggled. Obscenity usually made her giggle.

‘Ugh! Talk about a video nasty. I hope you arrested him.’

‘Oh, he’s an old friend, Ma’am. And so are most of his customers. We keep them under surveillance with these TV cameras. Then we move in when we’ve got the evidence we need.’

The inspector stood up and reached for his leather jacket. There was a whiff of aftershave. He looked every inch TV’s idea of an undercover cop. I had noticed the Princess register his star quality as we arrived at his office half an hour earlier. That was good. An attractive male lead always brought out the best in our unpredictable royal performer. ‘If you’re ready …’ he said, heading for the door with an athlete’s easy grace. His amused expression promised further treats in store.

The Princess followed him meekly. Her eyes were demurely lowered, as if to retain the image she had just seen. I knew she was enjoying herself – she was fascinated by the forbidden.

Two minutes later we were outside on the late rush-hour streets of King’s Cross. Night had fallen. It started to rain. Out of the darkness a solitary flashbulb popped. I heard the Nikon’s motor drive as my boss reacted with a loud sigh of exasperation. ‘Oh! Wretched press! They follow me everywhere.’ The plaintive note was easy to hear. Too easy, I thought. You’re overdoing it. But it earned her a sympathetic look from our handsome guide, so that was good too.

As we moved unnoticed into the hurrying crowds, I took up my familiar position slightly behind the tall figure with the expensively casual hairdo. Tonight she was in black jeans and a short, sexy jacket. This was our version of incognito. The Princess of Wales, icon of the oppressed and champion of the socially excluded, was beginning another ‘secret’ fact-finding tour.

Tramping round King’s Cross that night, I felt again the familiar wrench in my gut. It always came when I thought of where the Princess had been and where she was going. The sensation was becoming much more frequent. It was the same feeling you get on a roller coaster as it stops climbing and begins to dive towards the ground.

She had been so high: the future Queen. Now she was still high, at least with the people we were meeting on the street, and the papers said she was a phenomenon – the looks of a supermodel and the heart of a saint. But I knew the truth.

I had seen many saintly things done in her name, and even if she was not exactly saint material herself – as she would be quick, even too quick, to agree – she had certainly done a lot of suffering. Not all of it had been done in public either, as some would have you believe. Now, however, she was floundering. Where once she had been the ideal young wife and mother, now she was a self-proclaimed adulteress. Where once she had been worshipped by charities, now she was worshipped for her photo-spreads. Where once she had summoned Air Force jets, now she cadged lifts in planes smelling of rich men’s cologne.

True, there were always going to be causes begging for this kind of celebrity patronage; and she had built up deep reserves of public sympathy. She still had that magical forgivability. But I knew these were the gifts more of others’ mistakes than of her shining virtues. I knew she had begun to believe her own publicity, just as I was believing it less and less. I feared that others, like me, were every day seeing more of the steady fraying of her fragile mental stability, and I felt there was now no way back to the happy certainties of my early days at the Palace.

How had it all changed? Eight years earlier it had all been so different – another world, almost another universe.

Autumn 1987. Somewhere on the long journey from Scotland I had lost my cuff links. Summoned from the frigate Arethusa while she was pausing in her patrol to refuel in a stormy west-coast sea loch, I had taken a boat, two buses, an aeroplane and a taxi to reach the Kensington hotel that was my base for the coming ordeal. Along the way the cuff links, with their family crest and a wealth of sentimental value, had disappeared, never to return.

Some frantic improvisation was called for. Dejectedly I substituted collar studs, one of the archaic pieces of kit which gave the Navy its charm for me. It seemed a bad omen, not least because in those days any meeting with royalty was a signal for sartorial precision of the highest order. This was no ordinary meeting either: it was a job interview. By some quirk of fate, I had been chosen – along with five others – as a candidate to be the next equerry to the Princess of Wales.

I knew little about what an equerry actually did, but I did not greatly care. I already knew I wanted to do the job. Two years on loan to the royal household would surely be good for promotion, and even if it was not, it had to be better than slaving in the Ministry of Defence, which was the most likely alternative.

I wondered what it would be like to work in a palace. Through friends and relatives I had an idea it was not all red carpets and footmen. Running the royal family must involve a lot of hard work for somebody, I realized, but not, surely, for the type of tiny cog that was all I expected to be.

In the wardroom of the frigate, alongside in Loch Ewe, news of the signal summoning me to London for interview had been greeted with predictable ribaldry and a swift expectation that I therefore owed everybody several free drinks.

Doug, our quiet American on loan from the US Navy, spoke for many. He observed me in sceptical silence for several minutes. Then he took a long pull at his beer, blew out his moustache and said, ‘Let me get this straight. You are going to work for Princess Di?’

I had to admit it sounded improbable. Anyway, I had not even been selected yet. I did not honestly think I would be. ‘Might work for her, Doug. Only might. There’s probably several smooth Army buggers ahead of me in the queue. I’m just there to make it look democratic.’

The First Lieutenant, thinking of duty rosters, was more practical. ‘Whatever about that, you’ve wangled a week ashore. Jammy bastard!’ Everyone agreed with him, so I bought more drinks.

While these were being poured, my eye fell on the portraits hanging on the bulkhead. There were the regulation official photographs of the Queen and Prince Philip, and there, surprisingly, was a distinctly nonregulation picture of the Princess of Wales, cut from an old magazine and lovingly framed by an officer long since appointed elsewhere. The picture had been hung so that it lay between the formality of the official portraits and the misty eroticism of some art prints we had never quite got round to throwing away. The symbolic link did not require the services of one of the notoriously sex-obsessed naval psychologists for interpretation.

As she looked down at us in our off-duty moments the Princess represented youth, femininity and a glamour beyond our grey steel world. She embodied the innocent vulnerability we were in extremis employed to defend. Also, being royal, she commanded the tribal loyalty our profession had valued above all else since the days of King Alfred. In addition, as a matter of simple fact, this tasty-looking bird was our future Queen.

Later, when that day in Loch Ewe felt like a relic from another lifetime, I often marvelled at the Princess’s effect on military people. That unabashed loyalty symbolized by Arethusa’s portrait was typical of reactions in messes and barracks worldwide. Sometimes the men gave the impression that they would have died for her not because it was their duty, but because they wanted to. She really seemed worth it.

So this is where she lives, I thought. I stood by the gates to Kensington Palace (or ‘KP’ as I came to call it) and looked up the long drive to where another set of gates – the security barrier – guarded the entrance to what is in fact a kind of royal compound.

The usual picture the public sees of KP is only one short face of a rectangular complex of buildings. Behind this facade – the favoured backdrop of TV reporters doing a Princess Di story – lies a warren of courtyards and gardens. Around these are an assortment of grand state apartments and smaller private apartments where the Waleses, Princess Margaret and other royal people have their London homes.

I suppose, if you have to live in a palace, this is the one to choose, in London at least. It sits at one end of Hyde Park, and if you look out of a window facing north, east or south the view is mostly of trees and grass. If you look west you can see the smart houses in ‘Millionaires’ Row’. Insulated from the noise of London’s traffic, I discovered that it was a tranquil spot, especially in summer. On a fine day the only noise was of birds and crackling police radios – sometimes punctuated by the shouts of William and Harry riding their bikes, or by the penetrating laughter of the Princess of Wales, as she stood at the front door telling a new joke to her personal protection officer before revving up her convertible and racing off.

I had imagined that the heir to the throne and his family would live somewhere elegant and spacious, in an atmosphere of restrained grandeur. I pictured French windows leading onto a lawn and perhaps a smaller version of the terrace I knew they had at Buckingham Palace. In fact, their apartment did not have much of a view at all. Tucked into the heart of the Palace complex, it was surprisingly dark. The Princess had a love–hate relationship with it. It was convenient for her public work and for shopping, and it was secure. But by 1987 it was the backdrop to a dying marriage and its walls had heard too many angry words.

Not only was the apartment dark and viewless, it was also surprisingly small. Everybody could hear everybody else. If you needed to get away from someone, there was just not enough space. The reception rooms were no bigger than you would expect in any smart town house and the private quarters were very unpalatial. Although I did not yet know it, the Prince had already moved out of the matrimonial bed and into his dressing room.

Most of the time the house was still. The Prince and Princess were usually out and the staff retreated to their places behind the scenes. Bursts of sudden activity broke the stillness, however. Every royal arrival or departure was marked by the slamming of doors, the bustle of domestic staff and, as often as not, the anxious pacing of the private secretary. Meanwhile, in the sewing room, the pantry, the kitchen and the nursery (not to mention the brushing room, the police room and the cellar) a large staff unobtrusively maintained a style of life that had changed little in a hundred years. Yet if you sent the staff home, closed the curtains and forgot to turn on all the lights, no amount of TV channels, loud music or ringing telephones could keep the darkness at bay.

Of course the house had been made comfortable – especially if you like lime-green carpet – but unless you had all the lights on, even in daytime it was gloomy. The Princess’s sitting room was the sunniest in the house. Its tall windows looked down on a pretty walled garden where she sometimes relaxed on summer evenings (though her favourite place for sunbathing was on the roof terrace). It also looked down on the front door so she could see or hear everybody approaching. She had very acute hearing. Inside, it was a grown-up version of a teenager’s room. There were two pink sofas by the fire and a smart writing desk by the window, but there were also soft toys, cushions that said ‘Good girls go to heaven – bad girls go everywhere’, and children’s school paintings on the walls. Every flat surface had photos, Halcyon Days enamel boxes or Herrend figurines crammed on to it. It was cheerful, girlish and very cluttered. It smelt good too. There were always flowers – lilies were a favourite – as well as potpourri and scented candles.

She must have been in her sitting room that day as I made my cautious approach to the anonymous black door that was to be my entrance to the world of the Waleses. I tried to look calm on the outside, as if I turned up at palaces every day, but inside I was quaking … and curious.

Before going back to the reality of my very different life in the Navy, I decided to enjoy this unexpected opportunity for as long as it lasted. I would use the chance to find out as much as I could about this woman who fascinated millions of people who had never met her and never would do so. I was not fascinated myself; not really. I already knew that would not be an advantage for anyone trying to work for her. But if I was going to have to meet this beauty, about whom I had unavoidably read and heard so much, I might as well make the most of the experience.

Nervously, I tried to check my reflection in the opaque window of the front door. I had an idea that equerries to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales were several inches taller than me in their Gucci loafers and carried a reassuring air of labradors and sports cars. They certainly did not lose their cuff links.

Summoning up all my stiffening thoughts, I pressed the bell. I could not hear if it had rung, so after several minutes I pressed it again, just as the door opened to reveal the Prince of Wales’s butler. He was about my height and wore a dark blue jacket with the Prince of Wales’s cypher on the lapels. He looked politely unimpressed. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

Later, I came to know Harold Brown well and grew to admire his professionalism. At home and abroad, he quietly bore the hundreds of little stresses that came with dealing with his royal employers at their less attractive moments. His gift as a mimic had me crying tears of laughter into my whisky on many foreign tours. That afternoon, however, he was every inch the guardian of his master’s privacy and impassively allowed me to follow him to the Equerries’ Room where I was to await the royal summons.

Like so much of the apartment, although undeniably comfortable and well appointed, the Equerries’ Room was dark. Clever effects had been achieved with concealed lighting, pastel colourings and flowers, but the over-riding impression was one of pervasive gloom.

Two people were already there – the Princess’s lady-in-waiting, Anne Beckwith-Smith, and her current equerry, Richard Aylard. They were there to examine me as a possible recruit to their exclusive way of life. During the last few days they had been examining five others as well, of course, so they were understandably distant, if polite.

I was polite too – this was surely part of the selection process – and determined, like the butler, to look unimpressed. But I did need to go to the loo. Badly.

Groping in the semi-gloom of the cloakroom, I became the latest visitor to fumble for the trick light switch on a fiendish trompe l’oeil before finding the real switch on the wall behind me. The humour continued on the other walls, where original cartoons celebrated the Prince of Wales’s talent for self-deprecation. Other pictures showed the Prince and Princess in mostly military group shots, and the image of country-house-style domestic harmony was completed with some equestrian prints. Looking more closely, however, I could not help noticing that even the most recent photograph must have been at least five years old and all the cartoons featured a distinctly bachelor Prince.

Of course I had read the tabloid rumours about the marriage – there had recently been a furore about a visit to a badly flooded area of Wales, when the couple’s visible estrangement had been more of a story than the floods themselves. Like practically everyone else in the wardroom, I had also tittered over Sylvie Krin’s imaginatively romanticized reports in Private Eye. But nobody really knew what was happening. Everybody just assumed that, whatever their private difficulties, the Prince and Princess would stoically maintain the outward unity that was expected of them.

Although schooled by my upbringing to view the monarchy with reverence – and still very much in awe of my surroundings – I already felt an inkling of critical detachment. Later, it was this ability to put some distance between myself and the job that helped keep me sane. Having no strong English ‘county’ background made this easier, I thought. So did the years I had spent living in the Irish Republic. Nevertheless, I happily accepted that if I was to become even a temporary member of the courtiers’ charmed circle I had to accept that royal people by definition exercise a supreme authority. It was an article of faith.

This was obviously a historical anachronism, but I rather liked that. Anyway, I felt quite sure that somewhere wise heads must long ago have worked out the answer to a nagging question. How, I wondered, would I reconcile that historical anachronism with the harsh realities of a world which did not swallow articles of faith quite as readily as it had in more deferential times? Perhaps, from my seat on the sidelines, I would learn how it was done.

Without apparent warning, we were on the move. Following the impassive butler up KP’s broad staircase – a steep hill of lime green with pink fleurs-de-lis – our conversation seemed suddenly too loud. As we approached the summit our voices fell to the self-conscious level you might hear in a church or a ward for the gravely ill. We were led into the drawing room, blinking against the sudden bright sunshine. In the glare I registered the room only as an overexposed negative. Impressions of family photographs, great art and pastel fabrics swam at me against the light. Conversation dwindled to nothing as we stood and fidgeted.

Suddenly a door at the far end of the room opened and the Princess of Wales entered at speed. Squinting horribly against the sun, I prepared to make my bow while trying desperately to see if she was even looking in my direction.

She was. I had seen the blue-eyed gaze in photographs, of course, and it lost none of its unsettling power at close range. When I looked again, though, I saw the gaze was tempered by an undeniable friendliness mixed with frank appraisal. In my peripheral vision I noticed some incidental details. She was wearing a cream cotton suit that set off her tan nicely. A bit too many rays on the chest, I thought absently, noticing a rosy tint to the even golden appearance. No jewellery.

Her handshake was cool and firm, my bow instinctive. In the distance somebody was introducing me. ‘It’s good of you to come all this way, Jeph,’ said the Princess. Even as I realized she had only misheard the introduction, I thought how nice it was that she used an old family nickname. As I was to learn, she seemed to have a knack for attracting such happy coincidences.

We went through to the dining room for lunch, and the same sun that had dazzled me in the drawing room bathed our small round table in a golden light. The Princess sat on my left, while Anne and Richard arranged themselves in the other seats. I took stock of my surroundings, trying not to goggle too obviously.

The KP dining room was tall and square, furnished with antiques and softened with pink and peach pastel fabrics. A complicated flower arrangement seemed to burst out of the middle of the table. Silver and crystal sparkled against the crisp whiteness of the napkins. Portraits from the Royal Collection looked down at the scene and I was just practising meeting their regal gaze unblinkingly when a voice on my left diverted my attention to the real thing.

‘I hope you like chicken,’ said the Princess. ‘I’m afraid we seem to have it all the time.’ This was true, I discovered later. At the time I was only aware that, for all I cared, I might have been eating the royal underfelt that no doubt lay beneath the deep-pile carpet. There were tiny potatoes and salad with the chicken, and white wine. I watched the Princess covertly for signs of an eating disorder, even though I had no idea what those signs might be. She seemed to eat like anybody else, and drank the wine too.

I now realized that the energetic flurry of our introduction was an affectation. As she probably intended, her breezy bonhomie blew away our nervousness. It also seemed to dispel an air of preoccupation that had hung about her as she entered the room. In later years I came to recognize the technique, which she often used to shrug off – however temporarily – the cares that beset her.

It was time to practise my small talk. ‘Are you looking forward to going to Germany, Ma’am?’ I had done some research and knew that she and the Prince were due to go on a tour the following week.

She nodded, but without much enthusiasm. ‘It’s an outing for my husband really,’ she said. (It was strange to hear him described like that, and it was the same when I first heard her mention ‘my mother-in-law’ or ‘Granny’.) ‘He gets a chance to meet his old rellies. Half the royal family’s German!’ She giggled. Later, when she was in trouble for buying a German rather than a British sports car, she joked, ‘Well, I’ve got a German husband, why can’t I have a German car?’

For me this was daring stuff. ‘Better be careful,’ I said. ‘Don’t mention the war.’

She laughed again – not because she recognized my Basil Fawlty quote but because she recognized that I had been trying to tell a joke. She laughed as a reflex, whether she understood it or not. Later I learned that she would laugh at anything. Sometimes I thought you could read her the phone book in a funny voice, then look at her expectantly, and she would laugh. She was that desperate to be happy. Happy people laugh a lot, so she would laugh whenever she could – and often when she should not.

This made her a quick pupil for anyone who had the nerve to tell her something really filthy or offensive. That was a double thrill for her – she could be shocked and amused at the same time. Smut was a sure-fire way of getting her to laugh. It would not be a natural, convivial sound, however, but a great, honking, nasal guffaw. The more offensive the joke, the more unattractive would be her reaction. She also enjoyed the shock she could achieve by repeating the worst from her collection. Needless to say, we did not plumb quite those depths on the first day. It took a week at least.

If I had expected a lively, informed debate about the function and purpose of a modern constitutional monarchy, I was wrong. This was a relief, although as a politics graduate I was keen to study the reality at close quarters. I felt like a medical student with a theoretical understanding of anatomy who is suddenly confronted by a real patient. Only in this case, I suspected that the patient was free to prescribe her own treatment.

Our conversation cantered along at a surprisingly easy pace. I gleaned little about my prospective duties, except that one of them at least was to fill a lunchtime with polite chat. Nor was I asked to reveal much about my own background. I assumed this was because she was already well briefed on my personal details, but later I realized she was not really very interested in where I came from, only in whether I would be bearable to have around for a year or so.

Like many of the family into which she had married, she only reluctantly acknowledged that her staff had a life either before or beyond their contact with her. Employees came and went with such rapidity that this was possibly an understandable reaction. Sometimes she certainly did make a conspicuous and generous effort to be a concerned employer – more so, in fact, than most other royal people – but it did not come naturally. In any case, nothing enforces the concept of royalty being different more effectively than a bit of healthy indifference towards the underlings.

The underlings, therefore, had to look after themselves. It did not take me long to realize that, whenever I was uncertain what to do next in any royal situation, usually the best option was to do nothing and enjoy whatever pleasurable compensations were to hand. A sense of humour was essential survival equipment in the palace jungle (but nothing too clever). So was an ability to enjoy food and drink.

To these I secretly added an ability to enjoy plane-spotting. It turned out to be quite useful. Many of my tensest moments were experienced in royal aeroplanes, but surprisingly often I could deflect the Princess’s fiercest rocket with a calculated display of nerdish interest in what I could see out of the window.

As it happened, I was able to indulge this lonely vice almost immediately as I caught the bus back to Heathrow. Farewells at KP were polite but perfunctory and Richard and Anne gave no hint as to the outcome of my interview. Richard ventured the comment that I had given ‘a remarkable performance’, but this only added to the general air of theatrical unreality. I was pretty sure I had eaten my first and last royal Jersey Royal.

Back in Scotland, my despondency deepened as I inhaled the pungent aroma of my allocated bedroom in the Faslane transit mess. It was not fair, I moaned to myself, to expose someone as sensitive as me to lunch with the most beautiful woman in the world and then consign him to dinner with the duty engineer at the Clyde Submarine Base. And how could I ever face the future when every time the Princess appeared in the papers I would say to myself – or, far worse, to anyone in earshot – ‘Oh yes, I’ve met her. Had lunch with her in fact. Absolutely charming. Laughed at all my jokes …’

Now thoroughly depressed, I was preparing for a miserable night’s sleep when I was interrupted by the wardroom night porter. He wore a belligerent expression so convincing that it was clearly the result of long practice. No doubt drawing on years of observing submarine officers at play, he clearly suspected he was being made the victim of a distinctly unamusing practical joke. In asthmatic Glaswegian he accused me of being wanted on the phone ‘frae Bucknum Paluss’.

I rushed to the phone booth, suddenly wide awake. The Palace operator connected me to Anne Beckwith-Smith. ‘There you are!’ she said in her special lady-in-waiting voice. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere. Would you like the job?’

TWO

IN THE PINK

Some events can be seen as milestones only in retrospect, while at the time they pass almost unnoticed. This was not such an event. The court circular for 28 January 1988 spelt it out in black and white: Jephson was going to the Palace and an insistent inner voice told me his life would never be the same again.

Reaction among my friends and relations was mixed. The American, Doug, thought it was a quaint English fairy tale. My father thought it inevitably meant promotion (he was wrong). My stepmother thought it was nice (she was mostly right). My brother thought it would make me an unbearably smug nuisance (no change).

Although I would never have admitted it, I thought I must be pretty clever, and I apologize belatedly to everyone who had to witness it. That was lesson one: breathing royal air can seriously damage your ability to laugh at yourself. It is sometimes called ‘red carpet fever’ and usually only lasts a few months, but severe cases never recover and spend the rest of their lives believing in their own acquired importance.

I reported to the offices of the Prince and Princess at the end of April. In those halcyon days their staff occupied a joint office in St James’s Palace. The couple shared a private secretary, a comptroller, a press secretary and numerous administrative officials who helped run an organization some hundred strong. They themselves lived at KP and made the journey to ‘SJP’ when required.

In the Prince’s case this was frequently and – unlike his wife – he kept an office at St James’s for the purpose. Given the clutter of books and papers with which he usually surrounds himself, this elegant room – all limewash panelling and thick carpet – seemed strangely anonymous, its few personal touches almost an afterthought. The cleverly concealed lighting and carefully selected antiques seemed to have taken priority. Its enormous desk was naked but for a photo of William and Harry, while from the mantelpiece an unusual triple-portrait photo of his mother, aunt and grandmother looked down on the inmate with matronly appraisal. The place smelt of polish and expensive fabrics and in every way satisfied what I suppose are masculine preferences in orderliness and understated good taste. It was a constant reminder – along with its equivalent in cars, clothes and other accoutrements – that the heir’s cares were shouldered in at least tolerable comfort.

The penalty of operating out of two palaces was the amount of time – and often anxiety – expended on getting from one to the other. My tendency to plan journeys to coincide with the sedate passage of the Household Cavalry always raised my blood pressure. I almost came to believe that the Mounted Division only ventured out in splendour to block Constitution Hill when they had word that the Princess had summoned me to an urgent meeting in KP.

There were benefits too. Even the most conscientious private secretary could sometimes be grateful that his boss kept at a distance from the office. Moreover, when peace and quiet and decent coffee were elusive at SJP, I often took refuge in the tranquillity of the KP Equerries’ Room. The house staff always kept a warm welcome and would let you raid the pantry. Also, more often than I cared to admit, it was useful to be ‘unobtainable’ while stuck in traffic somewhere on Kensington Gore, although the fitting of mobile phones to office cars made this an increasingly dodgy excuse.

The Wales household occupied offices in St James’s that had previously been used by the Lord Chamberlain’s Department. The previous occupants’ more sedate tastes were apparent in the dense brown carpet and heavy furniture. Against the sober backdrop of high ceilings, ornate plasterwork and yellowing net curtains the youthful Wales staff sometimes seemed like children who had set up their office camp in an abandoned gentlemen’s club. The average age could not have been more than 22, and the secretaries were almost without exception from backgrounds where girls were expected to be seen and heard and enjoyed being both.

At that time the office worked as one unit with Their Royal Highnesses’ private secretary – the genial Sir John Riddell – presiding over a team which, on the surface at least, owed equal loyalty to both. I soon discovered, however, that the Princess’s small component was still regarded as a minor addition to what was essentially an enlarged bachelor establishment. This was especially evident in the planning of joint programmes, when, as if part of the natural order, the Princess’s requirements took second place – and sometimes not even that, unless the Prince’s staff were gently reminded of her involvement. Despite this, thanks to a lot of goodwill, it was an addition that was loftily tolerated, despite its perceived irrelevance to the main work of the organization.

The private secretary’s room lay at one end of a string of smaller offices on the first floor of York House. At the other end a swing door separated us from the decidedly grown-up world of the Central Chancery of the Orders of Chivalry. Between the two I found offices for the deputy private secretary, the comptroller and the lady-in-waiting, interspersed with larger shared offices for lowlier forms of life such as equerries and secretaries.

My predecessor Commander Richard Aylard and his opposite number, the Prince’s equerry Major Christopher Lavender, shared an office that seemed to be the size of a small ballroom, inelegantly partitioned to make a small adjoining space for three secretaries (or ‘lady clerks’ in Palace-speak). I was planted behind a small table in a corner, from which I could observe the veterans at work. Now, I thought, I’ll find out what an equerry actually does.

Many people then – and since – made dismissive comments about equerries being needed only to hand round gin and tonic or carry flowers for the lady-in-waiting, both tasks being about on the limit of my perceived ability. I performed these tasks on numerous occasions, but even at the outset I knew there must be rather more to a job which provoked such envy and contempt. I had an idea – reinforced by a helpful introductory letter from Richard – that I was expected to help implement the Princess’s programme and generally act as a kind of glorified aide-de-camp.

Listening to the confident instructions being rapped out by Richard and Christopher in a series of seemingly incessant phone calls, I was gripped by panic. How would I ever know what to do? How would I ever develop the easy blend of nonchalant authority and patient good humour that seemed to be the better courtier’s stock in trade? Especially when all the time my novice high-wire act would be under unblinking scrutiny from royal employers, sceptical colleagues and – worst of all – the royal press pack.

My panic deepened as I contemplated my first task. Thinking he was easing me in gently, Richard had thoughtfully given me the job of writing a memorandum to the Princess outlining programme options for a forthcoming visit to the West Country. I stared transfixed at the notepad in front of me, my mind as blank as the paper. The letterhead grandly announced the writer as ‘Equerry to HRH the Princess of Wales’ and I dumbly wondered if I would ever have the temerity to sign anything that followed.

Eventually a lucky inspiration came to me. On the pretext of familiarizing myself with the office filing system (a feat still incomplete seven years later), I sauntered into the secretaries’ room. The girl-talk came to a temporary halt as three laughing pairs of eyes appraised me.

‘We’ve decided to call you PJ,’ the senior secretary said. ‘We can’t possibly call you Pat in the office and there’s already a Patrick in BP.’ Thinking of other things I could – and no doubt would – be called, I decided to accept this tag without protest. The secretaries’ nicknames were acutely observed and tended to become universally accepted. Compared to some, I was fortunate.

‘Can I help you, PJ?’ asked the girl with the eyes that laughed the most. Jo had already been introduced as my secretary and was thus a crucial partner in the adventure that was about to begin. I explained my predicament and she rummaged in a filing cabinet that I could not help noticing seemed to act as an overflow for her handbag as well as secure storage for sensitive papers.

‘We’ve got some examples here somewhere which you could copy …’ With a triumphant toss of chestnut hair and a jangle of bracelets, she handed me some files in the distinctive dark red of the Wales office. ‘When you’ve drafted it, I’ll type it for you. But we’d better get a move on. The Bag closes in half an hour.’

This was obviously an important piece of information. I checked the instinct to rush back to my desk and instead asked what the ‘Bag’ was. The girls looked at each other significantly. ‘That is the Bag.’ A manicured nail indicated a red plastic pouch the size of a small pillowcase. It sat in isolation on one of the less cluttered shelves next to a basket of papers on which I could glimpse Anne’s distinctive writing.

The Bag came to rule my life. It was the main means of written communi-cation with KP and so carried the whole catalogue of information, advice, pleading, cajoling and obfuscation which seemed to comprise our output. It also carried our letters of petition, contrition and – occasionally – resignation. These were mixed with bills, pills, fan mail, hate mail, and any private mail that had not already gone directly to the KP breakfast tray. Those envelopes had to be delivered unopened on pain of death, but it was by no means obvious which were entreaties from ardent suitors and which were complaints about office incompetence from loyal subjects. A secretary who could sniff the difference (sometimes literally) was worth her weight in gold.

In return the Bag welcomed us each morning with the overnight products of the royal pen. Schoolday comparisons with waiting for prep to be marked were inescapable, especially when alternative programmes such as the one I was struggling to draw up for the day in the West Country had been submitted for consideration.

The art, I discovered, was to submit the options in a way which led the Princess imperceptibly to the desired choice. The quickest way to learn that art was to watch what happened at the receiving end. Often, when I had been out with her all day, the Princess would find the Bag waiting in the car that came to collect us. It could be a tense moment. If we had enjoyed a good day, a bad Bag could take the shine off it in a second; and it took a very good Bag indeed to restore shine to a day that had been lousy.

She would snap the little plastic seal, pull back the heavy zip and delve inside. Balancing the inner cardboard file on her lap, she quickly sorted the papers into piles. Fashion catalogues or designers’ bills were dealt with first; then press cuttings; then loose minutes from the secretaries about things like therapists’ appointments or school events for the boys; then personal mail – some of it saved for private reading later; then real work – memos from me that required a decision, outline programmes, draft speeches, invitations, suggested letters … the list was endless.

She would hold out her hand for my pen, then go to work. She was quick and decisive – and expected me to be the same. This was at least partly to draw a distinction between herself and the Prince, whose capacity to sit on paperwork was legendary.

What worked best was to reduce a complicated question to a few important points – the bits she really had to know – and then offer two alternative answers. It was pretty basic staffwork, but quite intellectually satisfying. Soon I could anticipate fairly accurately her reaction to most questions. If I expected her to go for option A (‘Yes please’) but for reasons too complicated to explain I wanted her instead to pick option B (‘No thanks’), all I had to do was explain that A, while superficially attractive, risked controversy/conflict with another member of the royal family/bad press. ‘We don’t want to do that, do we, Patrick?’ she would say and I would look judicious, as if weighing up the pros and cons, and then agree with her. The pen would mark a big tick next to option B and everybody would be happy.

Mind you, she would not have been the Princess of Wales if there had not also been times when she would do the exact opposite out of spite. It seldom had anything to do with the pros and cons then. Eventually, however, I could sometimes predict these moods too. Then the procedure was reversed: all I had to do was extol the virtues of option A and she would automatically tick option B. It was a great game.

Much later, the game became less fun. The Princess bought a shredder and would unblushingly destroy papers that displeased her, then accuse me of not showing them to her in the first place. This enabled her to claim that she was not being supported, that her office (me) was incompetent, etc., etc. After a few such happy experiences, I learned to keep duplicates of anything that might end up in her shredder. I would then produce them when the original mysteriously ‘disappeared’. She hated that.

On my first day, of course, I knew none of this. Back at my temporary desk, I perused the files Jo had given me. One, labelled simply with ‘Merseyside’ and a date, was thick with papers and looked as if it had already made several arduous journeys to Liverpool in the rain. The other was pristine, contained two small sheets of pink paper and was labelled ‘Savoy lunch’.

‘Merseyside’ looked more promising, so, ignoring the background sounds of efficient equerries at work, I delved into its dog-eared contents. These read rather like a story whose plot assembles only gradually. Some characters – such as the Prince and Princess – we already know from previous novels in the series. Others we know by title if not yet as distinct personalities – the Lord Lieutenant, the Chief Constable, the local director of the Central Office of Information. Others again are complete new-comers whose place in the coming narrative is tantalizingly obscure. Will the leader of the Acorns Playgroup outbid the chairperson of the Drug Awareness workshop in the competition for the selector’s eye? Are the patronages they represent in or out of favour and will this affect their chances? Or will all be bulldozed aside by the requirement to fête the opening of a semiconductor factory whose oriental masters might repeat their largesse in another unemployment blackspot if given sufficient royal ‘face’?

Such musings crowded into my mind as I composed my first memo for the Bag. What style would be best? I had already seen a document addressed to the Queen in which, as precedent demands, the writer opened with the sonorous ‘Madam, With my humble duty …’ and, although I relished such verbal quaintness, it did not seem right for the lively Princess who had given me lunch. The examples I found in the ‘Merseyside’ file were more reassuring, opening with a simple ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am’ and proceeding to describe complex choices in simple, straightforward English. The only peculiarities I noticed were neat abbreviations for unwieldy royal titles (‘YRHes’ for ‘Your Royal Highnesses’) and a brisk respectfulness (‘As YRH will recall …’).

Eventually Jo forced me to hand over my meagre draft. Once printed on thick office stationery, its tentative phrases took on an air of authority which quite had me fooled until I saw my signature at the bottom. Early days, I thought to myself, as I saw it committed to the Bag which was then promptly sealed. ‘I’m going to the High Street during lunch so I can drop the Bag at KP nice and early. You never know, we might get it back this afternoon,’ said Jo, making for the door.

I returned to my corner and sought comfort in thoughts of lunch. Suddenly the phone on my desk rang. I went into shock. It had not rung before. What should I do now? Everybody else was already talking on their own phones, so this one was down to me.

It rang again, sounding louder. In my nervous, beginner’s state it even sounded royal. I picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ I said, clearing my throat. That didn’t sound very pukka, I thought.

‘Hello?’ said a man’s voice. It was crackly and faint, but vaguely familiar. ‘Who’s that?’ The voice sounded rather tetchy.

‘Who’s calling?’ I asked, trying to sound as if I was getting a grip.

‘It’s the Prince of Wales speaking,’ said the voice. Definitely tetchy. Panic.

‘Oh … sorry Sir. Um …’

Richard had finished his call and, from the far side of the room, his antennae had already picked up my plight. Dabbing a key on his fiercely complicated-looking phone, he cut in smoothly. ‘It’s Richard here, Sir …’

I imagined I could hear the relief in His Master’s Voice. What a great start, I thought.

The phone came to rule my life just as much as the Bag and, by its nature, it proved a shrill and insistent mistress. I admit now that I was too often ready to allow my patient secretaries to screen calls, so I was left at the end of the day with a callback list which reproachfully catalogued awkward conversations shirked and good news still untold.

My excuse – and it seemed a good one – was that I was fully occupied with priority calls, mostly from the Princess. She was a virtuoso with the instrument and I quickly came to measure the mood of the day by the first syllable of her morning greeting. It might have been telepathy, but I sometimes felt as if I knew just from the sound of the ringing tone that it was her. Taking a deep breath, I would pick up the receiver. Sometimes she would come straight through, calling from the car or her mobile. At other times she would be connected by the Palace switchboard.

The familiar voices of the imperturbable operators could spark a reply in neat adrenaline. I became quite good at interpreting the subtle nuances of their voices too. Some are indelibly linked in my mind to traumatic events of which they were the first harbingers. Invariably kind, often humorous, sometimes wonderfully motherly, they must have assisted unwittingly at many executions. On a shamefully rare visit to their subterranean den, I was not surprised to see knitting in progress.

The background noises could be a clue to how much you were going to enjoy the call that followed. Silence meant she was at her desk, probably perusing the Bag and about to ask an awkward question. If she was in the car and it was early morning, she was most likely on her way back from her morning swim and anxious to resolve a nagging problem that had surfaced during her 50 lengths.

Later in the day it probably meant she was shopping, so expect to be quizzed on men’s taste in cashmere sweaters. The sound of a Harrier jet in the background meant she was under the hairdryer, so expect either the hairdresser’s latest filthy joke or a piece of gossip which the Princess had picked up earlier in the day (‘Did you know the Duchess of Blank’s aromatherapist was having a raging affair with your neighbour?’). The sound of running bathwater meant we were in for a playful 10 minutes during which I was supposed to imagine the saintly form up to its neck in bubbles. The distinctive sound of a dress being unzipped meant she was having a fitting with her current designer … or something.

That first syllable was crucial. It could be warm and conspiratorial: ‘Patrick! Have you seen the papers?’ This induced a cautious relief at being singled out for speculation about the morning’s unfortunate tabloid target, usually another member of the royal family.

Or it could be flat and accusatory: ‘Patrick … have you seen the papers?’ (The ‘yet’ was silent.) This produced a state of high alert. Good preparation was vital – I always tried to have an answer ready for every current subject of her potential displeasure. She was often working from a different list, however.

Or it could be light and carefree: ‘Patrick, have you seen the papers?’ This might be an invitation to share joy at a prominent story showing her in a good light. Anything that described her as ‘serious’, ‘independent’ or ‘caring’ would have this effect. Descriptions of her beauty or fashion genius got a similar but less fulsome reaction. A critical story, however – especially if she had predicted it – meant trouble. The light-hearted tone was designed to lower your guard, the better to deliver either a stinging rebuke or an invitation to join in the persecution of the perceived offender.

It was easy to be fooled, though. I quickly learned how misleading such judgements could be as I witnessed dramatically different moods being signalled to different listeners all in the space of one car journey. It was pointless to question such inconsistency. What mattered was the mood allocated to you and, until it changed, life was at least straightforward, if at times uncomfortable.

No less impressive was her use of the phone as scalpel and feather duster. Under the latter, the most recalcitrant member of the ‘old guard’ would wag his tail with pleasure, but under the former, discarded favourites dumbly suffered their excommunication. In severe cases, any subsequent wailing or gnashing of teeth could be neatly avoided simply with a change of number. The magic digits – the coveted code to personal access – would abruptly fail to connect.

The common denominator was her absolute command of the conversation. This she achieved with artfully presented moods and a surprising fluency which served as a reminder of her mental sharpness. Her sense of timing was sometimes uncanny. In my case she would usually ring when I was late coming back from lunch.

Ultimately, of course, there was the royal hang-up, which could lend unprecedented significance to a simple click. On the other hand, a good call could put a smile on your face for the rest of the day.

I had hardly finished congratulating myself on completing my first piece of written work in my new job when I noticed a lull in the hitherto ceaseless activity at the equerries’ desks. In unison, Richard and Christopher stretched and looked at their watches. It was 1.15, which my internal clock had already informed me was well past its customary lunch call.

‘Good heavens, look at the time, better go to lunch!’ said Richard.

‘Come on!’ said Christopher in a voice which would have galvanized his beloved Ghurkas, and I fell in behind the two veterans as we marched at speed down the stairs, across Ambassador’s Court and out into the sunshine of Green Park.

Approaching Buckingham Palace from St James’s, the great building seems less intimidating than when seen from the grand processional route of The Mall. Visiting heads of state, arriving by the more impressive route, can look up with relief from their open carriage as the Palace fills the horizon, knowing their horse-drawn ordeal is nearly over, while heedless tourists reverse suicidally into the traffic as they struggle to squeeze the whole building into their viewfinders. From Green Park the view is oblique, framed by leafy branches and altogether more human in scale.

The short walk between the Palaces became a well-worn route for me as I shuttled to and from the senior household offices with their Olympian denizens. Sometimes the journey was an opportunity for self-congratulatory reflection or garden party preening. At other times it was a true via dolorosa as the cares of the whole monarchy seemed to reach out at me from a hundred faceless windows on the monolithic facade.

When great events were in the offing, the international TV networks set up their outside broadcast studios among the trees, creating a media gypsy camp under a forest of aerial masts. From this cover, preoccupied courtiers could be ambushed as they hurried by, later to discover that they had become unwitting walk-on extras in the main feature. As additional entertainment, Lancaster House would occasionally lay on a G7 or NATO summit, allowing us the chance to peer at the visiting Presidents and Prime Ministers as they were conveyed past in their limousines.

Safely across the pedestrian crossing at the foot of Constitution Hill, our small detachment marched through the gates into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace, the focus of a hundred pairs of jaded tourist eyes. Were these men in the Simpson’s off-the-peg suits important? They did not look royal, that was certain (especially the one at the back who was explaining to the police that he had not yet got his security pass). But just in case, we had better take a photograph anyway – through the railings as if they were animals in a zoo; or inmates, I sometimes thought, at a secure institution.

Buckingham Palace has two main working entrances – one round the side near the kitchens and one at the front on the right as you look at it. Like everything else, use of each entrance is determined by your place in the hierarchy. Being ‘household’, we strode proprietorially up the steps to the Privy Purse Door, thus being spared the indignity of queuing up with the delivery men at the side gate.

A liveried doorman spared us the further indignity of having to open the door ourselves and, I noticed, greeted Richard and Christopher as if he really recognized them. This is the life, I thought, as my nostrils had their first sniff of the unique Palace smell: a mixture of polish and hot light bulbs with just a hint of mothballs. My feet at last felt qualified to pad across the red carpet as I followed my hungry guides into the bowels of the building.

It was as well that I stayed close to them, because the route from the door to the dining room was labyrinthine to the uninitiated. The entrance gave on to a stairwell, which gave on to a corridor, which jinked, climbed, narrowed and divided before at last turning into the great entrance hall from which the dining room debouched. Even after several months’ practice the journey could seem hazardous, though whether this was from fear of getting lost or getting found I was never quite sure. The latter was a real anxiety at moments of internal tension, as my route even to the nearest exit offered ample opportunity for unexpected encounters with the Palace’s most senior inhabitants.

Running this gauntlet was made slightly more pleasurable by detouring into the Queen’s Equerry’s Room for a preprandial drink. Every day without fail, it was full of courtiers intent on gin and gossip. While exploring the drinks tray on that first day I learned another lesson which time was to reinforce. In a way reminiscent of the tolerance extended by the Prince’s organization to his wife’s, the senior household played forbearant host to its subordinate satellites. Among these the Waleses’ organization constituted the most important – and certainly the largest – planet, but all down to the merest Pluto of royalty theoretically shared equal status as members of household. This entitled them to walk on red carpet, cruise the Royal Enclosure at Ascot and enjoy a number of other perks, one of whose daily rituals I was now experiencing.

The atmosphere reminded me of one of those better service messes where the members had not forgotten some basic rules of communal living, principally the endangered art of making polite conversation. This was not surprising given the preponderance of ex-military personnel, but the similarity began to fray when I listened to the shoptalk which, inevitably, dominated the conversation. Beneath the surface conviviality I slowly detected a lack of the kind of common purpose to be expected even in the least cohesive wardroom.

This was obviously a valuable clearing house for the various informal royal intelligence services. The principal members of the royal family were represented by their private staffs and the heads of the Palace’s great departments represented the behind-the-scenes support structure. This mixture of disparate interests genteelly fenced and bartered in a way that cannot have changed much, I supposed, since Victorian times. Then as now, representatives of lesser households might have felt themselves mere cousins admitted to the ancestral seat where the inner family carried on with its laundry, hiding its resentment that the visitors had the intrusiveness of kin without the discretion of polite guests. The soothing properties of civilized conversation were thus much needed – and were generously employed, not least in greeting the new boy, for which I was duly grateful.

The room quickly emptied in a general move towards lunch. I joined the throng feeling I was among friendly people whose friendship would nevertheless have carefully controlled limits. I would be accepted subject to certain constraints, most of which appeared reasonable to me. These would be imposed by my comparative youth, junior position, temporary appointment and membership of a subordinate organization, tenants of a property outside the pale. In short, we were tolerated. Politely, entertainingly and often warmly, but still only tolerated.

As senior staff, our ‘canteen’ was the Buckingham Palace Household Dining Room. In its scale, decor, portraiture and appointments it encouraged us to feel reassuringly exclusive. We helped ourselves from a sideboard and sat where we thought the best conversation could be found – or avoided.

On that first day I was surprised by the variety of my fellow lunchers. There were the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting – treated with universal respect – and the Queen’s private secretaries – also treated with respect, at least by me. But there were others further down the hierarchy who hinted at the bewildering diversity of the royal household. There was the captain of the Queen’s Flight looking smooth. There was the keeper of the Royal Collection, looking not at all like Anthony Blunt. There was the press secretary, wearing his poker-player’s face. And there was the senior policeman, looking surprised to find himself there at all.

I am sure I did too. My morale was soon boosted when, in a ceremony that beat all the majestic pomp and circumstance of the British Crown, the duty footman dymo-taped my name on to a napkin ring. I may only have been temporary, and I would often lunch somewhere else, but now I was a member of the club.

That first afternoon I strolled back across the park to St James’s feeling pretty pleased with myself. It was a sensation that soon became unfamiliar. The job often made me feel so anxious that the outward perks – even my own napkin ring – seemed like a bad joke. On some days I would have swapped them all for a friendly Portakabin somewhere, anywhere, else. As I returned to my new office that day, however, I was beginning to believe that I could act my part. From my temporary perch I felt the first stirrings of confidence as I measured Richard’s desk with my eye and contemplated a suitable fate for his Australian beer mat if he was careless enough to leave it behind when he moved along the corridor to his new post as comptroller.

The afternoon’s programme was intended to begin my education in Palace life. I was to meet two of the more significant Palace office-holders for ‘a chat’, and in their own way they neatly illustrated the latent tensions that I had detected at lunch. There was an old guard, almost literally. They were mostly ex-Guards Regiment, not very qualified in anything very much, but at least superficially friendly, if tending to be dogmatic about How Things Should Be Done. Then there was a younger guard, less overtly military, less dogmatic, no less friendly and arguably better qualified. As members of the heir’s office, we were usually grouped with this second category, not least by temperament.

The royal household is sometimes still caricatured as being made up of faceless courtiers drawn from public schools and the Army. During my time there, it was still quite true that both types were in the majority. Even those from a City or diplomatic background had mostly worn uniform at some stage, but despite a predictably establishment outlook – which I shared – most also had a very realistic attitude to the institution they served. They had inherited a hidebound, antique machine. To make it work they had to be highly effective in the real world of power and personalities which ran national life – but they also had to be sensitive to the hothouse family politics of the royal world. It was sometimes an impossible job. Failure was always headline news and any success had to be passed modestly upwards.

In a minority of cases, however, it was painfully apparent that the only journey some had taken to be reborn as courtiers was the short march from Wellington Barracks to Buckingham Palace. Their tone and style of working were therefore vaguely familiar to anyone who had ever humoured an unstable commanding officer or in turn meted out patronizing encouragement to a subordinate. My first ‘chat’ was with a prime specimen of this type. Order, precedent and self-preservation were everything to him, which left little room, I observed, for intellect. It became apparent quite early in our conversation that it also left little room for humour, insight, empathy or outside interests of any kind. These were optional in his post and, I suspected, in his world.

He clearly had a dilemma. His self-appointed task was to brief junior new arrivals such as myself about aspects of life at court. Under this heading he included the history of the British monarchy (a bizarre account of his own making), its relevance to modern Britain (akin to his own), and how an insect such as I should hold his knife and fork (an exaggeration, but only just). This performance may have been for our benefit but it was undoubtedly also for his own, since it gave us newcomers a wonderful opportunity to marvel at his mastery of arcane and irrelevant information. However, he plainly suffered doubts as to whether we were suitable receptacles for such priceless wisdom. I fear I did little to set his mind at rest, either then or in our subsequent uneasy encounters.

‘Above all,’ he said, leaning forward for emphasis and fixing me with a watery glare, ‘we don’t want any nonsenses! Nonsenses always lead to nausea!’ He sat back, obviously feeling that no further explanation was required. There was a pause, presumably to allow me to dwell on my capacity for nonsenses. It seemed infinite to both of us.

‘Thank you,’ I said, already aware that hollow pleasantries would be a necessity of life in this place. Then, seeing an opportunity, I added, ‘I really should be getting back …’

He took this news quite well, despite the fact that he had barely warmed to his theme. He left me feeling that I was but a passing aberration on the seamless splendour of royal existence. That may have been quite true, but it did not stop me outlasting him by many years.

Looking back, I now know that he was an exception to the general rule about the Queen’s advisers who, almost to a man, I found to embody the qualities for which I unkindly judged this particular individual had no excess cranial capacity. At the time, however, I thought him a caricature and a good example of a species on the edge of extinction – which, incidentally, is where it remains.

My next encounter was with a representative of the newer generation. Back at St James’s, I had time for a chipped mug of weak tea before the next stage of my indoctrination. I knew instinctively that I was about to learn matters of real relevance from an instructor who would closely monitor my performance, or lack of it. She would become one of the two most important women in my working life: the lady-in-waiting and assistant private secretary to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, Miss Anne Beckwith-Smith.

Anne had been with the Princess from the start. In a world built on precedent, she had created most of the procedures and conventions by which even our little office needed to function. She set an example of dignity and common sense which belied our subordinate status. Later I discovered that she was also a lot of fun. But on day one I recognized her as a formidable ambassador for her mistress, unlikely to be tolerant of any backsliding on my part.

Her office was the most attractive in St James’s. Formerly a royal dressing room (when our quarters had been a royal residence), it retained an air of domesticity enhanced by Anne’s tasteful choice of decor. A wide bay window looked down into Ambassador’s Court, offering an ideal vantage point from which to observe the daily traffic of the Palace’s visitors and occupants. To me it seemed like a boudoir crossed with a throne room, an impression reinforced as I approached the desk behind which Anne presided with a magisterial presence.

She was just one of many courtiers who had a difficult decision to make when faced with a new recruit such as myself: How much do we tell him? For the next half hour I listened attentively to Anne’s introduction to the workings of the Princess’s office, and although this was accurate and informative, it left me still largely ignorant about the most important factor of all, namely what went on in the mind of the Princess. By what Anne left out on this subject I drew a generally accurate conclusion about Palace life – admit nothing to anyone, especially if they are new. Let them find out for themselves, the hard way.

In obedience to this principle Anne stuck to what I naively thought were trivia. She explained my responsibility to look after the ladies-in-waiting who would accompany the Princess on all her official engagements. ‘You must make sure they have their programme and briefing notes at least a week before each engagement,’ she told me, rather optimistically as it turned out. ‘And you must help them out whenever they need helping out.’

Out of what? I wondered. Cars? Lifts? In fact it was both, among many other things, including that state of Siberian ostracism to which our mistress occasionally committed all who served her closely. Anne, of course, knew that such unwelcome experiences of ‘helping out’ would come my way soon enough. How I dealt with them would be an interesting test for me which I could be sure would be closely monitored.

Anne had been in the Wales business quite long enough to know that the marriage was now largely a sham. Thanks to tabloid coverage of separate sleeping arrangements on the recent German tour, almost anyone else could now come to the same conclusion. She knew also that this created powerful forces that could blow apart the image of normality that we existed to protect. There would be untold consequences, not least for the constitution, and never far from her thoughts was the potential effect on Princes William and Harry. Nothing was said about any of this in that first meeting.

In the Navy I had been used to living by the ‘need to know’ principle. It was elementary security practice to restrict sensitive information just to those personnel who needed it to carry out their tasks. A rather haphazard version of this operated at the Palace. Those who knew the fractured state of the Waleses’ marriage were like members of a secret society, bound by loyalty to their employers. Membership was not to be granted lightly to the new temporary equerry. For one thing, he may be out on his ear next week if he fouls up, and for another, the more people we tell, the more difficult it is to pretend that things might yet get better.

So I had to find out for myself, which I did, but only detail by painful detail over a long period of time. By then I had some sympathy for the hidebound old guard. How much more reassuring simply to lecture the new boys on regimental history and mess rules.

In a conscious effort to break this understandable but counter-productive culture of secrecy, I tried to be more open when it was my turn to break the bad news to new staff. Apart from courtesy, there was a more practical reason: such coyness bred an atmosphere of unreality and suspicion which did nothing for efficiency or morale.

In its more absurd forms it saw courtiers at lunch disdainful of discussing royal revelations already splashed on the morning’s front pages. Sometimes I knew these revelations had been planted by royal leak; in fact, by my revered and respected boss, as when – some years later – she was notoriously photographed making a secret rendezvous with the Daily Mail’s court correspondent Richard Kay. Then it felt as if the world had turned upside down.

When I first realized that such things were possible, initially I felt as though I had entered a devastated landscape from which all signposts and familiar paths had been obliterated. Somewhere I knew civilization continued, the familiar routines of Palace life carried on regardless. Footmen brought tea to comfortable offices in which comfortable officials happily scanned guest lists for garden parties; in the mews contented horses were eating hay; in the Throne Room a smiling Queen received Ambassadors. Yet the whole facade of traditional royal management could be overturned by one phone call to a journalist from a young woman who happened to be married to the Prince of Wales. It made a mockery of the established order under which, if such dirty work needed doing, then a host of officials or ‘friends’ would jump to the task. It was shocking to the royal establishment (but curiously refreshing too) that the Princess was prepared to commit such sins unblushingly and by herself.

I left Anne’s office deep in thought. I was happy to leave premonitions to my more spiritually inquisitive employer, but the sense that events were not entirely under control was real enough. Nothing specific had been said, but it did not need to be. The instinctive reluctance to talk even discreetly about calamitous stories blaring daily from the headlines told its own story: we would bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best.

Much of the lunchtime euphoria had left me and I was again conscious of the mountain I had to climb if I was going to fit into my new world, let alone be a success in it. My gloom deepened as I returned to the alien bustle of the equerries’ office. On my learner’s desk I could see the note I had sent to KP in the Bag that morning, promptly returned as Jo had predicted.

Despite my best efforts, the paper trembled slightly in my fingers as I searched for the teacher’s comments on my first piece of prep. The sprawling, girlish script that I came to know well spelt out just one word – ‘Perfect’. There was an exclamation mark too. I breathed again.

‘Beginner’s luck,’ said Jo’s voice behind me.

I was half expecting the Princess to turn up at St James’s, but she did not. Nor did she phone me. I was not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. I knew my Palace life would not really have begun until I spoke to her in my own right, rather than just as a job-hunter.

I went home late that night. As I passed KPI looked up the long drive and wondered what was going on behind the lighted windows. It looked cosy enough, but I remembered the Princess’s forced laughter and her clumsy jokes about her in-laws. It did not take a psychologist to see there was a great tension just below the surface.

Her popularity clearly gave her enormous power – I had felt it very strongly when I met her. But, like a toppled pyramid, it seemed an immense weight to rest on just her slim shoulders. Were others helping her carry that weight? Would I?

I already knew the answer to the second question. Even at this early stage I felt a loyalty to the Princess. For all her professional competence and innate nobility, there was an indefinable vulnerability about her that drew from me an unprompted wish to protect her. This developed into a complex mixture of duty and devotion which sometimes took more and sometimes less than the strict professional loyalty required, but which has never entirely disappeared.

As for the first question, I already had the glimmerings of an answer to that too. My observations at lunch in Buckingham Palace had given me a clue. If I felt that I, a junior minion in a junior household, was just tolerated by the old guard, how much more was that true of my boss. If I looked up from my own small patch of red carpet, I could see my experience reflected in that of the Princess, although hers was on a scale as different from mine as a lifetime is from a two-year secondment. Inside the organization of which she was a senior, popular and accomplished partner, she was just tolerated.

Being tolerated was fine, I supposed, but I had expected a degree of supervision, if not actual direction. At times I came to feel that even a measure of interest would have been welcome. Raised in disciplined organizations, I was surprised to discover the extent of the autonomy given to the junior households. Some form of structured, central co-ordination was the Philosopher’s Stone of royal strategic management and endless attempts were – and are – made to discover it. But even the sharpest sorcerer on the PR market is unlikely to work the magic for long. The base material of his potion is a thousand years of royal durability. It is hard, dull and unyielding, not readily open to transformation. It is strong too – but its strength is not the kind you would want to cuddle up to. The best he can hope to create is media gold – a fool’s delight.

Later, as events in the Waleses’ marriage moved from concern to crisis, tolerance became pained aloofness in some cases and outright distaste in others. In the end, however, it was the indifference that caused such harm. Opportunities to alter the downward spiral of events were squandered. Those who could have helped preferred too often to look away or distract themselves with the accustomed routines that had proved an effective bulwark against intrusive reality in the past. I knew and understood why. The need to confront unfamiliar and painfully intimate issues was deeply unwelcome to us courtiers as a class. What I resentfully saw as indifference I eventually realized often masked a genuine concern – and an equally genuine sense of complete impotence in the face of events that constantly defied the rules of familiar experience.

Part of what drove the Princess on to endure and exploit her public duties was her wish to earn the active recognition and approval of the family into which she had married. Sometimes with bitterness, but increasingly with a resigned acceptance, she complained to me that nobody ever told her she was doing a good job.

Oh, the papers praised her to the heavens, but they could knock her down again the next day. The public adored her, but theirs – she thought – was a fickle love, lavished on her hairdo as much as on her soul. In any case, she left it behind with the slam of her car door. Her staff could try to redress the balance, but the line between true praise and toadying was always perilously fine.

It was a cruel irony that the better she did her job, the more she felt resented by some of her in-laws, unable to stomach the idea that she was a channel for emotions they struggled to feel, let alone express. Very well: if she could not please them, she would please herself. Little wonder, then, that she grew to prefer working for her own benefit and, as she saw them, the emotional needs of humanity at large. It might be selfish and it lacked intellectual discipline. It could – and did – expose her to criticism from agents of an older royal order, fearful of the public sentiment (or sentimentality, in their eyes) which she increasingly stirred up. But better that, she thought – even unconsciously – than deny her need for a recognition that accepted her as she really was.

The liberal, compassionate and educated people who are the emerging face of royal authority might at this point feel entitled to a flicker of exasperation. ‘We did everything we could, but she was impossible!’

I can only reply, ‘Yes, you did. And yes, she was.’ But too many people who could have put things right did too little for too long. I will always believe it to be true: the Princess of Wales did not set out to rebel. What in the end was seen as her disaffection was what she did to compensate for a chronic feeling of rejection. Time and again, a small handful of sugarlumps would have been enough to lead this nervous thoroughbred back into the safety of the show ring. When none could be found for her, she set off into the crowd.

The organization I joined in 1988 nonetheless seemed, at least on the surface, to be united in its common aim of serving the Prince and Princess, both of whom for their part seemed equally united in keeping away from public gaze whatever private difficulties their marriage might have been experiencing. Even those well acquainted with the rumours, such as Georgina Howell, writing in the Sunday Times on 18 September 1988, could still reassure themselves that ‘Diana [has decided] as royal women so often have … to make the best of a cool marriage instead of fighting it.’ Ominously she added, ‘… but she lacks romance. The danger is that she may find it.’ Given what was later disclosed to Andrew Morton about the Princess’s love life at the time, this understatement is touching in its innocence. Captain Hewitt had already been on the scene for some time, carrying his own supply of romantic sugarlumps – and self-denial was never her strong point.

That first night, as I inched past the gates of KP in the London traffic, such thoughts were the merest inkling, easily pushed to the back of my mind. In the years that followed, however, they grew from idle speculation to grim reality.

Had I known it, the signs were all there from the beginning.

THREE

UNDER THE THUMB

The Princess’s footsteps sounded hurried. I had been listening to them for about five minutes now, standing in the semi-gloom of the KP hallway. Upstairs, she was preparing for a day of engagements out of London – what we called an ‘awayday’. Her high heels struck a distinctive note as she marched back and forth from her bedroom to the sitting room with, it seemed, several rapid diversions en route. To my nervous ears she was beginning to sound impatient. There was something increasingly agitated about her pacing.

Suddenly I heard a phone ring and there were a few minutes of silence, broken only by the low murmur of her voice. Then the footsteps started again, back to the bedroom, only this time more urgently, as I imagined her checking the time remaining before we were due to leave. She was fanatically punctual.

It was my first ‘real’ day at work – the first day on which I was going out with the Princess. This was my chance to begin to see the world through her eyes, to experience what it was like to be royal, only slightly second-hand.

In a pattern that was repeated a thousand times over the next seven years, I waited in the darkness at the foot of the stairs and listened to her flitting from room to room on the floor above, trying to guess what mood she was in and what sort of day lay ahead of us. The phone call could have been from anybody. The tone of her voice was neutral and I could not catch the words. I hoped whoever it was would not keep her talking – I had already learned enough to know she would be irritated if we started late. Best of all, whoever it was might make her laugh and send us smiling all the way to the helicopter.

A door opened and closed. At the top of the stairs she paused, straightening her skirt. Her blue Catherine Walker suit and executive blow-dry told you that here was a woman who was ready to take a grip on the day. The phone call must have been OK, because she cantered down the stairs, spotted the new boy and smiled, holding out her hand to me. It was to be seven years and a million royal handshakes later before we shook hands again. Then it was to say goodbye.

‘Hello again, Patrick. We didn’t scare you off then!’

I bowed and mumbled something.

‘This is a crazy place to work,’ she continued, heading rapidly for the front door, ‘but on this team we all started as outsiders, so we know how strange it feels to begin with.’

The lady-in-waiting and I followed her outside. After the darkness of the house the sun seemed dazzling. A car took us the short distance to Perk’s Field – a green offshoot of Hyde Park – where a shiny red helicopter was waiting. ‘Yuck!’ said the Princess through smiling teeth. ‘The flying tumble dryer. I just hope it won’t be bumpy. I hate bumps.’ Later I came to hate bumps too; not because they made me airsick, but because bumps, like rain or hail or the temperature of her tea, could quickly become the excuse for a mood. Moods were what we all dreaded.

As we clattered eastwards over London’s rooftops, the Princess ignored the view and concentrated on her copy of Vogue. The Queen’s Flight always kept a well-stocked magazine rack. After Vogue she might reach for a tabloid newspaper – usually the Daily Mail – and furrow her brow over Dempster. Often there was a royal story. That was a good way of starting a mood too.

Luckily it was noisy on our 30-minute flight, so there was no need to try to talk. On the occasions when I really had to communicate, shouting into her ear at close range made me paranoid about my breath. She had the same fear and regularly squirted Gold Spot into her famously perfect mouth.

Five minutes before landing the crewman signalled that we were nearly there. The Princess began rapid, expert work with the compact and lip gloss. With something of a shock, I realized the perfect complexion was not completely perfect close up. When I discovered her fluctuating intake of chocolate and sweets I could understand why – and sympathize too, as I contemplated the visible effects of a courtier’s diet on my own appearance.

A generous blast of hair spray always followed. Months later, when she was sharing the helicopter with her husband, she made (almost) all of us laugh by theatrically overdoing this emission of ozone-hostile gases.

As our destination – an Essex seaside town – hove into sight, she pulled out her briefing notes and gave them a cursory final glance. She was very good at her homework and usually swotted up the main points of the programme before she left the Palace. If her staff had done their planning properly, the day would run pretty much automatically. If she did not feel inspired to do more, all she really had to do was smile, shake hands and drop the occasional well-worn royal platitude. Except, of course, she usually was inspired to do more. Once on duty she hardly ever coasted. She took a professional pride in giving her public full value, which was one reason why they were ready to wait in vast numbers in any weather for even a fleeting glimpse of her.

As the helicopter’s rotor blades wound slowly to a stop, she undid her seatbelt and stooped by the door, waiting for it to be slid open, poised like an athlete before the starting gun. She gave a final tug to her jacket, smoothed her skirt and caught my eye. ‘Another episode in the everyday story of royal folk!’ she laughed, putting the newcomer at ease. Look, she was saying, I’m human, friendly, approachable. You’re really lucky to be working for me…

As I watched her step nimbly out of the helicopter into the excited noise and good-natured bustle of a busy day of good works, I had no trouble agreeing. Disenchantment – hers and mine – came only slowly. That day, the picture was brand new, glossy and colourful. As she visited a factory, a hospital and an old folks’ home I saw the royal celebrity at work: professional to her fingertips but still a flirt; ready to laugh with those who laughed – and ready to make them laugh when nerves got the better of them; ready to comfort those who were weeping.

Halfway through the day we stopped for lunch. Lunches on an engagement were usually planned as buffets so that she could circulate among as many guests as possible. But circulating and eating do not mix – you risk spraying sausage roll over people when you speak – so the Princess would ‘retire’ to a private room for a loo stop and a quick bite before joining the throng.

These short breaks were a great relaxation for her in the middle of a tiring day. ‘Have a drink, boys!’ she would say to me and the policeman if a bottle of wine had been left for us. She would usually restrict herself to fizzy water and nibble a sandwich, but if she was tense she might do real justice to the caterer’s pride and joy and eat forkfuls of salad and cold meat followed by pudding – or sometimes the other way round.

Without warning, she could be ravenous for sweet things. The wise lady-in-waiting carried fruit gums in her handbag and the chauffeur kept a stock of emergency chocolate in the car. I frequently watched her eat a whole bar of fruit-and-nut between engagements. Suddenly aware of her behaviour, she would insist on everyone else eating sweets too. No wonder I spent much of the time feeling queasy.

It was not until later that I recognized these mini-binges as comfort eating, vain attempts to console herself for her emotional hunger. The roots undoubtedly lay in childhood unhappiness. The broken home of her early years has been well documented and she spoke to me often of tensions with her father. ‘Once when he took me to school,’ she said, ‘I stood on the steps and screamed, “If you leave me here you don’t love me!”’

I did not probe into the Princess’s childhood, but in a way I had no need to. Photographs of the teenage Diana Spencer show her at a glance to be knowing, dull-eyed and self-conscious. Throughout my time with the Princess there were occasional signs of the scars of earlier traumas: insecurity in her attractiveness, a passionate need for unconditional love, an obsession with establishing emotional control, and a sabotaging approach to relationships. The distrust of men and the chronically poor image she had of herself told their own story.

The Princess was bulimic for most of the time I knew her. Despite a continuous battle with the condition, which she was popularly supposed to have won, she often suffered recurrent attacks. These were most frequent when the strains in her marriage were simultaneously driving her to comfort eating while fuelling her innate self-doubt.

Once – on a hungry day – she took a big bite at a prawn sandwich. A solitary prawn escaped and fell with deadly accuracy down her front, disappearing into her cleavage. She squeaked with surprise and looked inside her jacket. I waited for the prawn to reappear, but it failed to do so.

‘Bloody thing’s stuck!’ she said through a mouthful of sandwich.

‘Poor prawn,’ I said lamely.

‘Bloody lucky prawn!’ she corrected me, turning away to deal with the intruder. I took the hint. Modesty was for her to indulge in when she wanted to. It was not for me to question her absolute desirability, even in fun, even by a syllable.

Perhaps surprisingly, there was never a ban on food jokes. Maybe it was her way of dealing with the potential embarrassment of the whole subject. I was later struck by the courage – or foolhardiness – of her self-mocking reference to constantly ‘sticking my head down the loo’.

Later that day we flew back to London. As the helicopter lifted from the town park, so the tensions of the day lifted from her shoulders. It was instant party time. Now came the jokes and the gossip. Nobody cared about shouting. My newcomer’s ears struggled to believe what they heard. Was this the same Princess who an hour ago had been the saintly hospital visitor?

‘What d’you get if you cross a nun with an apple?’ she yelled above the engine noise.

‘I don’t know, Ma’am. What do you get if you cross a nun with an apple?’ I replied, looking dumbly at the lady-in-waiting to see if this was normal behaviour. Her determined smile indicated that it was.

‘A computer that won’t go down on you!’ shrieked the Princess, doubling up with mirth.

Even as I obediently joined in the laughter, I noted the sadness behind my new boss’s taste in humour. She would not know how to switch a computer on, let alone use it for long enough to see it crash; and as for the oral sex … as a joke, it was reassuringly remote. The daring and crudity gave her the necessary thrill. Even if she did not fully understand what she was saying, she knew it would shock and that was what she wanted. It was the safest of safe sex.

The theme of sex was a standard feature of her joke repertoire. She seemed immune to the embarrassment it might cause others. Careful never to exceed the bounds of good taste while in the public eye, her reticence was thrown to the winds as soon as she felt she was in relatively safe surroundings. Even then her judgement was erratic. Many times I cringed as her crude jokes and braying laughter scandalized the delicate ears of outsiders such as Queen’s Flight crews, diplomats and charity officials. The desire to shock outweighed any possible pleasure she might have gained from the humour of what she said.

The same desire was apparent in her infantile mockery of other members of the royal family – though only behind their backs. Thus her husband was referred to as ‘The Boy Wonder’ or ‘The Great White Hope’, while her father-in-law was labelled ‘Stavros’ and her in-laws generally as ‘The Germans’.

Even the objects of her compassion were considered fair game. All this I could laugh off, however uneasily, as her way of coping with stress. However, the looks of worried disbelief on strangers’ faces – and those of junior staff too, worst of all – made me realize that other people’s feelings were less important to her than her desire for gratification.

By the time we were back at the Palace front door the Princess was cool and controlled again. We stood awkwardly, waiting to be dismissed. Each in turn, she held our eyes and inclined her head. We bowed.

This, I learned, was when she looked back over the day and judged our loyalty. If she failed to make eye contact – ‘blanked’ you, in the jargon – you had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Suddenly the jokes in the helicopter seemed a long time ago. I tried to guess if I had laughed enough.

‘Thank you all very much,’ she said, her voice now carefully neutral. But I got the message. Yes, I can be fun, but I can also choose to be an imperious madam – and now I own you.

She disappeared back up the stairs. In the silence I heard her footsteps once again, heading towards her bedroom. The door slammed. Slowly I let out my breath. This job was going to be interesting.

I drove home slowly, my mind filled with images of the day. Most vivid, of course, were those of the Princess. I had to admit, I was surprised. From that first lunch and, I suppose, from the gossipy things I had read about her, I had expected a well-meaning but essentially shallow person, perhaps in need of my manly support and worldly wisdom – a sort of royal super-Sloane. Instead, what I had seen was a polished and confident performance from a professional celebrity. Every gesture, every glance and every word – at least in public – had been consciously planned. Sometimes the planning had taken only a split second, but that simply showed how quickly she thought and how sharp were her public-pleasing instincts.

There was no doubt about it. Behind the good looks and the expensive grooming there was much more than the bimbo caricature to which her critics – even then – would have liked to limit her. That first day I saw, from her effect on the people she met, that she had a powerful, even hypnotic, charisma. Later I learned that it had the ability to conceal many flaws, or at least compensate for them.

Of all the day’s new impressions, it was perhaps the Princess’s fondness for crude humour that sat least comfortably with the public image which until now had been my only guide to her personality. When she was relaxed, the Princess’s vocabulary and verbal mannerisms were pure Sloane Ranger. Consonants were an optional extra, so words often emerged in a lazy drawl. This suited the subject matter, which in private was not always very elevated. The cruder the humour, the more her verbal discipline deserted her, as if it shared our wish suddenly to be far away, preferably with someone not expected to ascend the throne.

When she was serious, however, she commanded phrases and delivery that could make her a witty and clever conversationalist. Her speaking style was that of the verbal sprinter not the marathon runner. I doubt if anybody ever suffered a Princess of Wales monologue, except possibly when seeing her on Panorama, but many will remember – most with pleasure – being on the receiving end of one of her quicksilver one-liners.

These deserve special mention because they played a key part in shaping the impression she left. On public occasions, amplified by the hushed, deferential expectation which is the royal visitor’s usual reception, her spontaneity cut through the self-conscious small talk that thrives on British social nervousness. She reacted instinctively against pomposity – and just think how much of that she had to endure. Her favoured weapon was the verbal pinprick that released the speaker and the audience from the tension which paralyses truthful communication.

She might sit with an audience of drug addicts (or mental patients or battered wives) listening to a turgid briefing on their problems from an overly earnest therapist before leaning forward with a smile and perfect timing to whisper loudly, ‘Does he always go on like this?’ In the laughter that she knew would follow, pent-up emotion was suddenly released and contact made between Princess and pariah. As an added test – or entertainment – the turgid speaker could pretend to laugh too.

This technique, honed in a hundred hospitals, drop-in centres, outreach projects and community facilities, gave her public that feeling of intimate knowledge which is the secret ingredient of devotion. Also, like all really effective spontaneity, it knew its own boundaries. Even her wittiest remark contained a nugget of sympathy, understanding or concern. She may have been short of O levels, but she never dropped a public clanger, never mocked disability or disfigurement.

Except in the car going home, of course. Then the stress of so much emotional giving could be relieved with some pretty unedifying outbursts. By then, however, she had done her duty, left hope with the hopeless and smiles on stricken faces. We told her so, since nobody else was going to, swallowing our scruples to join in the desperate humour that she often called on in place of joy.

It was a very different world from the one I was used to. I was already beginning to learn that early impressions – whether of my new boss or my new surroundings – must never be taken at face value. I also knew that I was not there as a reward. I was there to work. Thus I quickly began to comprehend that being in royal service might provide a rather luxurious working environment, but only at my peril would I ever feel in any way entitled to it. The order of things had been made clear in the Princess’s glance as we waited to be dismissed at the end of the day: she owned us, not the other way around.

In the years that followed there were times when the grandeur and privilege of my surroundings seemed to mock my efforts at running the newest royal household. I realized, though, that it was a healthy sign sometimes to be at odds with those surroundings. In fact, I came to view with suspicion anyone who seemed to take to them too easily. I already had an idea that our royal employers could be jealous of their inheritance and suffered our intrusion only as long as we were useful – or amusing. I resolved to be both to the Princess of Wales, given the chance.

During that first day out with her, I had been surprised by her conflicting displays of compassion and indifference. I had been shocked by her crude humour when out of the public eye, some of it at the expense of those she was visiting, but I had also recognized its value as a safety valve for the stresses of spending so much time being sympathetic to those in desperate suffering or need. Even so, it would have been hard to serve someone who was so ready to find humour in such tragic situations. Luckily for my own peace of mind, I quickly learned that much of the Princess’s compassion was very definitely the genuine article.

As I watched her at a dying child’s bedside, holding the girl’s newly cold hand and comforting the stricken parents, she seemed to share their grief. Not self-consciously like a stranger, not distantly like a counsellor, not even through any special experience or deep insight. Instead it just seemed that a tranquillity gathered around her. Into this stillness the weeping mother and heartbroken father poured their sorrow and there, somehow, it was safe. The young woman with the smart suit and soulful eyes had no answers for them, but they felt that somewhere inside she knew at least a part of what they were feeling. That was all the moment needed.

The Princess did have some experience of what they were feeling, and she usually managed to let it appear rather more, but the suffering she felt had none of the merciful clarity of bereavement. As I slowly discovered, it was dark and complex and grew from years of stunted emotional growth. The compassion she showed others was not drawn from some deep supply within her. Rather, it was a reflection of the attention she herself craved. Once we had returned her to the lonely privacy of her palace, I sensed she had little left over for herself.

Instead, she increasingly settled for the illusion of compassion. Reading about herself as ‘the caring Princess’, she felt a soothing glow of achievement, but the reality was that her compassion came to be reserved largely for the cameras. It was not exclusively so, because along with a cynical use of her saintly reputation there was an erratic but genuine kindness. Even this struggled to remain anonymous, however. The surprised recipients of flowers or sympathetic messages after some well-publicized tragedy might justifiably have suspected that their good fortune – artlessly shared with a local newspaper – just added to the overall illusion.

As for the cumulative, corrosive effect of this on her own sense of self-worth, I was to discover that it could be severe. Even at the outset I could see that receiving credit for virtues she did not possess could not satisfy the hunger for recognition that burned within the Princess of Wales.

Gradually I slipped into my new routine, wearing the same few suits, parking under the same tree in The Mall, giving the same cheery greeting to Gladys the St James’s housekeeper, and offering up the same daily prayer for continued survival. Richard took his beer mat to his new office, the Princess began to ask for me instead of him, and I began to look forward to opening the return Bag with something less than panic.

After my first day out with her, my urgent priority was to gain confidence in planning the Princess’s public appearances. An early milestone came with my first solo recce itself. The engagement was to be quite a routine London affair – the official opening of an office and resource centre for a small children’s charity, followed by a reception to meet the usual mixture of fundraisers, charity workers and local officials.

In later years the recce might have taken me three-quarters of an hour – 15 minutes for the recce itself and 30 minutes to chat up and generally get the measure of the hosts. As the rawest apprentice, however, I must have spent nearly two hours pacing out every inch of the route, nominating press positions and marking places for individual presentations.

Then I changed everything and started again. I failed to get the measure of the hosts as well, but I think it can be safely concluded that they were very patient people.

From this I learned the importance of not hesitating to change my mind if I thought it necessary. However tempting it was to cultivate an air of infallibility, complacency was a risky companion when planning a royal visit and often led me into embarrassing U-turns. Such was my spurious authority – and their customary good manners – that few hosts objected and some, I think, even enjoyed the chance to prolong the royal experience. Generally, though, changing my mind – like confessing to my mistakes – was a pleasure to be indulged in sparingly.

Again and again I felt my lack of experience, but surprisingly quickly the time I spent on recces began to shrink. Even 15 minutes eventually became too much for some engagements. By then I knew what would work and what would not. The extra time was needed only to reassure myself that my distilled experience as passed on to the hosts would be treated like the politely phrased commandments I felt them to be.

I knew, for example, that the Princess refused to be rushed when meeting people. If time was limited the only option was to reduce the number of people she met – not, as some hosts seemed determined to try, merely to persuade her to hurry up. Nothing was more calculated to make her slow down even more.

I had seen that she liked to be punctual and well briefed, preferably in humorous, bite-sized chunks. ‘YRH will remember Mr X. Last time you visited he forgot to bow; he curtsied instead!’

She also liked plenty of elbow room when she was in the public eye. Apart from a protection officer, she preferred the gaggle of officials and dignitaries who inevitably accompanied her to keep well out of her way. I sometimes thought the equerry and lady-in-waiting were mainly there to conduct a type of genteel crowd control. With sharp elbows and distracting small talk, we became expert in buying our boss the uncrowded stage she needed to perform at her best.

I knew where the arrival line-up should be positioned, where the girl with the posy should stand, where the ribbon should be cut and where the press pen should be sited. The Princess liked short line-ups, preferably with spouses excluded. The girl with the posy should be at the end of the line, well positioned for the cameras because there was always a moment of amused miscommunication – small fingers reluctant to let go at the crucial moment – as the flowers were handed over. If not, she would laughingly contrive it. The flowers should be in neutral colours, in theory to avoid clashing with the royal outfit, and unwired.

She liked the ribbon (or the plaque or the sapling or the pharmaceutical research laboratory) to provide a backdrop that identified the cause being supported and, ideally, someone very young or very old on hand to ‘assist’ photogenically with the cutting, unveiling or digging. She preferred the press to be well penned, unobtrusively positioned and silent but for the whirr of their motor drives. Muffled yelps of delight were permitted and not infrequent, but groans and calls of ‘Just one more!’ usually met the same contrary response as requests to hurry up.

She did not like the press party – unkindly termed the ‘rat pack’ – to get too close. Cameras, flash guns and the dreaded boom microphone could all ruin the carefully arranged spontaneity that we tried to make her trademark. But nor did she like the pack too far away. She traded skilfully on the knowledge that they needed her just as much as she needed them, so she theatrically ‘endured’ their presence and could be sharp with her staff if any cameraman got too far out of line. All the players in this game knew it was a mutually advantageous conspiracy, however, and played by the rules accordingly. She gave them the shots both they and she needed, and they responded with enduring devotion.

I learned the crucial importance of seeing all planning decisions through royal rather than mortal eyes. In my ignorance I had imagined that, as with some naval chores, royalty regarded public duties as just that: duties which had to be performed as a matter of necessity, to be enjoyed if possible, to be endured if not and all to be accomplished with a noble appreciation of the greater good being served – or at least with the satisfaction of a job well done. Now it slowly dawned on me that the process was more complex and allowed the intrusion of other personal considerations. While some might see only the outward appearance of royal concern – in, say, a children’s hospice – the equerry has to allow for the emotional toll exacted by 90 minutes’ close involvement in a dozen harrowing accounts of family distress.

The engagements which required the greatest display of outward compassion (hospices were a case in point) were often those that drew deepest on the Princess’s reserves of inner goodwill and determination. I came to understand that, while showing sympathy with those in distress sometimes rewarded her with a virtuous glow, it also emphasized the loneliness with which her personal unhappiness had to be faced.

Surprisingly often, even the most efficient and well-run organization seemed unable to understand the simple practicalities of designing a visit programme. Often it was the humblest charity which had the clearest idea of how long could be spent talking to a certain number of patients and how welcome would be the obligatory shaking of influential but otherwise ungripping hands.

Watching it wrestle with such small considerations frequently seemed a measure of how well a management knew its own people. I quickly learned that the priority was not just to allocate the required number of minutes to a particular event. Frequently it was more important to practise ego-management, as a touchy official or departmental head hotly insisted on more time as if it were a measure of his importance or even – in extreme cases – his virility. Always to be pitied were those who would bear disappointing news home to their wives about the limit on line-up numbers, to the equal dismay of local hat-sellers.

Best of all were the organizations who simply explained what they hoped would happen during their royal visit and then left the rest to us, the assumed experts. Less welcome were those who had considered every detail and were then unwilling, understandably, to accommodate changes made for reasons that I could not tell them, such as the fact that the Princess would probably prefer to climb straight on the plane home rather than sit next to an old bore like you during lunch. Least welcome were those who introduced their plan with the words, ‘Now, you won’t have to help us with any of this. We know the ropes. We had the Duchess of Blank here in 1971 and it was a huge success …’

A lexicon of soothing phrases, excuses and explanations quickly became part of my visit-planning toolkit as ministers, matrons and monks were lulled into complying with a programme whose constraints they might often have found eccentric, trivial or even offensive. Over time, however, the necessary mannerisms of speech accumulated into an oleaginous patina which proved hard to shake off when talking to people outside my narrow field of work. Thus can courtly talk slip into insincerity.

The final step in the planning process was to walk the course. An obvious precaution, you might think, but with surprising regularity it was possible to encounter host organizations who had overlooked elementary considerations such as the time actually spent walking from one part of a building to another.

To be fair, this was partly because their minds were quite properly concentrated on the people at the expense of less exciting aspects such as timing or camera angles. Also, until you had experienced it, it was difficult to estimate accurately just how quickly a 26-year-old Princess with the ground-covering abilities of a mustang could move between the car and the briefing room, the lab and the packing centre, the day room and the chapel, the royal box and the touchline, the presidential jet and the guard of honour, and so on. It did sometimes seem, however, that concerned hosts were expecting a visitor with the frailty of the Queen Mother rather than a young woman whose athleticism was becoming legendary.

FOUR

DOUBLE UP

Once I had achieved a shaky confidence in organizing the Princess’s UK engagements, I could look forward to the challenge of planning her overseas visits. I remembered pictures I had seen of the Princess looking cool and compassionate in a dozen exotic foreign locations. This, I thought, would be where my new job started to become a bit more glamorous. The reality, of course, was that it took a lot of very unglamorous hard work to reach the media-friendly results that she – and her public – expected.

I have always taken undue pleasure even from aimless travel, and to be offered transport and accommodation on such a royal scale and be paid to indulge my puerile desire seemed the best part of the job description. During my early days at St James’s I heard an endless travelogue of tour stories, some of dizzying tallness. As I was to learn, even in exaggerated form these tales struggled to convey the reality of transporting our royal circus to foreign countries. Not to be outdone, over the years I developed my own improbable repertoire of traveller’s yarns from which, if nothing else, my audiences learned that the overseas tour encapsulated in concentrated form all the best and worst aspects of life with the Waleses.

Tours were a big challenge for our royal employers too. The task of representing the country overseas as a kind of super-ambassador makes great demands on their reserves of diplomacy, tact, confidence and patience – not to mention the royal sense of humour, digestion and general physical and mental constitution. There are therefore big demands for both external comforts and internal strength. These must somehow be supplied from the foreign surroundings in which duty has deposited the royal traveller and from internal resources, reinforced by years of heredity and training. However gilded the cage, though, no guest palace provides the familiar, reassuring touches of home.

To help achieve the external comforts, the Waleses usually travelled with a surprisingly large entourage. On one of my first tours the party totalled 26. As well as more senior officials such as private secretaries and press secretaries, the cast included a doctor, four policemen, three secretaries, a butler, a valet, an assistant valet, a dresser, an assistant dresser, two chefs and a hairdresser.

Not surprisingly, we also needed a baggage master to look after the small mountain of luggage. In order to achieve the desired result of making the Prince and Princess feel that their temporary accommodation was a real ‘home from home’, an extraordinary amount of personal kit had to be carried with us. Everything from music equipment to favourite organic foods had their special containers – and came high on the list of priorities.

In-flight meals were seldom straightforward either. In later years when travelling on solo tours, the Princess was happy enough to choose from standard airline menus. This also applied to journeys with the Queen’s Flight, who usually found reliable airline caterers whatever the exotic destination. Before the separation, however, the Princess took a leaf out of her husband’s rather more fastidious book, and while their accompanying staff demolished the output of the British Airways first-class flight kitchen, our employers would pick at home-grown organic concoctions in Tupperware boxes like pensioners on an outing. They were a lot slimmer and fitter than most of us, of course, but it still looked like a pretty joyless experience.

Meanwhile, host government officials, Embassy staff and senior members of the Wales household (the collective term for private secretaries and other top management) laboured to produce a programme befitting the stature of the visitors. The planes, boats, trains and cars – as well as the cameras, crowds, guards of honour and banquets – combined to create the overall theatrical effect without which no royal visit can be really royal. Adjusted for scale, the same principles apply equally to a visit to a crèche as much as to a continent. Add the scrutiny of the press and the unpredictability of foreign hosts’ resources, and it is little wonder that touring is seen as one of the greatest tests royal service can provide. Little wonder either that it demands the full set of royal stage props to achieve its full effect.

Every month or so a list of forthcoming engagements was circulated in the office. For many excellent reasons it was treated as a confidential document, though whether to thwart terrorists or merely to baffle the Queen’s Flight was never fully explained. Its colloquial name was Mole News, since it was assumed that its list of dates and places would form the leaker’s basic fare. By the time of my arrival, however, the leaking was beginning to emanate from more exalted sources such as royal ‘friends’ and other thinly disguised mouthpieces for the Prince and Princess themselves. Eventually Mole News practically lost its original innocent purpose as a simple planning aid and became instead just another piece on the board game of misinformation in the intelligence war between them. As they drew up their diaries with more and more of an eye to the media impact of their activities, information on each other’s future movements became vital in the popularity contest that they were both beginning to wage.

Soon after my arrival I had scanned this programme eagerly, looking for my first chance of an overseas trip. Disappointingly it seemed that I would have to wait almost a year before I could join the veterans whose briefcases sported the tour labels which I so coveted. I was scheduled to accompany Their Royal Highnesses on a tour of the Gulf States in March 1989. At least, I thought, it was a part of the world I knew slightly and liked a lot. Also it would be hot and I would at last have an excuse to wear that expensive tropical uniform – the preferred choice of most officers who had seen Top Gun.

In Mole News joint engagements were indicated with an asterisk. What had not yet been widely noticed, however, was that asterisks were becoming a rarity. In fact, by the late eighties joint appearances at home were already mostly confined to set-piece events such as the Queen’s Birthday Parade, the Garter Ceremony, Ascot and the staff Christmas lunch. The same trend of disappearing asterisks was visible in the overseas programme. Solo expeditions had always been a feature of royal overseas work, but the Waleses were noticeably beginning to make more and more of their overseas trips alone. This was bad for publicity – it just fuelled rumours about the state of the marriage – but for staff in the firing line it was also a bit of a relief. The coup de grâce was finally administered to joint tours by the Korea trip of November 1992, but the signs of a terminal divergence of interest were already perceptible in January 1989 when I joined the Gulf recce party at Heathrow.

Just as joint engagements gave the Prince and Princess the chance to work together (however reluctantly), so they drew their respective staffs into cautious co-operation. When they were on form, we saw our employers put on a double act which carried the world before it. For our part, we enjoyed the opportunity to put aside the growing estrangements of the office and reclassify our differences as merely interesting variations of technique.

The Prince’s team provided the lead. Under the direction of the private secretary or his deputy, His Royal Highness’s press secretary and senior personal protection officer (PPO) were joined by either his own or his wife’s equerry, depending on whose turn it was to swap the pressures of the St James’s office for the pressures of its temporary foreign equivalent. On the tour itself this would mean that I would primarily be in attendance on the Prince, particularly if any of the engagements called for military uniform to be worn. The Princess would take a lady-in-waiting and forgo the services of her equerry unless he could negotiate his absence from the Prince’s entourage, a loss which His Royal Highness bore with increasing fortitude as time passed.

The gloss on my picture of royal tours soon began to look pretty patchy. I would be junior boy on the recce team – the private secretary’s scribe, memory and general bag-carrier. On the tour I would also be responsible for transport, accommodation, the travelling office and a million undefined administrative details. The horrifying truth slowly dawned that I would take the rap for the great majority of potential cock-ups, and so it proved.

I found myself treading on eggshells even before I had left the UK. Taking leave of the Princess was never easy, even when going abroad ‘on duty’ as I would be for this recce. Arrivals and departures were important to her. They were landmarks in an otherwise monotonous landscape of public and private routine. They presented opportunities for her to make a point. The simple exchanges involved often gained an extra theatrical value as she expressed delight with a greeting or wistful regret at a parting. Her natural ability to influence moods was at its strongest when first and last impressions could be created. This was a characteristic ideally suited to the life of transitory encounters that she led in public.

Also, I found that I missed her. This was partly sentiment – employed to serve and, metaphorically, to defend her, I sometimes felt a vague sense of negligence if separated from her for long. As I grew less impressionable, this was supplemented by a healthy suspicion of what she might be doing or saying in my absence.

In her moments of greatest doubt, any absence for any reason could be exploited to support a passing prejudice. Thus going away on holiday could provoke an envy bordering on resentment, apparently impervious to her own frequent absences on ski slopes or beaches. She paid lip service to the need for staff ‘R and R’, but seldom missed a chance to make you feel just a little bit guilty for taking it. Going away on recces was scarcely less suspect. Even when I knew I was heading for a tough recce far from home in an inhospitable land, she somehow managed to make me feel like a truant, if not an actual deserter.

She would look up wearily from a desk that had suddenly become conspicuously crowded and give me a well-practised, reproachful look. ‘It doesn’t seem fair on you’ – by which she meant her – ‘to be sending you away. We’re so busy at the moment.’ (We were always ‘so busy’.)

‘Well, Ma’am, you know I can’t get out of it – I’m duty for this tour. And everything’s up to date here …’ She looked meaningfully at the papers on her desk. ‘And I won’t be away for long. I’ll phone.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘And take pictures. Then you can see what I’m letting you in for!’

‘Hmm.’

That was obviously an idea too far. I had failed to lighten the atmosphere and it took the application of several airline gin and tonics to ease the feeling that I was abandoning her.

That feeling never entirely left me and, if anything, it got worse as the years passed and her position in the hierarchy began to be threatened. She once memorably had me paged at Heathrow as I was about to leave for a decidedly non-recreational recce of Japan. Expecting some nameless catastrophe, I took her call with a heavy heart. She knew exactly where I was and that I was about to miss my plane, yet she spent 10 minutes cross-examining me on a minor diary item months in the future. Of course I had none of the paperwork with me and my memory refused to come to my rescue in the crisis. From her voice, the Princess’s loneliness was transparently obvious, even when expressed in the reassuringly familiar format of chiding her scatterbrained private secretary. A call that began with contrived recrimination ended with genuine good wishes for my success and a quick return. No wonder I felt a heel.

Especially when feeling beleaguered – not uncommon – she would sometimes wonder aloud whether a protection officer could not achieve just as much as the private secretary now shuffling in front of her, visibly champing for his club-class dinner. In some households it was true that an experienced PPO could more than adequately organize security, logistics and even domestic arrangements, but the requirements of the Waleses and their entourage demanded attention to a range and depth of subjects that were beyond the reasonable capacities of any single person.

Local British Embassies could also not be expected to shoulder more than the already considerable extra workload our visits entailed. A sensible rule was therefore followed by all with responsibility for royal programmes: ‘Never recce anything you’re not going to visit, but never visit anything you haven’t recced.’ There was nothing more unsettling than arriving blind at an unknown destination for a high-profile engagement.

The other golden rule – ‘Avoid surprises’ – was one you broke at your peril. Whatever the hardships (or compensations), everything that could be recced was recced, regardless of raised eyebrows from envious office-bound colleagues or royal employers scenting a skive. The office folklore of recce excesses provided rich pickings for anyone wishing to believe that these foreign planning trips were not all work and no play. In due course I could add to them myself, albeit discreetly.

It was perfectly true that recceing gave you the chance to experience many royal delights twice over – and without the attentions of the press pack. Had I not flown all over the bush in Zimbabwe in search of the right refugee camp? Or lunched alone with six Indonesian princesses anxious to practise their royal conversational skills? Or even risen at dawn to see the sunrise from a frontier fort in the Khyber Pass? Too much of this kind of reminiscence could produce jaundice in the most tolerant listener, and the Princess seldom fell into that category except when on duty. I sometimes unfairly felt that there was nothing like another’s good fortune to cloud her sunny outlook. Nor was there anything more guaranteed to stir up royal displeasure than the thought that those travelling on their coat-tails were enjoying the ride.

So if the Princess asked, apparently kindly, if your room in the guest palace was comfortable, it was wise not to make too much of its huge TV set, bottomless minibar or big fluffy towels. She was not really that interested, except to find reasons for feeling resentful or exploited.

It could have gone either way, therefore, but when I said goodbye to her on the eve of my departure for the Kuwait recce she was touchingly solicitous, concerned for the hard work I faced and anxious to let me know that I would be missed. This reflected her good nature. It also reflected her tendency to see duty on her husband’s behalf – which this would largely be – as an unenviable hardship. I later concluded that it was also evidence of her foresight in realizing that this was not going to be one of those recces that anyone would sensibly envy.

Twenty-four hours later I lay in the darkness and shivered. I had not expected to feel cold in the Persian Gulf and this dusty chill had a penetrating quality. I was dog tired, but sleep was impossible. The Embassy residence was quite small and, as a junior visitor, I had been given a room that could have been used in the fight against government cuts as convincing proof that there was no feather-bedding in this corner of the Diplomatic Service. I soon started rummaging in my suitcase for extra clothes that I had not packed. My thoughts turned enviously to my companions who, because of the lack of official accommodation, had been exiled to the nearest five-star American hotel.

The shivering was not just caused by the cold. The Ambassador’s anecdotes, though intended to amuse and inform, had also contained warnings about the pitfalls awaiting us in the protocol departments of our later destinations in Bahrein, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

I felt oppressed by our responsibilities, especially my own. I was scared stiff, in fact. I have never needed much excuse to indulge in a good bout of worrying and it often has the beneficial side effect of displacing my habitual lethargy. This time, however, I realized I had better reason than usual to feel apprehensive. A tour could be judged as successful against a host of different criteria – there were as many opinions as there were observers and any credit could therefore be widely distributed. No such latitude applied to the unsuccessful tour. I knew that if the verdict on our Gulf expedition was unfavourable, in the scramble to avoid the ensuing derision I would be at a disadvantage. Royal displeasure is an unstable pyrotechnic, but I had already observed that it favoured soft targets – and I was pretty sure that they came no softer than the apprentice equerry.

Even more worrying was the discovery that this regal wrath could be directed almost at will by those whose domestic responsibilities kept them closest to the royal person at its less royal moments. It may be true that no man is a hero to his valet, but it was a law of Palace survival that only a hero (and a foolhardy one at that) would disoblige a royal valet and expect to escape the inevitable explosion. I now had almost unlimited power to disoblige valets and their ilk. One poisoned word from them would drop me deep in the mire. Two poisoned words, and I might as well run away to sea, assuming the Navy would have me back.

The reason we gave to sceptical hosts when they politely queried our extensive and precise domestic requirements was that to give of their best our employers had to feel that a little piece of KP was awaiting them at the end of an arduous day’s hot and dusty engagements. In this need for domestic predictability they perhaps echoed the travel-weary businessman’s preference for hotels whose location in the world is easily guessed from the name given to the bar, or the bartender.

Both being rather exacting in their personal requirements, the Prince and Princess induced an understandable nervousness in the valet and dresser, who would bear the brunt of any shortcomings. They in turn developed powers of critical invective that would be the envy of Michelin inspectors. Their judgement in such matters was absolute and would be shared sooner or later by the Prince and Princess. It was thus the equerry’s over-riding task on the recce to ensure that they never had cause to exercise their awesome power to turn cold toast (or a sticking window, or a hard mattress) into a tour-wrecking catastrophe.

As I dozed fitfully on my own lumpy Embassy mattress, I scared myself into a cold sweat with visions of royal domestic disaster. Missing baggage, inadequate transport, unpopular room allocations, unacceptable food … the list was endless. It was so unfair. Luck seemed to play such a huge part in deciding my success or failure. Every time – as the dream descended into nightmare – the vision ended with a posse of iron-wielding valets pursuing me, mouthing damning judgement on the arcane arrangements over which I had sweated blood.

I greeted my travelling companions blearily at breakfast. Their tasks all seemed so straightforward by comparison. No wonder they had all slept so well. Then I noticed John Riddell’s expression. The normal half-amused, donnish detachment was missing, replaced by a look of unusual preoccupation. It might have been the Kuwaiti version of an English breakfast staring back at him from his plate, but I preferred to believe, with relief, that he shared some of my anxiety.

In the exotic surroundings of the desert state – and with the excuse of jet lag and general mental disorientation – it was a struggle to remember that the basic rules of recceing were basically unchanged from those I was learning to apply in more mundane surroundings in Britain. To counteract this, I acquired the knack of dismissing my surroundings, however diverting, in order to concentrate on the simple staples of timing, route, press, protocol and security.

Begun as an act of self-preservation, it became a habit that eventually passed for professionalism. Sadly, it also meant that I was often oblivious to which great event or personality I was trying to organize, save for the need to contrive my courtier’s patter into a form I judged least provocative to the local culture. It is only now, years afterwards and without the benefit of even the sketchiest diary, that this lid of detachment has been edged aside by memories which have stood the test of time. Having remained so vivid, they are probably the only ones worth having – a thought that somewhat justifies my slothful scorn of the assiduous diarist.

Assiduous was not a description I felt I could apply to my performance on the Kuwait recce, except perhaps in comparison with our delegation as a whole. I was probably applying attitudes still shaped by the demands of the Navy, however, and had yet to realize fully the deceptive way in which the courtier’s imperturbable outer calm could be mistaken for ennui.

Against this background, you can perhaps imagine the trepidation with which I set off after breakfast to recce the Salaam guest palace. In an ominous development, none of my colleagues felt able to tear themselves away from their own duties in order to accompany me. The message was clear: this was definitely the equerry’s job and I was welcome to it.

Salaam means ‘welcome’ and nobody could doubt the sincerity of the Kuwaitis’ hospitality. Nonetheless, as I stood in the grandiose marble hallway of the Salaam palace my senses slowly alerted me to the fact that however grand the title, and however warm the welcome, our temporary home was going to give the entourage plenty on which to sharpen their critical faculties.

The livid green carpet emitted an unidentifiable musky odour, which was taken up and queasily repeated in the chemical whiff I caught from voluminous drapes and curtains that billowed in the air conditioning. Insecticide, I thought. Drains, I thought, as I checked the bathrooms. What’s that? I thought, as I peered into the subterranean kitchens.

Circular in design and labyrinthine in its floor plans, the guest palace offered a bewildering range of permutations when it came to allocating rooms to the tour party. There was, of course, a formula to guide ignorant equerries in this exacting science. Distance from the royal bedroom was not arbitrarily assigned and paid no regard at all to what an outsider might think the appropriate order by seniority. It was your job not your apparent status that determined your room.

Some, such as PPOs and valets, had to be close by. Most of the rest could be parked in an outer zone from which a short sprint could bring them to the door of the royal apartments, where they could cool their heels awaiting the summons. Others still were banished to the Intercontinental hotel down the road. These were the true fortunates, unless you counted royal proximity above reliable plumbing, crisp sheets, a minibar and direct-dial phone. Few did.

The days of the recce passed in a flurry of planning visits to clinics, palaces, museums, crèches, schools and even a camel race track. Everything had to be planned in minute detail – the protocol, the press, the security and the transport. Everything became blurred by fatigue and desert sand; and by the aftereffects of an intensive round of ex-pat entertainment. Down the Gulf the pattern was repeated, in Bahrein, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

Punch-drunk with planning and giddy with jet lag, I returned to London and managed to sell the draft programme successfully to the Princess, even though at times it threatened to remain just a confusing, technicolour jumble of memories.

It was six weeks before I returned to the Middle East. This time I was in charge of the small advance party that flew out ahead of the Prince and Princess to check on last-minute arrangements. To my dismay, instead of a few minor adjustments, I discovered that the programme needed quite major surgery. Since the recce, our hosts had made various ‘improvements’ which, though undoubtedly well intended, nevertheless posed a serious threat to the delicate structure of compromises that made up the final version approved by the Prince and Princess.

The Ambassador and his staff worked heroically to explain this and placate our puzzled hosts. At last a compromise was reached which left our original programme broadly recognizable, but I was still apprehensive as I prepared my uniform for the royal arrival next day. As if sensing my mood, several buttons chose that moment to come loose on my jacket. I clumsily set to work with the hotel repair kit, assailed by visions of bursting undone at a bad moment.

Later, I gave up the unequal struggle with my needle and thread and tackled the last of my chores for the evening. I phoned the Princess, as we had agreed I would. I imagined her at KP making her own last-minute preparations for departure in the morning. It seemed harder to imagine her waiting expectantly for me to phone.

This would not be an easy call, I thought, as I dialled the familiar number. The agreement was that I would tell her how I was getting on in general and, in particular, what she could expect to find when she finally stepped off the plane in Kuwait. She knew the programme was liable to change at short notice and, like any element of uncertainty in her public life, she found that very unsettling.

Should I tell her the changes I had been forced to agree to on my own initiative? Pre-tour morale – hers and mine – was fragile and I had no wish to incur her severe displeasure at this late stage. If I just presented her with a fait accompli when she arrived, however, I might face accusations of keeping her in the dark – a cardinal sin, if sometimes a necessary one. Perhaps I could fudge it…

‘Patrick!’ came a breathy voice. ‘I thought you must have fallen down an oil well. Where have you been?’ She giggled expectantly.

This was terrible. Often it was worse if she was nice. Goodwill expenditure was carefully noted in the royal ledger and there was usually a price to be paid sooner or later. Still, it might be worth testing. Should I tell her that new joke about the camel who applied for a sex change? Or would any sign of levity be seen as damning proof that I had been living the life of Riley in the sunshine?

‘Did you hear the one about the camel who—’

‘Patrick! I haven’t time for your smutty jokes now. Have you managed to sort the programme out? Assuming you haven’t been sitting by the pool all day.’

‘Well, there are a few small changes …’ I explained them briefly. The silence on the other end of the line was heavy with disapproval. When I had finished my excuses her voice acquired an ominous tone of reproach.

‘Patrick! All that extra work, and after such a long flight. We’ll be on our knees.’ It always switched to ‘we’ when she was trying to imply that I – or life in general – was being unfair.

‘Yes, Ma’am, but it’s serious stuff – it’s not just something to keep you occupied while the Prince does the grown-up bits – and it’ll give the press something to write about apart from what you’re wearing.’

There was a pause, and then a sigh. ‘So what you’re telling me, Patrick, is: “Shut up, Diana, and do your job.”’

‘Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that …’

‘Ha! I know you wouldn’t. All right, Patrick – I’ll do what my male nanny tells me.’

‘Thank you, Ma’am.’ Hmm. Male nanny. It could be worse. It was certainly worth a facetious parting shot. ‘Have a nice flight.’

The reply was a violent raspberry.

In the event, of course, everything did work – at least as far as most people could see. The royal VC-10 whistled to an ear-splitting halt precisely on time, raising the curtain on a show essentially as old as diplomacy itself. The stars smiled for the cameras, spoke their lines and performed their routines with the charm and ease the world had come to expect. The machinery we had laboured to set up whirred into action and carried us all along on a conveyor belt of engagements, each a one-act play before an audience as faithful to the script as we were.

Nobody saw the little dramas behind the scenes. Nothing stirred a ripple on the smooth public surface of the tour. There were no cameras to snap the Princess testing her mattress by bouncing on it. Nobody recorded the staff’s impromptu late-night revue, complete with the butler’s impersonation routine that had us crying tears of laughter into our whisky. No outsiders, fortunately, witnessed the other tears and tantrums that inevitably erupted from time to time in our highly strung party far from its home base.

In fact, memorably, it was an outsider – a hysterical military attaché – who caused one of the greatest dramas by threatening a soldier in our team with court martial for insubordination. The poor, choleric colonel did not realize that the offender was a vital part of the royal support system and hence beyond the reach of normal military censure. Later, he recovered sufficiently to try to wheedle an official portrait photo of the Prince and Princess out of me. These trinkets had a remarkable attraction for some people and I could see the attaché’s mantelpiece was not going to be complete without this happy snap. There were real tears in his eyes as I explained that he was not on his Ambassador’s list of those deemed worthy of such recognition.

Disaster always seemed a hair’s-breadth away. Usually the crises were self-inflicted, as with our departure from Bahrein. Until that point the whistle-stop visit for lunch with the ruler had lived up to its expectations as a stress-free interlude between the exertions of Kuwait and the Emirates. Everything had gone smoothly and we returned to the airport to resume our journey in a state approaching euphoria. The accompanying party were already installed back on the VC-10 and I could see their faces pressed against the portholes as they looked down at the departure ceremony at the foot of the aircraft steps.

With a final wave to their host, the Prince and Princess started to climb the steps to the forward door of the aircraft. The remaining members of the party, me included, hurried up our own set of stairs to the doorway further aft (a sensible piece of aeronautical class distinction for which the venerable VC-10 might have been specifically designed). Speed took precedence over dignity, because we knew that slick RAF practice demanded that the engines should be started as soon as the senior VIP passengers were aboard. Any underlings following in their wake had therefore better look sharp or be left behind.

Sure enough, as we clattered up the last few steps I heard the first of the four Conway jets start to whine into life. Suddenly there was an urgent call from below. ‘Patrick!’ I turned round. At the bottom of the steps one of the local Embassy staff was holding out a suitcase. Had I forgotten something? I racked my brains, ready to blush at the thought of some duty not done.

Then it hit me. The watches! This was the almost mythical bonus that awaited members of royal tour parties visiting certain countries where ancient customs of hospitality had survived into a more material age. The suitcase was filled with gold, cunningly disguised as wristwatches, and each member of the accompanying party, down to the most humble secretary, expected his or her share of the windfall. No wonder their noses had been pressed to the windows as my car drew up. I had almost forgotten the most important piece of luggage of them all.

Quickly I turned and ran back down the steps to the ground. Fervently thanking my guardian angel, I started the return climb to the beckoning doorway, swag secure in my clammy hand. Imagine going down in history as The Equerry Who Forgot The Rolexes…

Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the forward door was now firmly closed and a party of soldiers was hurriedly rolling the red carpet back towards the ceremonial dais from which our hosts were waving a final farewell. In my ears the Conways were rising to a crescendo. I did not have a second to spare.

With a final heave, I reached the platform at the top of the steps and thrust the suitcase at a large RAF figure who was blocking the doorway. ‘Quick, take this!’ The figure did not move. What was the matter with the idiot? ‘Hurry up! They’re waiting for us to go!’ I shouted above the steady roar of the jets. I could sense a dozen sets of eyes burning resentfully into my back. This stupid naval officer was delaying everything and spoiling the perfection of their departure ceremony. And what is the problem with our suitcase? Are our gifts unworthy?

The RAF figure was quite oblivious. ‘Has this item been security cleared?’ it asked impassively.

Still standing exposed on the platform, I felt a sudden rush of exasperated anger. ‘Of course it bloody well hasn’t! It’s a gift from the Emir and he’s watching us right now wondering what the f***’s the matter with it!’

‘I don’t care who it’s from,’ said the figure, still blocking the doorway. ‘It’s not coming on this aircraft until it’s been searched. It might be a bomb for all I know.’

‘All right then! You search it!’ I shouted, dropping the case at his feet and pushing past him into the cabin.

To his credit and my shame, he squatted on the platform under the baleful gaze of the Bahreini ruling family and the jubilant scrutiny of the British press corps and searched the suitcase from top to bottom, very thoroughly.

As we made our progress down the Gulf, schizophrenia seemed inevitable. One moment I was standing at the royal elbow, trying to wear an expression appropriate to the business in hand, be it the Emir’s banquet, the centre for children with disabilities, or the display of folk dancing. The next moment I was scurrying around in the false sanctuary of one of our guest palaces, humouring the hairdresser, placating the baggage master or fighting with the unfamiliar shower controls as I hurried to change for the Embassy reception.

With astonishing speed, the engagements painstakingly researched, recced and re-recced came and went. The closely typed pages of outline programmes, detailed programmes, administrative instructions and security orders had their brief moment of frenzied importance and then were forgotten, turned to paper vermicelli in our mobile shredder.

The leading lady did not even appear in the final scenes. She made a suitably stylish departure from Dubai in a borrowed jumbo jet, lent by a solicitous Sheikh. Never one to disappoint a damsel in need, when he heard that her scheduled return flight was delayed, he sent for his pilots three and dispatched her towards London in nothing less than a flying palace.

It was not clear who felt most upset: the Queen’s Flight at not being properly consulted about the use of an unfamiliar aircraft, or me at having to watch the Princess and her homebound team fly away in an aeroplane I would have liked to bore my grandchildren about.

The baggage master and I rattled back to our hotel in the elderly Embassy Land Rover and tortured ourselves with thoughts of the luxuries now being enjoyed by the lucky passengers. We had no trouble agreeing we were much more deserving. This was probably debatable. She had earned her seven hours of airborne fun.

With the departure of the Princess, her lady-in-waiting, dresser, assistant dresser, hairdresser and detective – and practically all the press – something approaching a holiday mood settled over the remaining party. The last leg of the journey was a private visit by the Prince to another desert kingdom, a male sanctuary where the exclusive club rules of worldwide royalty offered an understanding welcome for a fellow member. Compared to the tensions of the preceding week, even someone feeling as neurotic as I was could afford to relax.

‘Here’s the medicine you ordered,’ said the man from the Embassy as we settled into the last of a series of guest palaces. He handed me a suspiciously heavy dispatch case.

‘I didn’t order any medicine,’ I replied, mystified. Then I heard a muffled chink from inside the box. ‘Ah … yes, of course. Medicine. Thank you!’

Our accompanying doctor was unimpressed. ‘What you lot don’t need is more whisky,’ he grumbled, handing out supplies of pills to help us either sleep or stay awake.

Now alone among the Prince’s staff, I could not escape the feeling that the Princess’s mark was metaphorically stamped on my forehead. Although encouraged to feel part of the team, I was still a guest among guests. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the unbuttoned atmosphere of the male court, where discussion of real political and philosophical issues was possible in an atmosphere reminiscent of the wardrooms I had left behind. I noticed the same cautious deference to the senior officer’s opinion and marvelled again at the intricacies of his domestic arrangements, which could suddenly override almost all other priorities.

In addition, the experience of working briefly in what was later to become a hostile camp was invaluable. In later years, when events suggested that this camp was capable of conspiracy against the Princess, I could reassure myself – and her – that its capacity for cock-up was even greater. The passage of time and further rotations of advisers has not greatly altered that early impression.

The Prince’s office had acquired a rather patchy reputation, not because of incompetence or lack of effort, but because a support organization constantly on the verge of meltdown seemed to be an essential accompaniment to the Prince’s sense of being unfairly burdened. In a revelation gleefully reported by the press, he even once disclosed that he was forced to spend time correcting elementary errors in correspondence originating from his own office. His obvious regret at such a slip was not quite in time to prevent an understandable dent in fragile secretarial morale.

At last we reached the end of the tour. The euphoria was almost tangible as we clambered out of the final motorcade, made our last farewells and headed for the elegant white and blue VC-10 which was waiting to take us home. With a reassuring nod from the top of the steps, the baggage master signalled that all the other passengers and our mountain of luggage were safely aboard.

Taking a deep breath of scented Arabian air, I turned to follow my companions up the ladder. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Prince give his final wave and disappear inside. As expected, the first of the four jets immediately began to whine into life. Remembering Bahrein, I smiled to myself. That fuss with the suitcase seemed a long time ago. I had come a long way since then.

I turned for a last look and saw something fluttering on the bonnet of the Prince’s car. ‘Christ! The Standard!’

I ran back down the stairs and sprinted towards the car. It was my most elementary duty to ensure that we always carried with us the little flag that flew from the royal limousine. To leave it behind was a guarantee of ridicule, or worse. The royal Standard was a coveted object, laden even now with a mystical significance. Thank God I had spotted it.

Seeing me approach, the driver leapt out of the car and started to unscrew the flag from its special attachment. How helpful, I thought. Behind me I could hear the VC-10 getting up steam. Panting, I reached out to take the scrap of multicoloured cloth, a grateful ‘Shucran’ already on my lips. Suddenly it was snatched away. ‘No!’ said the driver, his dark eyes flashing. ‘I keep! Always I keep VIP flag!’

I grabbed a handful of flag and started to pull. ‘Let go!’ I shouted. ‘You can’t keep this one!’

For a ludicrous few moments we tussled over the flag. I had a hysterical vision of it tearing down the middle as the VC-10 taxied away, leaving us to squabble in the gathering dusk. With a final, frantic tug it was mine. I ran back to the aircraft, cursing all collectors. The idling jets shrieked with laughter. It must have made a great cabaret for the invisible audience behind the row of lighted portholes.

Arriving gasping in the cabin, I was met by the chief steward. He was holding a tray on which a large gin and tonic clinked musically. ‘I expect you could do with this, sir,’ he said.

My first overseas tour had given me a rare opportunity to work directly for the Prince. Although nominally in attendance as his equerry for the entire tour, in fact I had spent most of the time accompanying the Princess on her programme. John Riddell had accompanied the Prince, who had been quite content for me to concentrate on looking after his wife in the same way as if we were in England. On this particular occasion, however, he had agreed to visit the British frigate Hermione currently taking a break from patrolling the Persian Gulf, and it made sense that he should be accompanied that day by an aide in uniform rather than the (very) civilian John.

This engagement had already caused me some amusement. Taking my seat at one of many mahjlis in the Emirates, I found myself next to the Prince’s then polo manager, Ronnie Ferguson. I knew he had flown out to Dubai some days earlier and I was anxious to confirm that the frigate had also arrived safely. ‘Is Hermione here yet?’ I asked in a low whisper, conscious of the royal pleasantries being exchanged close by.

Ronnie started out of his reverie, looking at me with sudden new interest. ‘I say, you’re a quick worker!’

‘What do you mean, Ronnie?’

‘Hermione. You’ve already got some bird lined up here! Very quick work!’

Under bushy brows, his eyes twinkled with admiration. It was painful to have to explain the identity of the distinctly unsexy Hermione with whom I had planned this tryst. The twinkle slowly died and Ronnie lapsed once more into thoughts of polo.

Although the Prince was undoubtedly the senior figure in my royal world, I approached my day with him with few qualms. In all my brief encounters with him since starting the job, he had been friendly but reassuringly distant. Unlike his more volatile wife – who could switch from warm intimacy to frozen exclusion in an instant – he had the air of a man who did not care very much who or what you were so long as you did your job. In this he resembled a certain type of senior naval officer, a species very familiar to me. The Captain’s uniform he wore for the occasion reinforced this comforting impression.

As I sat with him in the back of the car I felt a distinct relief. The essentially female world I inhabited most of the time had its undoubted attractions, but it was a welcome break to be contemplating a day in uncomplicated masculine company in familiar surroundings. I felt as if I had been let out to play.

Hermione and the Prince both did themselves proud, I thought. The elderly ship looked brand new in the morning sun and her welcome was warm, enthusiastic and self-assured. The Prince was in his element, adapting his script instinctively to suit his varied audience of sailors, senior ratings and officers.

His visit was to end with a medal presentation in front of the entire ship’s company and I knew he would be expected to make a short speech. In the car I had felt an attack of panic as I realized I had not drafted anything for him to say. The Princess would have needed a script cleared well in advance, and coaching too.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t drafted anything for you, Sir,’ I said in some trepidation.

The Prince examined the backs of his hands. It was impossible to know what was coming next. ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of something.’ And he did, completely unrehearsed and much to the delight of the assembled sailors.

A few days later I saw a different side of him.

The halfway point in the tour came and went, and I had my first experience of the phenomenon known as ‘mid-trip dip’. Even the best tour could suffer from an attack of mid-term blues. The initial adrenaline surge wears off; the trip home lies on the other side of a mountain range of difficult engagements. An enervating climate and unsuitable food, bad sleep and bad hangovers combine to dull the reflexes, stunt new thought and confuse the body’s systems.

As our fatigue accumulated, so too did our immunity to anxieties that had seemed overwhelming on day one. Who really cared where we sat on the aeroplane – a matter of supreme importance in some households – so long as everyone was actually on board? And did it really matter that I had run out of a certain type of key ring which the Prince gave as a farewell gift to local staff?

Late one night in Dubai I discovered that it did matter, very much indeed. I had arranged our dozen farewell gifts on a sideboard in the Prince’s quarters, ready for him to hand them to the 12 – theoretically – most deserving officials who had helped with that leg of the tour. (This was the beauty parade for which the tearful colonel had failed to qualify.)

My job was to adjudicate on the list submitted by the Embassy, assemble the recipients and make sure they appeared smartly when I announced them. The size and combination of gifts – mostly signed photos, but also a few small items such as cuff links or purses – had to correspond to the perceived importance of the recipient. A short briefing was required on each so that the appropriate royal platitude could be murmured while the lucky winner bowed and grinned expectantly.

It was without doubt the worst part of any tour. The list of things that could go wrong was endless. Even if the Embassy could produce their proposals on time – and it was required at a stage in the proceedings when they were already under enormous pressure – its composition was fraught with protocol poison as jealous officials vied to be included. We were strict to the point of meanness about the number of recipients allowed and I often felt there was scant justice in the compromises that resulted.

Even if we had remembered to bring the right number of gifts from London – and for a long tour like the Gulf it could take several large cases to carry them and all their likely permutations – the Waleses were always liable to impose last-minute changes to the choice of photograph, the design of cuff link or the style of purse. In its most virulent form, this wish to control unimportant minutiae could grow to exclude all other considerations. It was as if this was the only part of our employers’ lives with which they could directly tinker, and goodness, how they relished it.

The result was a tension bordering on suppressed hysteria as prizegiving time approached. It was always shoehorned into a passage of frenetic activity in the programme – shortly before departure – and the logistic planning required to ensure the appearance of effortless efficiency was more appropriate, I felt, for the Nobel Prize itself. The tension was shared in full by our royal employers, who were sometimes unable to resist the temptation to be sharply pernickety with those responsible for any shortcoming. That night in Dubai, the responsible person was undoubtedly me.

The Prince had recently chosen a new style of key ring to give to drivers. Only a limited number had been available before we left, but enough, we thought, to cope with the expected demand. Just to be on the safe side we had brought a number of the old pattern as well. Fate – or the Prince’s enthusiasm for his new design – now caused us to break into our reserve stock of the older version.

I was congratulating myself on my foresight in bringing this spare supply as I completed my preparations for the imminent ceremony. It was perhaps unrealistic of me to expect royal recognition for my prudent planning. In fact, self-congratulation was usually followed very quickly by nemesis, but I had not expected it to arrive quite so quickly.

My ears rang to the sound of princely disappointment. Why was he not being allowed to give out the new key ring he had chosen? The rebuke was addressed to an unfair world, but all available eyes turned inexorably in my direction. Disaster – never banished, only postponed – stared me in the face with a look that had been vaporizing erring equerries for a thousand years.

In my pristine white buckskin shoes, my toes wriggled in embarrassment. I squirmed. But I managed to stare back. Beneath my shame a vague sense of injustice stirred as I mentally scanned my endless list of responsibilities. All this fuss because of a key ring? Calling on distant naval experience, I fixed an expression of vague contrition on my face and simultaneously raised a quizzical eyebrow. Insolence, like beauty, is firmly in the eye of the beholder and I held my breath, awaiting the final thunderbolt, the prelude to dismissal, disgrace and – probably – public execution.

It never came. The storm passed as suddenly as it had blown up. With a smile the Prince redirected the reproach to himself. I was preserved to sin again in the future. Relief washed over me, but not before I had registered two important points: (1) always bring lots of spare gifts (or ‘gizzits’ in the jargon) to cater for sudden outbreaks of royal largesse; and (2) remember Princes get tired as well.

Like insolence and beauty, humour is also in the eye or ear of the beholder. Recovering from my experience with the gifts, I was tempted to try to be funny with the Prince on our return to England. The results were not encouraging, as I shall describe. This taught me another lesson: the Prince’s ability – which he undoubtedly has – to enjoy certain types of joke is not to be taken as an encouragement to display your own scintillating wit. That was my experience, anyway.

That aside, I had liked my first experience of working with him. It was not just the reassuring familiarity of having a male boss again: there was a humour and a warmth behind the acquired remoteness which I felt was waiting to be released, if only I had the time and guts – not to mention the presumption – to try to unlock it.

It was true, I had also detected an occasional brooding menace. Like his famous charm, it was only revealed fleetingly to me, an outsider. It jostled in his face with self-pity and other, more uplifting emotions, but it was there nevertheless, in a vengeful look or anger explosively expressed.

I learned that, among other feelings he stirred in her, many of them still warm and affectionate, the Princess also felt fear. Except when she was roused with her own formidable brand of indignation, she would go to great lengths to avoid needlessly provoking the Prince. When she felt herself to be on the receiving end of his anger, before her characteristic defiance set in I often saw a look of trepidation cross her face, as if she were once again a small girl in trouble with the grown-ups. Though not his fault, I believe it joined with other fears deep within her to produce much of the temperamental instability that increasingly became his experience of her and from which, eventually, he would do anything to escape.

Speculating about the innermost secrets of the Waleses’ marriage has often been a national pastime, at least according to the media. There is a horrifying fascination about watching other people’s relationships disintegrating. The tour I had just finished had theoretically given me the chance to indulge such voyeuristic fascination at close range, but this was not an appropriate pastime for a member of staff.

The Prince and Princess were generally considerate enough with their staff and with each other to avoid all but a few public displays of their private problems. Whatever we staff saw or heard – including an obvious aversion for each other’s company in private – we played along with the image, to outsiders, subordinates and anyone else who might ask us for royal gossip. In fact, especially during the public acrimony of the separation a few years later, I often wondered if mine was the only dinner table in the country where the subject was banned.

By the time I awoke from an exhausted sleep on our homeward flight we were already over Italy. Far below, tiny lights reminded me of the existence of another world beyond the darkened aircraft and its dozing royal cargo. Outside this warm cocoon, like the chill air of the stratosphere, the real world waited. In time it would claim me back from princesses, palaces, caviar and good whisky.

That’s OK, I thought. I’m only here till my time’s up. Then the real world can have me back. But until then I’ll enjoy the ride. I settled lower into the broad, comfortable seat. Idly I noticed the embroidered logo. How thrifty of the RAF to acquire seats from the defunct British Caledonian Airways. I dozed again, joined in my dreams by uninvited air stewardesses in tartan uniforms.

Some part of my brain, however, continued obstinately to play and replay scenes from the tour. The images and the restless thoughts that accompanied them would not switch off. It was the start of a mental treadmill, conscious and subconscious, which still turns 10 years later.

This may have been because the people and issues involved demanded a huge commitment from anyone involved in running the Wales production. For me, given my background and idealistic personality, that commitment became total. Unfortunately, the problems we were beginning to encounter in sustaining the marriage and the public image were to prove insoluble. Soon, the knowledge that we were fighting a losing battle in an atmosphere that could not countenance failure sometimes became very bad for morale. My sense of total commitment then became focused on one person – the Princess – and that put too great a burden of expectation on us both.

Back in my snug seat on the VC-10, unhappy thoughts and dim glimpses of the future chased each other round my head. Some things stood out clearly, even if their accuracy and full significance would only emerge later.

When they were working together, the Prince and Princess created a dynamism that was phenomenal. I had seen examples of it during the tour, especially during formal ceremonial moments. The effect of their arrival at something as staid as a diplomatic banquet left me in no doubt about their power. The world’s most glamorous couple, the perfect mixture of regal gravitas and youthful beauty, could provoke a reaction among even the most jaded guests, inured to real emotion by years of protocol. I sat next to enough of these government hospitality veterans to observe the look of surprised, almost embarrassed awe – quickly suppressed – that this embodiment of living royalty inspired as it shone its two famous faces upon them.

Unfortunately, the stresses it laid on the owners of these public faces created powerful polarizing forces. These two egos were a match for any number of awestruck looks, and sharing the spotlight did not bring out the best in either of them. A reluctance to work as a team would inexorably drive them apart – he to resume a long-accustomed pattern of solo engagements, she to seek an undefined, independent new role.

It would be nice, but sadly false, to claim an inspired prescience about the events that were to follow. Based on my observations during the tour, however, added to what I had learned in a year at St James’s, even I could see that my employers seldom worked as a team any more. If the stars were uncomfortable sharing top billing, then it was logical to think that they might be happier not sharing the same spotlight.

Two contrasting images stayed in my mind. The first was a glimpse of intimacy which I had never seen before, and which I was never to see again. The VC-10 had landed at one of our many ports of call – I think it was Abu Dhabi. As the plane taxied sedately towards the waiting red carpet, band, guard of honour and ruling family, the usual controlled bedlam broke out inside. There was not the remotest chance that we would ‘remain seated until the captain has switched off the “fasten seatbelts” sign’, or heed similar airline-style safety sense. Half the cabin was on its feet before we had even turned off the runway.

Valet and dresser headed forward to the royal compartment to tend to their charges. The private secretary, waking violently from a well-deserved doze, began urgently reading his programme. The police were squinting through the portholes as if to satisfy themselves that no suicide bombers were lying obviously in wait, while anxiously trying to get their hand-held radios to talk sense. The press secretary was at another porthole, awkwardly trying to glimpse the position of the rat pack. It seemed that only the secretaries were calmly staying put, looking out at the latest stretch of baking tarmac and methodically gathering their cabin baggage.

Supercharged with energy, I was hunting in the back of the capacious travelling wardrobe – one of our more essential ‘extras’ which the RAF helpfully fitted into the aircraft to accommodate the yards of hanging luggage. It lay immediately aft of the royal compartment and through the partly open door the Prince and Princess could be seen conducting their more elegant version of the scenes in the main cabin. Scrabbling between the gently swaying, beautifully wrapped dresses and coats, I eventually found my ceremonial sword and stood up to buckle it on.

I was still tugging my tunic into place and trying to calm my accelerating pulse when, unseen by anyone else, I noticed the Prince lightly place a hand on the Princess’s hip. It was the kind of small, encouraging gesture that might pass between any happily married couple about to face a common ordeal.

I felt an unexpected glow that such things were still possible between them. This was only slightly diminished by the further observation that the touch lasted for only a moment, and was not reciprocated. Also, there was something about the angle of the hip – which was all I could see of her – that made me think the Princess did not welcome it.

The second image came from an incident, probably related, which occurred soon afterwards. As soon as the doors opened, the activity that had been fermenting in the confines of the aircraft’s fuselage burst out into the glaring sunshine, as the supporting cast hurried down the aft gangway in time to see the Prince and Princess regally descending the front steps. I paused by the cargo hold long enough to ensure that actual violence did not erupt between our forthright baggage master and those less Welsh sent to help him, before joining the rest of the entourage in the blessed cool of the royal terminal.

It was the usual procedure. In a symbolic act of welcoming courtesy, the royal host offered his guests coffee as they sat on ornate armchairs while, at right angles, the gaggle of accompanying officials from both sides sat opposite each other on long sofas. Into the space in the middle were shepherded the press corps, who had half a minute to take the sort of staged pictures that are the staple diet of mainstream reports on all such airport encounters. After the press were shooed out, a further awkward five minutes had to be filled with small talk while energetic old men in beards refuelled our coffee cups.

The royal host and his senior guest were sticking manfully to their scripts, while the rest of us thought it polite to pretend not to be able to hear the stilted pleasantries. Plainly uncomfortable, the Princess was not joining in either, nor was she being invited to by the Prince or her host.

She seemed to have created an invisible barrier around herself, as if to say that she was apart from the polite charade going on around her. To me she looked excluded and vulnerable. To the host as well, presumably, because eventually he leaned across the Prince to ask her politely what she was hoping to do during her visit. Under the unexpected attention she visibly brightened, perhaps thinking – as I was – of the serious programme we had arranged: visits to a day centre for mentally handicapped children, a clinic for immigrant women and a girls’ business studies class.

The Prince also turned towards her, looking as if he was seeing her for the first time, ruefully indulgent, patronizing. There was an expectant hush. Before she could reply, he said with studied innocence, ‘Shopping, isn’t it, darling?’

The words dropped into the marble stillness like bricks into plate glass. The Princess coloured, mumbled something inaudible and lapsed into silence. There was an awkward pause, broken by the Prince pointedly resuming his conversation with a host whose aquiline features now registered a politer version of the disbelief I felt.

When we were outside again I cornered John Riddell. ‘Did I see what I thought I saw in there?’ I asked him.

He looked at me pityingly. ‘Oh yes, Patrick. Indeed you did. That is the world we have to live in.’

Approaching Lyneham at the end of our flight home, I perched in the spacious cockpit of the VC-10 and watched the lights of Wiltshire villages slip under the plane’s nose. The Captain, a giant of a man, blocked much of the view as he sat hunched over the instrument panel. The controls seemed like toys in his huge hands as he gently followed directions from a radar controller on the ground.

The Navigator was timing our arrival to the second, giving a running countdown to the magical ‘Doors open’ order that I had heard repeated half a dozen times in the Gulf. I was always impressed by the RAF’s mastery of such precision. This time it was different, though. The doors would open not on to blazing tarmac and a red carpet but on to a patch of drizzly British concrete. There would be no sheikhs in flowing robes and no guard of honour. Instead there would be an anxious-looking RAF duty officer and the familiar Jaguar for the short drive to Highgrove. The contrast amused me. I wondered if it would amuse Him.

We landed exactly on time. Leaving the cockpit, I felt a sudden blast of damp English air as I passed the crewmen opening the door. After nearly two weeks of air conditioning and hot desert dust, it smelt delicious. As I entered the royal compartment the Prince was peering out of the porthole. He looked up and I fell into the familiar routine for arrival at a tour destination.

‘This is Lyneham, Sir, in England. The outside temperature is 5°. The ruler is not waiting at the foot of the steps. There is no guard of honour to inspect and the band will not play the anthems. There is no press position on either the left or the right of the red carpet. In fact, there is no carpet. But there is your car, Sir, and it will take you home.’

The Prince’s mouth twitched in what I hoped was fulsome approval of my uproarious joke. Well, it had been worth a try. With a brief word of thanks he headed for the door. The ever-present valet held out an overcoat and I silently saluted the planning that had brought it magically to hand after 10 days in the desert. Then he was gone into the night. Gone to Highgrove and the familiarity of house and garden, of dogs and books and pictures, and a welcome we all knew would not be his wife’s.

FIVE

DOUBLE TAKE

I returned home exhausted and several pounds lighter, not least thanks to an energetic desert stomach bug. The Princess welcomed me back like a wandering stray and wrote me a typically generous note of appreciation. For a day or two I recuperated in the knowledge that I had survived my first tour, which had been generally recognized as a pretty challenging initiation.

Media coverage of the tour had been extensive. Still a novice, I took an immature pride in the glossy magazine stories and the TV special that followed in the days after our return. Somehow, I felt, it would not have been possible without me – which may have been true, but only to a very limited extent.

Not featured in the glossies but of growing interest to tabloid commen-tators was the state of The Marriage. I had seen some of its internal stresses while on tour – however careful the Prince and Princess were to keep their troubles to themselves, being ‘on the road’ always accentuated differences that could be smoothed over more easily at home – and already the media sharks had scented blood in the water. They would not remain hungry for long.

To compensate for the lack of united leadership at the top, the Wales support organization had for some time been making its own arrangements to adapt to the unpalatable truth. Huge amounts of energy were diverted into concealing the real state of the marriage, and still more were expended on structuring our bosses’ public lives to minimize friction between them. It is a tempting but pointless exercise to imagine what more could have been achieved if this energy had been available to support the global influence of a Prince and Princess who were able to work as a team.

My introduction to these realities had occurred during a visit by the Prince and Princess to the Glasgow Garden Festival in my early days in office in May 1988. Not unusually, Their Royal Highnesses had been apart in the days preceding the engagement but obviously had to appear as a couple, if not happily, then at least willingly united when they arrived at the Festival. They therefore made their ways in separate aircraft to what, fortunately, turned out to be a simultaneous rendezvous at Glasgow airport. Logistically this was no mean feat, but, as I came to realize, the Queen’s Flight, the police and the respective staffs were not short of practice in this manoeuvre.

On the flight to Scotland I had been conscious of a heightened tension, but in my happy lack of awareness had ascribed it only to the prospect of an exciting day in the sunshine in front of what were sure to be huge crowds. Later, I came to recognize the nervous giggles interspersed with brooding introversion as characteristic of the Princess’s agitation at the prospect of working with her husband. Also, it was only later that I realized the significance of her frequent trips to the royal loo. ‘Bulimia’ was a word I did not even know how to spell in 1988.

John Riddell was in charge of the engagement. As ever, his charm and studied absent-mindedness produced the intended mood of amused tolerance in the Princess as we arrived in Glasgow. Inside, he must have felt he was defusing a ticking time bomb. In this he was like many senior courtiers who lacked the benefit of regular contact with her – their understandable inclination was to treat her like a beautifully wrapped parcel of unstable Semtex. His only acknowledgement of the unspoken matrimonial drama which waited on the tarmac was to smile reassuringly at her as we left the plane and say, ‘Let’s hope we all reach the end of the day in the same happy mood we started it in!’

In bright sunshine the Prince and Princess met by their aircraft, brushed cheeks for a fraction of a second and climbed into their car. The day was a success. The beautiful weather, happy crowds and grand scale of the event perfectly set off their own professionalism.

They were an unbeatable double act who could anticipate each other’s moves, instinctively work a crowd and betray by neither a word nor a gesture the fact that they would jump back in their separate planes as soon as duty released them. In the brief moments of semi-privacy, however, away from all but the familiar company of their staffs, they might have been on separate engagements. Not a word or a glance passed between them.

Only the atmosphere of relief on the homeward journey, and the veiled references to disaster averted, alerted my novice’s consciousness to the fact that we were playing a game. There was only one rule: nothing must be said to disturb the myth of permanence that was now the marriage’s only certainty.

Competition between the stars of our show was never far below the surface, and set-piece joint events usually brought it into the open. A garden party at Buckingham Palace was the perfect opportunity for some rather pointed sparring. For those of us who saw beyond the myth this was entertaining too, in a painful way.

It was the sort of obligatory event that went into the Princess’s diary automatically, at least twice every year. However much she denied it, I think she secretly rather looked forward to these occasions. The reason was not hard to find. It came to me at the start of one afternoon’s proceedings, as I paraded in my top hat and tails at the edge of the Buckingham Palace lawn along with other members of the Prince and Princess’s senior household. At our backs a lawn the size of a football pitch was crowded with a multicoloured mob of deserving guests from all walks of life throughout the Commonwealth.

Three approximately equal gangways had been carved through this crowd by Beefeaters in full ceremonial dress. The idea was that three royal couples would descend the steps from the Buckingham Palace Bow Room door on to the lawn and split up, one couple per lane. They would then proceed through the crowd at a slow pace towards their reward: tea in a special marquee at the other end of the lawn with members of the diplomatic community.

In effect, it was a time-honoured and rather formal version of the walkabout which I had come to know so well on the streets of provincial Britain. This time, however, the sun was shining, the crowds were all in their Sunday best, if not better, and the Princess was dressed in clothes she might happily have appeared in on Ladies’ Day at Ascot. In other words, despite the formal royal setting and order of events and ceremonies which had changed little since Victoria’s time, here was a chance for the Princess to do what she did best, in front of an audience drawn from those she sometimes saw as her greatest critics, namely other members of the royal family.

Apart from the Queen, who was naturally the symbolic focus of all attention, with her Palace as a backdrop and her Guards band playing her anthem, no one outshone the Princess. She stood statuesquely, slightly to one side, eyes demurely downcast, an object of wonder and curiosity, holding the gaze of several thousand eyes.

She and the Prince decorously descended the steps on to the lawn and the show began. The private secretary bowed, I bowed, we all bowed. The Prince looked grumpy, the Princess looked radiant. Then I detected a wicked edge to the radiance. It came, I was sure, from the certain knowledge that she was about to outshine her husband in public and intended to derive no little amusement from the task.

She winked at me and I fell into step slightly behind her. She took the right-hand side of the lane and the Prince took the left. The Prince’s equerry and I then spent the next 45 minutes striding back and forth ahead of our royal charges, ensuring that some 30 or so preselected guests were hauled to the front of the crowd and made to stand prominently so that they could receive the handshake they had been promised.

We sometimes darted further ahead to where the Queen’s comptroller stood at the confluence of the three lanes, marching back and forth and looking important – something he did very well, except that he glanced at his watch rather too often. He had the tricky task of trying to arrange for the occupants of all three lanes to arrive simultaneously at the door of the tea tent. It was a practically impossible task, because each of the six royal runners had their own technique for working the crowd and their rate of advance was anything but uniform. Nevertheless, he had to try and we had to try to help him.

After a few years of garden parties it dawned on me that there was only one game for the Princess more amusing than putting her husband in the shade for the afternoon, and that was frustrating her equerry’s artful attempts to make her hurry up or slow down in order to fall in with the comptroller’s master plan.

It was hard enough trying to make the Waleses co-ordinate speeds even in their own lane. One year the couple were particularly at odds and their progress had been anything but co-ordinated. With something approaching panic, I watched the Queen finish her lane and start to make her way towards the tea tent. We were going to be very late.

‘You’re going to be very late!’ the comptroller snapped at me and I returned fretfully to my lane, trying to look blasé on the outside while feeling like an incompetent sheepdog on the inside.

I went to explain the problem to the Prince’s equerry. Once again demonstrating that alarming ability which all royal people seemed to possess, the Prince overheard our muttered conversation, taking place some 20 feet behind him. ‘I didn’t know it was a race.’ The words were flung peevishly over his shoulder.

Immediately I relaxed, reminding myself once again of that saying attributed to Balfour: ‘Nothing matters very much, and very few things matter at all.’ It was a piece of wisdom I sometimes wished had been carved in illuminated letters 10 feet high across the whole facade of Buckingham Palace. It was a valuable lesson, and one which the Prince had evidently learned many years before, at least in relation to garden parties. I duly received a black look from the comptroller for spoiling the perfection of his arrangements, but he recognized the notorious independent-mindedness of the Waleses and was in any case already thinking about tea; and so, soon afterwards, was I.

Hot on the heels of the garden party came another set-piece event at which the aim of portraying our household as one big happy family came rather closer to success. This was the annual Highgrove staff barbecue. Awnings were pitched on the Highgrove lawn, external caterers were brought in with superior bangers and steaks, and the Prince and Princess vied with each other to play gracious and relaxed host to their hundred or so staff and their guests.

The Princess was in her element. In a casual outfit which looked as though it had come straight from the set of a jeans advert, she worked the crowd as if this were a superior sort of walkabout. Most of the faces were familiar to her, of course. I watched as she adjusted her demeanour according to whether she pigeonholed the person she was speaking to as (1) friendly and therefore deserving proprietorial in-humour, or (2) potentially hostile and therefore marked down for commiserating good humour, on this occasion anyway, or (3) neutral between the two camps. For those in the last category she reserved her most winning smile of all.

Everyone seemed to be hyped up – the employees because their pleasure at feeling they were getting something from the management for free was moderated by the knowledge that they were still under royal surveillance, as they consumed as much food and drink as they decently could. They were also, in many cases, showing off for the benefit of their guests, who were either partners or family. For their part, most of the guests were overawed by being welcomed to Highgrove, which they knew was first and foremost a private residence. The Princess was vigorously marshalling her support and I, for one, was keeping a watchful eye on the progress of her own version of an internal MORI opinion poll. The only person who seemed truly relaxed was the Prince, not least because the event gave him another opportunity to take small groups of reverential employees on guided tours of the gardens which were his consuming interest.

Visiting the house itself on barbecue days was not encouraged, but I had been there often enough before. Engagements that fell on Mondays or Fridays usually began or ended at Highgrove, with an associated trek, inevitably at the worst time of day, along the M4.

It has been said that the Princess disliked Highgrove and my own observations would confirm this, particularly towards the end of the marriage. As has also been said, it was in most ways a typical, comfortable country house with cartoons in the loo, boots in the porch and Jack Russells, it seemed, almost everywhere. It was distinctly more homely than Kensington Palace and certainly, so far as the Princess was concerned, there was no distinction between family and staff areas of the house. When I arrived I might expect to find her perched on the kitchen table, swinging her legs and sharing gossip with the chef, or in the staff hall, listening to the housekeeper’s latest personal crisis.

When the Waleses separated in 1992, the Princess collected all her belongings from the house and quit without much evident regret. No sooner had she gone than comprehensive redecoration took place, together with large-scale purging of the domestic staff. Highgrove then formally became what it had always seemed to be: the Prince’s personal sanctuary and main domestic base. For the Princess’s staff, it became foreign territory overnight. She never returned.

As allegiances in the office and in the country hardened, I found myself firmly in the Princess’s camp. This was not because she was blameless – she could not and did not claim this for herself, as I knew better than most. In fact, she was refreshingly honest about her capacity to run amok in the royal china shop, without ever surrendering her right to do so. ‘Everything’s got to change, Patrick!’ she would say, and I spent a few years trying to translate this aspiration into a reality that was acceptable to the institution and still recognizable to her.

I suppose I supported her because, in the end, she was younger and more naive than her husband was, and ultimately he bore responsibility for what happened in his family. In an organization that had such a highly developed sense of duty, this seemed logical, but I had not even begun to grasp the agony the Prince must have suffered trying to reconcile duty with the demands of the heart. Only now can I hope to have a better understanding of his dilemma.

From this comfortably conceited moral high ground, I felt able in the years that followed to criticize the Prince – if only privately – for failing to break the deadlock with his wife, a move which I knew she would welcome and the country would applaud. As the menace I had seen in him grew in my own mind into a force to be opposed on principle, I believed with righteous zeal that he represented the greater of two pretty unattractive wrongs.

If forced, I would still stand by that assessment, but it is an assessment now tempered by my own experience. All the while I was ministering to the needs of the royal family, I was neglecting those of my own. Ironically, I eventually found myself facing the same doubts about my personal morality for which I had so unhesitatingly condemned the Prince. In my small way, I also faced the opprobrium of observers snug in a moral certainty I could only envy. As my own marriage began to feel the consequences of my strange occupation, I blushed to remember my outrage on behalf of the wronged wife.

Even in what I thought to be the line of duty to the Princess, I cast more than my share of stones at the man I felt was the greater sinner. You may feel, as I do, that it says something about him that he declined to throw them back. Less charitably, you may also feel he had no need, there being plenty of volunteers to undertake such dirty work unbidden on his behalf. Yet in the end it is naive – however superficially justified – to criticize royal people for misdeeds carried out in their name. Being different, if not strictly better than the rest of us, is their raison d’être. Questions of blame also seem to become irrelevant when royalty is concerned for its own survival. All’s fair in love, war and royal service. Many people are attracted to it for that very reason.

As had been proved both at home and in the Gulf, our daily working lives were adapting to the Waleses’ growing estrangement as a matter of professional routine. However, this uncritical acceptance of the facts of life ran into trouble when we had to explain them to others. It was uncomfortable to have to provide for the stark domestic reality behind the public illusion.

One very practical problem arose whenever we were making arrangements for accommodation on overseas tours. We now needed two royal bedrooms. Few hosts were so indelicate as to query this, although raised Embassy eyebrows sometimes had to be stared down. A line suggested for use in these circumstances went something like this: ‘The Prince and Princess often work to different programmes on tour and it makes sense that they – and their immediate personal staff – don’t get in each other’s way when quick turnarounds are required between engagements. This sort of arrangement was perfectly normal for royal people historically and for much the same good reasons. To this day, many couples in the aristocracy organize their sleeping arrangements in the same way. It doesn’t mean they don’t have – and take – the chance to meet intimately when time and inclination coincide.’ In other words, mind your own business – which I, for one, was happy to do. It proved impossible at times.

Apart from the considerable duplication of effort this system dictated, not to mention the restrictions it sometimes placed on the types of accommodation we deemed acceptable, it struck an unwelcome, discordant note among our hosts and anybody else who was taking an interest. I sometimes felt we were arriving with our dirty laundry already on display.

In the mornings they would emerge from separate quarters like boxers from opposing corners of the ring, except that, unlike boxers governed by the bell, they could stage their entrances for effect. Sometimes she would keep him waiting, sometimes vice versa. Tension that might have been safely – if uncomfortably – vented behind closed doors was carried instead into the day’s work, where it could fester.

It was like a secret deformity that our hosts never saw, but which restricted our freedom to programme joint activities while doubling much of the administrative effort. Even something as simple as getting the end-of-tour presentation photographs signed by them both could call upon all Harold Brown’s skills as the behind-the-scenes co-ordinator. Never were his talents as butler/diplomat in greater demand than when he had to preside over divided domestic quarters in an unfamiliar house.

There were benefits as well. One of the unresolved questions in the wake of their divorce was whether the Prince and Princess should have tried harder to ‘make a go of it’. Looking at the situation from a different aspect, the question could be rephrased, ‘How long should you force people to stay together if they want to be apart?’

As I greeted the Princess in the mornings or took my leave at night, I knew the answer in practical if not in philosophical terms. There was absolutely no doubt that, however sadly solitary, her room was a haven of privacy between bouts of exhausting public exposure. Had she been forced to swap the media spotlight by day for a marital battleground by night, I doubt she would have performed her royal duties at all. Since I observed similar feelings in the Prince, it is safe to conclude that, this close to the end of their marriage, the royal double act was a performance best reserved for barely consenting adults in public only.

Other benefits looked attractive at first sight, especially to me as the inexperienced new equerry. On closer inspection, however, they stirred my early suspicion that my boss was anything but a guileless pretty face. These dubious benefits centred on the Princess’s wish to be seen as more popular, approachable, flexible and generally ‘normal’ than her husband. When they were on tour together he was conveniently close by to act as a foil for this desire, much to the uncomfortable advantage of ‘her team’.

As if to underline the contrast with the Prince’s habitually more preoccupied appearance, she would burst from her quarters in the morning radiating popularity, approachability and flexibility to the assembled entourages as we waited to depart for the day’s programme. Usually she would time it so that we had several minutes to bask in the effect and pick up the nonverbal signals with which she indicated who was in favour and who was to be conspicuously ignored.

Her husband’s staff were a favourite target. It was seldom a hardship, however. Her desire to create an impression that contrasted with her husband’s usually made her a welcome visitor to the temporary office. There she might find two of his secretaries wrestling with our primitive portable computers and last-minute amendments to the Prince’s next speech.

‘What is it today – global warming or Shakespeare?’ she would ask with a laugh, perching elegantly on a desk. Then there would be girl-talk about clothes, or the heat, or the hysterically ornate splendour of her quarters. There would always be concerned enquiries about the staff’s accommodation or general morale. Needless to say, I listened to the answers with my heart in my mouth. Any complaint would earn me a raised royal eyebrow. It all helped to prove her point: I care about the workers, even if certain other people are too busy.

She also managed to create the impression that her husband was unpunctual and lacked her enthusiasm for the day’s events. When he emerged and took in the scene, she would chide him with a thin affability. In full view of an audience she had already warmed up, he could do little to express any irritation her teasing provoked.

This often left me feeling queasy. Public point-scoring was one of the most unsettling aspects of the marital deterioration we had to witness, even if I was occasionally a temporary beneficiary. If I was obviously in favour, the resultant inner glow was tempered by the thought that she was just as likely to be trying to make someone else feel bad as to make me feel good. In turn this produced an unhealthy climate in which her praise could not be taken at face value. It also sharpened the sting of her criticism, which was seldom related to the actual gravity of the offence. Praise and criticism of her staff were both ploys she used in the mental game of musical chairs through which she played out her own emotional confusion.

Small wonder, then, that she and the Prince grew to prefer touring separately. The morning nonverbal signals indicating who was in and who was out never entirely vanished, but at least the audience was smaller. Without the need to strike a contrasting attitude to the Prince, the Princess’s actions became a more honest reflection of her own feelings – and she enjoyed herself more, which was good for everyone.

My first royal tour marked the end of my apprenticeship. There were still mountains of experience to climb. If I served her for a hundred years, I would still have much to learn about the Princess of Wales, and even more about the reactions she sparked in others. At last, however, I had the tour labels on my briefcase; I could swap tall stories with the best of them. Even more importantly, I had shared with the Princess the pressures and prolonged proximity that only foreign tours provide, especially difficult ones, which this definitely had been.

I had passed through a barrier of acceptability – one of many on the twisting and ultimately futile path to royal intimacy. From now on our relationship would be slightly different. She began to see through my mask of deference and I began to see through her saintly image.

The most significant change was the one least discussed. To travel with the Prince and Princess at that time was to learn, inescapably, the truth of their growing estrangement. In the office it had been almost possible to pretend that all was well. On the road in Britain I had been supporting only one half of what was still seen as a formidable double act. There was nothing to stop me arguing – as I did – that press speculation about problems in the marriage was offensive and inaccurate. The whole issue could be ignored in the comforting round of day-to-day business.

This was true no longer. I had arranged the separate accommodation and sweated to ensure the hermetic separation of his and her programmes, required for all but a few joint appearances. In Dubai I had been summoned into the cabin of the Princess’s departing jet to be given a farewell that was effusive and undeniably a pact of loyalty as I stayed behind with the Prince. I had witnessed with naive alarm the small, telltale signs of mutual antipathy that were soon to become public knowledge – averted eyes, defiantly uncoordinated walkabouts, competitive glad-handing.

Eventually, when she was travelling on solo tours, there was a welcome outbreak of informality in the Princess’s attitude towards me. Instead of the large numbers of their joint household who had previously paraded to greet her in the morning, she would find only me waiting at her door. I would be invited in, to steal extra breakfast, hear gossip from her phone calls, answer questions on the day’s business and compliment – or assist with – the choice of outfit. She might try three different outfits before setting off for the day and would ask my opinion on each.

‘Patrick, what d’you think of this hat?’

‘Um … very royal, Ma’am.’

‘Thanks. I’ll change it!’

The same process would operate in reverse in the evening, when she might ask me to pour a glass of champagne and join her in an irreverent postmortem on the people and issues that had made most impression on her over the course of the day.

This was quite nice, as far as it went. I defy anyone employed by royalty not to feel even a fleeting glow of illicit pleasure at being invited to share such intimacies. As I was to discover to my cost, however, centuries of deference had not been built up just to make the important people feel more important. Deference protected the small people too, from royal favour too lightly granted and too quickly withdrawn. So I was wary, even as I joined in what was, after all, just her way of dealing with the demands her job placed on her.

When she had chopped up and disposed of the day’s new players she often returned to a favourite subject: her husband. I once read extracts to her from Philip Ziegler’s biography of Edward VIII, in which the Prince of Wales (as he then was) was described by a contemporary as ‘part child, part genius’. She leapt at the comparison, as she did at many descriptions of her husband in which he appeared as naive, self-indulgent or emotionally immature.

In fairness, these were adjectives she was quite quick to direct at almost any member of the male species, and she was not blind to the Prince’s many virtues, among which she always included a touching vulnerability. When she spoke of him fondly – which admittedly was rare – it was with regret that he allowed his good intentions and good ideas (she stopped short of genius) to be hijacked by unscrupulous hangers-on. It was no surprise that many of her fiercest critics were drawn from these sycophantic ranks.

Even in the terminal stages of the marriage, when she was ready one minute to regard him as a wayward son and the next as her cold-blooded persecutor, I never knew her criticism of him to carry lasting malice. Nor do I doubt that she would have responded with pleasure and secret relief to marital peace overtures. For reasons that became clearer as my knowledge of them grew, however, the Waleses sadly found that they had less to contribute to their marriage than its survival demanded.

Meanwhile romance, in any of its forms, was what the Princess quite reasonably craved. She felt that it was withheld by her husband – deliberately or through incapacity – and therefore she sought and found it elsewhere.

Sometimes she found it in flirtatiousness at work, where her feminine charm was employed with precision and deadly effect. I was not immune to extravagant remarks such as ‘Oh Patrick, you’re the moon and stars to me!’ – even if the sentiment they implied did not seem to last very long.

Sometimes she found it in the supportive but necessarily circumscribed proximity of her personal staff. Any form of physical contact was, of course, unthinkable, but she would sometimes allow us all a playful frisson as we were invited to help her tie her army boots or check an evening gown’s dodgy zip.

With rare but spectacular exceptions, she was very cautious about expressing the aridity of her love life. Sometimes, though, the banter with which the painful subject was made bearable would slip, and in a voice suddenly sad and reflective, she would say, ‘Sex is OK, but sex with love is the best, isn’t it?’ That was quite a tough one to answer.

Although these sources of consolation were safe, they were no real substitute for the pleasures and hazards of a passionate relationship. Instead she developed an ability to experience emotions vicariously, drawing on her existing skills as a shrewd people-watcher and a natural talent to be sympathetic. St Paul’s injunction to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep might have been written for her. Sadly, joy is not an easy emotion to experience at second hand and after an initial expression of pleasure at another’s good fortune, she often found that it left her feeling envious and dissatisfied. This always seemed to be most pronounced in maternity wards. It did not take a genius to work out why.

In addition, she did find some consolation in well-documented liaisons with other men, most notably with James Hewitt, who already rode high in her affections when I joined her staff. He was a regular but discreet visitor to KP, although our paths seldom crossed. Sometimes when I was leaving the red-haired Captain would be arriving, emitting a palpable sense of unease and a nervous but winning smile.

Later, the Princess closely involved me in her attempts – by then – to distance herself from him. I even carried discouraging messages to him at his barracks when he was planning a newspaper revelation about their relationship ‘to put the record straight’ (something, incidentally, which I have never thought possible on practically any subject). In 1989, however, the affair was just one more thing to be ignored, another sign of our unhappy times.

Had I wanted to, I could have found out more and sometimes did, especially over a beer with a detective. I knew, however, that it was more important to be able to deny convincingly knowledge of anything that my boss might later wish she had not done. Being a royal conscience might be a wonderfully self-justifying job, but it would be a short one.

She was paranoid that her affair would be discovered – but only because it would weaken her moral superiority over her husband. She only admitted the affair with Hewitt after it had become public knowledge. After his return from the Gulf War in 1991, the Princess often visited Hewitt at his family home in Devon. She was terrified of being found out and I even warned the police that they might have to lie to cover up for her. I was shocked to hear myself say it, but they just smiled indulgently.

She wistfully imagined a house in the country – an idyllic domestic life for them both, full of children, dogs and horses – but when he became too besotted, she was embarrassed and realized he was a liability in the battle against her husband for public sympathy.

Although I chose to be ignorant at the time, and naive too, it was sadly obvious even to me that these desperate, ill-starred affairs shared Jane Austen’s description of adultery as merely consuming the participants with ‘universal longing’. As I watched her struggle with this longing, but also with conscience, duty and an enduring loyalty to her husband, I sometimes found it hard not to recognize some truth in her generally low opinion of men.

More than once I heard her reproduce a favourite and very second-hand phrase, picked up from TV, I guessed, but no less sincere for that: ‘All men are bastards!’ Sometimes, catching a flicker of reaction on my face, she might add, ‘Sorry, Patrick.’

I began to watch closely how the Princess coped with the strains of her predicament. She was not good at relaxing, although she devoted increasing amounts of time and energy to finding the ‘peace of mind’ she often told me she was searching for. Her luggage was always well stocked with the latest in a seemingly endless catalogue of remedies – for stress, sleeplessness and various unspecified deficiencies, aches and pains. There were numerous varieties of homoeopathic pills, tinctures and oils, all accompanied by scrappy instructions which she would sometimes read aloud to me in search of guidance I could not give.

Aromatherapy was a continuing fascination, which was not surprising given her love of perfumes, flowers and scented candles. Keen to share her belief in its revitalizing qualities, she once gave me some expensively prepared bath oil. It was a kind gesture, even if it did make the bath – and me – smell of Harpic to my uneducated nose.

An army of practitioners went in and out of favour. Among the masseurs, Stephen Twigg was a favourite. She believed that his trademark deep-tissue technique helped to relieve her of conveniently unspecific aches and pains caused by stress.

Colonic irrigation was another popular discovery, thanks to the Duchess of York. The semi-medical procedures and professional intimacy were highly attractive. So too was the skill and sympathy of the eminent Chrissie Fitzgerald, who so dexterously wielded the various tubes and solutions. The attraction, which survived for several years, waned abruptly as Chrissie’s treatment started to be accompanied by doses of robust common sense. Her crime, it appeared, was to be insufficiently sympathetic to the injustices of her royal client’s existence – perhaps because she had witnessed darker shades of the same misfortune further down the social scale. She also did not take kindly to the press attention which the Princess seemed powerless to stop bringing, literally, to her door. Chrissie was dropped abruptly, even brutally, soon afterwards. Others found it easier to keep to their script.

Fitness trainers such as Carolan Brown remained in favour until the Princess’s death, as did relays of astrologers. Some, however, such as psychotherapist Susie Orbach or self-improvement guru Anthony Robbins, found their work less conducive to the quick fix that she craved.

Sympathy and attention rather than reality were what the Princess sought. She paid no more than lip service to the alternative lifestyles on offer and did not embrace the complementary medicine philosophy in the way that her husband did. Nonetheless, if her exploration of her own health needs lacked conviction or direction, her attitude to her therapists did not. Their greatest value was in the attention they lavished on her.

Some became highly influential and coloured her thinking, with unpredictable results. Called upon to speak publicly on health or social issues, she would sometimes show an alarming tendency to recycle advice she had imperfectly understood from one of these unofficial sources. Following the thoughts of a current favourite, she once spoke convincingly of children’s status as ‘miniature adults’ – to the consternation of the patronage involved, which preferred to think of them as anything but.

Quite apart from the frustration it caused her official advisers, this hunger for guidance from dubious sources had a destructive effect on the Princess’s own judgement, a quality she did not lack when she applied herself. She sowed gossip and traded rumour with them and they in turn encouraged a sense of infallibility which undermined her innate sense of self-preservation. A blind belief in her own intuition increasingly became a substitute for balanced analysis, or even plain common sense.

It also undermined her sense of the ridiculous. ‘Do you know,’ she said to me one day in June 1992, ‘my astrologer says my husband will never be king!’ That may have been exactly what she wanted to hear at the time, but it did not appear to alter her husband’s daily routine one jot. Yet she continued to heed her astrologers’ predictions, the more dire the better, particularly where the Prince was concerned. Sure enough, she was rewarded with regular forecasts of helicopter crashes, skiing accidents and other calamities that obstinately refused to befall him – much to her relief, I have no doubt.

Ultimately she lost touch with reality in her restless desire for reassurance. In the last year of her life she was quoted in Le Monde as saying, ‘I don’t need to take advice from anyone. I trust my own instincts.’

The truth was, she consumed advice insatiably and, depending on her mood, she would take it from anyone. Her credulity seemed directly proportional to the thrill factor of whatever prediction she was being invited to believe – which made her pretty much like the rest of us, I reluctantly concluded.

Even so, I thought it important to affect a cheerful cynicism about every latest fad. My light-hearted attitude was intended to acknowledge the need for attention without conceding that she was anything other than physically fit as a fiddle. I never knew her to be genuinely ill for a single day. She kept her side of the pact by allowing – and maybe even welcoming – my theatrical disapproval as she swallowed the latest offerings from her army of alternative practitioners. As a reassuring contrast, I extolled the more traditional merits of hot whisky and a good book as aids to happy slumber. Perhaps sensibly, however, she avoided alcohol.

The real problem was that she had no safe substitute for the wise, supportive and unpaid company which, in the end, was the only medicine she really needed. Underneath the light-heartedness I was worried about her growing tendency to find pseudo-medical excuses for attracting attention and sympathy. She became increasingly indiscriminate in her search for physical remedies for emotional disorders. Complementary cures were freely interspersed with more conventional sleeping pills and stimulants.

The effect of these combinations was anybody’s guess, since no single doctor knew what she was dosing herself with, let alone controlled her intake. Deep-tissue massage and painful vitamin injections also became regular features of pre-tour preparations. Once, in a fit of hypochondria, she wangled an urgent MRI scan. Unsurprisingly, the scan confirmed my own less penetrating diagnosis: she was as fit as a fiddle.

Reassurances and remedies were all to little effect in lonely hotels and guest residences, however. All the pills in the world did not seem able to help then, and she fell back into less esoteric habits. Too often, time spent in her room supposedly relaxing was spent in obsessive phone calls – gossip with girlfriends; gossip and flirting with admirers; gossip and intrigue with palace staff back home; and, on the plus side, laughter and light relief with her children, whom she missed acutely whenever she was abroad without them.

Nothing she took seemed to dull her quick-wittedness, or her quick tongue. Depending on her mood, I found that she could be perceptive and thoughtful with her praise and encouragement, if a little inconsistent. Getting a pat on the back one day did not protect you from being kicked the day after for doing the same thing.

When she was unhappy, her natural suspicion and deviousness took control. Then her verbal skills were employed to hurt and confuse. When roused, she used words like tomahawks and her aim seldom failed. She would know, with a cat’s cunning, when to let you feel the claw in her velvet paw. Like the predator she sometimes was, she would stalk her victim, waiting for his or her attention to be distracted before striking.

Typically, we might be on a train about to arrive at our destination and my mind would be preoccupied with the practical demands of the next few minutes, when she would see her opportunity. Her voice would take on that tone of guileless inconsequentiality that always made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

‘Patrick, you never told me I’d been invited to speak at the Sprained Wrist Association AGM. I know you wouldn’t understand, but people with sprained wrists are excluded by society. I think we ought to make a speech about it.’

The opening volley was designed to saturate my defences. While still distractedly craning out of the window for a telltale sign of red carpet and a press posse, I would subconsciously assess the incoming missiles:

- She has deliberately chosen a bad moment for me. This kind of premeditation always spells trouble. Look out for the second salvo. (My God, I hope she doesn’t know about that business with her new car…)

- She is accusing me of deliberately concealing an invitation from her because I disapprove of it or because I am too lazy to research it. (Both true on occasions, as she probably knows.)

- Why the Sprained Wrist Association, for goodness’ sake? Aha – cherchez a handsome radial osteopath. Extra trouble: she loves to pretend you are jealous.

- Note that I am too insensitive to understand. This means I have missed a recent opportunity to be sympathetic, exacerbated by the fact that, unlike herself and people living with SWS (Sprained Wrist Syndrome), I have no idea what it is like to feel rejected.

- And now ‘we’ have to make a speech. This means a heap of exploratory work with the Department of Health (again) and probably a ruined weekend while I draft the speech (again). The speech will then be rejected because take your pick – she has gone off the osteopath/the Daily Mail says SWS is all in the mind/the astrologer forbids speeches during the current transit of Pluto/the Prince is patron of the Sprained Knee Association and we are making a show of not competing at the moment.

- Worst of all, somebody has snitched on me. How else did she find out about the invitation? Surely not one of the girls in the office … somebody looking through my papers … maybe the butler … the driver … Oh no! So she must know about—

‘Patrick! And when were you going to tell me you’d ruined my new car?’ [CURTAIN]

Of course it helped, always having the last word.

As time passed and I travelled with her more and more, I observed a phenomenon more usually associated with declining politicians and rock stars. The Princess found foreign tours stressful, both physically and mentally, yet she needed the buzz only they could provide. Tours also put her under unusually intense press scrutiny, because the travelling pack had no distractions other than her and the hotel bar, yet she delighted in the unmatched range of exotic and heart-tugging photo opportunities they provided. This persisted even when, as sometimes happened, the resulting press coverage back home was infuriatingly inaccurate and slanted.

When I challenged one of the travelling correspondents with a particularly misleading front-page story bearing his by-line, he genuinely seemed to share my outrage. ‘It’s the editors,’ he protested. ‘They rewrite my stuff to conform with their current line on the War of the Waleses.’

This last remark came back to me later. The Princess’s relations with the media were becoming a subject of growing interest to me, and to the public at large. I had already noticed that both she and her media pursuers had almost made a game out of satisfying their mutual requirement for each other (with truth as the first piece to leave the board), even though at times she would show flashes of resentment at press attention.

It was also dawning on me that there was something in her character which was attracted to this love-hate relationship. It was echoed elsewhere in her life. I often saw it in her attitude to her husband, or his family, or the public duties she did so well, and on each occasion it was the love half of the equation that seemed hardest for her to feel. Time and again, like an untrusting child, she doubted the dependability of the love she was shown. Small wonder, then, that she protected any affection she felt able to give – except to her children – with a portcullis of preconditions.

On a day-to-day basis, our job was to design her programme in such a way that the press had the best possible chance to report her routine public duties favourably, without inconveniencing the organizations she was visiting. If those organizations benefited in the process – and some did in spectacular fashion – then so much the better. On a deeper level, however, a dangerous mutual dependence was certainly growing. The media stimulated the Princess’s appetite for attention, but never satisfied her true requirement for love and security.

This produced some confusing results. You might not readily associate media phobia with the star of Panorama, but it became a daily reality for me. A distressed Princess is famously remembered to have asked, ‘What have the tabloids ever done for me?’ To this plaintively rhetorical question tabloid editors gave rather less rhetorical replies along the lines of, ‘We made you, darlin’!’ And so, in a sense, they had.

Unfortunately, it was not in a sense that gave her any feeling of genuine worth. After all, if being ‘made’ is to have a life as thin as the paper it is printed on, it might make you doubt your very existence. I came to think that the media were a kind of family to her. Theirs was the language of a desensitized childhood – extravagant praise followed by harsh rebuke. Like a child coaxed on to its parent’s lap for comfort, the pain of then being pushed carelessly aside was all the greater for her.

Although I only dimly understood the reasons for the Princess’s childlike temperament, I knew they were deep and traumatic. They left her constantly in need of reassurance. Tragically, she cared less and less whether this reassurance was healthy, or where she found it. For her, words of comfort were even more essential than for the rest of us.

It was one reason why she was so good at dispensing them herself. How often her messages of kindness and encouragement must have seemed a mirror of those she would have liked to receive. Perhaps the most poignant difference was that from her the words were as genuine as she could make them, but those she received were avidly gathered up like flowers on a walkabout, unconditionally and indiscriminately. The words were what mattered, and she cared little whether they had been truly meant, or whether they came from policeman or President, butcher or baker, butler or playboy.

For me, however, especially in those early years, it was enough to know that she had to be jollied along with flattery, humour, gift-wrapped advice and very visible loyalty – especially from men. I had only to master the formula, combined with an alert sense of self-preservation, to see out my brief appointment successfully.

Another thing I noticed about the Princess as my apprenticeship came to an end was her tendency very vocally to dread overseas tours but then, as soon as one was over, to look forward eagerly to the next. Given the many extra stresses and strains imposed by touring, this mystified me.

Then I realized what the attraction was. Travelling press aside, tours provided her with an endless supply of new and interesting supporting casts. She liked foreigners and, of course, the only ones she met abroad were the ones who liked her. In fact, it must have seemed to her that they adored her, unreservedly and unconditionally. They did not read menacing broadsheet newspaper analyses of her waning relevance to the power of the British establishment. They did not stop to consider whether she manipulated London’s popular media. They did not question her sincerity and motives in the way increasingly favoured by her Pharisee critics back home.

It is hard to blame her if, in the end, she preferred the company of enthusiastic foreigners to the wan faces of rain-soaked, provincial England; or the simple gratitude of a limbless Pathan tribesman to the false smiles of London society; or the attentiveness of a playboy lover to the lizard-like watchfulness she felt scouring her from the drawing rooms of Gloucestershire or the smoking rooms of St James’s.

Noticing the quick approval she seemed to attract abroad, I wondered how much of the Princess’s glamour was due to her innate qualities and how much she owed to the status she had acquired on marriage. The answer, I suppose, was an intricate mixture of both. Deprived of one – as she was when she effectively relinquished her royal status towards the end – the other had less chance to shine. Only the unique conjunction of inbred talent and historic opportunity could have created such a phenomenon.

Few film stars survive the transition from big screen to real life without losing some of their glamour on the way. Having been to more than my fair share of film premieres, I can vouch for the fact that in the flesh many actors do look surprisingly unheroic. It is the same with others in public life: to retain the importance we give them, they usually need to be surrounded by the trappings of office.

Royalty is famously no exception to this rule. The history of monarchy is one of clearly visible distinctions between them and us – from Henry VIII’s outsize codpiece to the extra-width gold lace worn on today’s royal uniforms. The necessity visibly to emphasize royal people’s uniquely superior status has kept generations of courtiers happily employed, not least because of the fringe benefits that accumulate for themselves. I will not forget the hot flush of conceit that swept over me as I opened the little Gieves and Hawkes box and out tumbled my first pair of royal cyphers – little silver ‘D’s, one of which I wore with bursting pride on the shoulder of my uniform on the rare occasions when I was still required to dress as a naval officer.

Unlike mere service equerries, the advantage of hereditary leaders is that, wherever they are and whatever they wear, they usually carry the genetic badge of office that marked their ancestors for greatness. This is one of many ways in which they differ from film stars. Nevertheless, even if they could quell a mob with a single Hanoverian glare, royal people still draw comfort and strength from the familiarity of grand surroundings.

The Princess could employ these props to dazzling effect, but her need for them differed subtly from conventional royal practice. For one thing, her inherent gifts created an aura that perfectly complemented her royal status (Ruby Wax remarked that the Princess had ‘charisma you can surf off’). Returning in the royal helicopter to Althorp or her old school, she would gleefully exclaim, ‘This is the way to arrive!’ More often, however, she showed a touching disinterest in the opportunities she had to overawe impressionable people with the accoutrements of her office.

I was reminded of the truth of this one afternoon on a blustery Cambridge railway platform. I had accompanied her on a low-key visit to a drugs project in the city and, not uncommonly, for reasons of economy we were travelling by (very) ordinary train. For some reason I now forget, we were not a very happy band that day. Having given her best for the drugs project and its clientele, the Princess had little bonhomie left over for the detective and me.

Her body language was usually quite unambiguous and we had no difficulty in recognizing that she wanted to be left alone. This was a cue which, in the circumstances, we were rather mischievously happy to take. We retreated as far away as we dared – in my case into the station bookstall – and left her apparently alone among the commuters. Needless to say, we kept her under observation from our places of concealment, so I was able to monitor first her gratifying look of disquiet when she realized she really had shaken us off, and then the reaction of other travellers.

Confronted by what appeared to be the world’s most photographed woman, statuesque in high heels and a pinstripe suit and apparently unattended on their familiar platform, their reflexes were instructive. A few just failed to notice. Rather more noticed but did not want to be seen to have noticed, probably out of a decent desire not to intrude on what was presumably a private appearance. Some backed off to a safe distance and then stared. A surprising number paused, looked her in the eye and nodded different degrees of what was recognizably a bow before continuing their stroll along the platform.

The experience of being almost alone in a public place – and hence almost like an ordinary person – was one she repeated quite frequently. As well as offering a fleeting sense of normality, it did also allow her to enjoy the innocent pleasure of being the object of excited ‘is she or isn’t she?’ whispering among bystanders, most frequently in the Kensington High Street branch of Marks and Spencers where she was a familiar figure, especially in the food hall.

It could be fun. One afternoon the Princess and I were driving to Burleigh. We were in a very unremarkable Ford, with no outriders or visible escort. We needed petrol and she pulled into the next filling station. I did the man’s task with the pump, followed by the man’s other task with the credit card in the shop. By the till two boys were arguing about the identity of the woman in the driver’s seat of the maroon Granada.

‘No it isn’t!’

‘Yes it is!’

‘No it isn’t! It can’t be! She’d ’ave police motorbikes if it was Princess Di!’

‘Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?’ said the man behind the till. Still arguing, they disappeared back to their waiting mother, who was by now also looking rather intrigued by the woman adjusting her make-up in the next-door car.

As I finished paying, the man said, ‘Did anyone ever tell you your friend looks just like Princess Di?’

I followed his gaze back to the car, where the driver had put away her compact and was obviously keen to get back on the road. I furrowed my brow. ‘Now you come to mention it, in this light … I suppose there’s a passing resemblance …’

‘Looks just like her. She could make a fortune on the telly.’

SIX

TOYCHEST

An old lag on the royal scene once gave me a very good piece of advice. ‘Never forget,’ he said over one of many brimming glasses, ‘to these people you’re just a toy. They’ll wind you up and watch you whizz all over the place and then, when your spring runs down, they’ll throw you away and get another one.’

In turn, I passed on a version of this guidance whenever new recruits fell into my hands. It was a gross exaggeration, of course, and it suggested a heartlessness about our royal family that was seldom my experience. Nonetheless, I thought – and still think – that it contained a grain of truth. Deference breeds indifference. Historically equipped with employees selected for their talent in the art of brown-nosing, there is little incentive for the royal recipient to experiment with more enlightened forms of personnel management.

In time, the respective postures become institutionalized. The servants seek ways to please, tendering advice with one eye on their pensions (I should know, I did it). The masters become jaded and indifferent, prepared eventually to swap a once-loved plaything for a new model with fresh batteries. The nursery cupboard is always well stocked with replacements, selected for safety and conformity. What is more, all the discarded puppets have conveniently signed confidentiality clauses, so there will be no trouble from them.

Every generation of toys thinks it will be different for them. Somehow they will escape the fate of all their predecessors and grow old in wisdom, honour and their owners’ esteem. Inevitably, however, most will be consigned to the charity box when the restless royal eye is caught by the next novelty.

You may think, rightly, that I was prematurely cynical, but the old lag had done me a favour by wiping the new toy’s shining eagerness off my face. When I later relayed his lesson to those I thought would not have time to learn it for themselves, it saved them, I hope, the expenditure of energy necessary to court fleeting royal favour and the unhappiness caused by the inevitable eventual rejection.

It was obvious that some royal people had grown accustomed to the seasonal change of playthings and sometimes quite enjoyed it. After all, why should they be denied this harmless pleasure, since they are denied so much else? But at an early stage it dawned on me that the only thing more valuable – and more permanent – than a new toy would be a toymaker.

No sooner had I formed this theory than its truth was confirmed in a sharp little exchange. After three years of what was generally held to be exemplary duty as the Princess’s equerry, my predecessor Richard Aylard had transferred to a post that was clearly on the Prince’s side of the invisible divide running through our still joint office. In a typically nonpartisan gesture, he offered to cover for me on one of the Princess’s engagements when I was unavailable. To my surprise his offer was immediately rejected. What could this good and faithful servant have done to incur such rapid alienation? Sadly I concluded that his sin must have been to transfer his allegiance, as she saw it, to her husband. The reason was probably immaterial. ‘Once gone, always gone,’ she said, and set her face resolutely against him.

I was naive enough to be flattered by this revelation. It was one of my boss’s less endearing habits that she encouraged her current favourite toy to take satisfaction from the misfortunes of his or her predecessor. It was one of my less endearing habits that I fell for it, at least initially.

If nothing else, however, it validated my theory about the advantages of being a toymaker rather than a mere toy. From then on I made a special point of controlling as much as I could of the hiring and firing process – which, when I became her private secretary, was practically all of it. I would like to think my involvement tempered some of the Princess’s more arbitrary attempts at personnel management. In the end, though, I could not escape the reality of royal service, which is that professional performance is less important than ‘chemistry’ in determining the progress of your career (or lack of it).

From my observations of the royal family, I gradually came to the conclusion that inherited power values survival above responsibility. You might say that such considerations are irrelevant, since royalty has been shorn of all real power anyway, thanks to generations of people’s representatives ready to risk their necks in the shearing. Yet it is perhaps because of this loss that some of today’s royalty seems all the more anxious to exercise its power over the smaller domains now left to it, and these begin and end at home. To a dresser, a valet, a housemaid, a cook, a chauffeur, a butler, a lady-in-waiting or even a private secretary, the royal master or mistress still holds the power of professional life or death. At least that would be the case, but for safeguards offered by post-feudal employment legislation and the spasmodic interest of the press.

This was even more true of the power acquired on marriage by the Princess. It was not that she was unfeeling, or lacking many of the qualities associated with effective leadership. Often the reverse was true. Rather, she had an iron resolve – understandable to a certain extent – to put her own interests above everything else in every situation. She subjected most decisions to a simple test: ‘How will this action affect my reputation, power base or convenience?’ It was further evidence of her subconscious need to assert her exclusive authority over as much and as many as lay within her reach.

She applied this test to people just as much as she did to decisions affecting her public profile. Cannily, she knew that the two areas sometimes overlapped. No Queen of Hearts – even in the making – could afford to spoil the public image with revelations about unsaintly behaviour towards her own staff. Characteristically she would pre-empt such revelations with a simple denial. At the time of Anne Beckwith-Smith’s ‘retirement’, the Princess had herself quoted as saying, ‘I don’t sack anybody.’ Equally characteristically, this breathtaking piece of wishful thinking was swallowed by most people, even as the P45s accumulated.

Perhaps only the Queen herself, famously loyal to her staff, could make such a claim. It was certainly not true of the Princess. The real significance of the remark is this: she actually convinced herself it was true. Put another way, she actually thought that having an old toy – sorry, long-serving cook – declared redundant (the usual way round the law) was not the same as having him sacked.

It was one of those remarks which she knew sounded good and which she would like to believe was true. Most of the time she conveniently forgot that it was not. After all, nobody was going to remind her. The curious thing was that so many people accepted such pronouncements about herself as if they were true. Thus her reputation was seen to be invincible, her domestic power base was strengthened and her convenience was unaffected, as cooks were easily replaced.

Such wishful thinking seemed to become more unabashed as the years passed. There are many other examples which come to mind: ‘I will never complain again’ (Nepal 1993); ‘I want to be Queen of people’s hearts’ (Panorama 1995); ‘I don’t need to take advice from anyone’ (Le Monde 1997). Wide-eyed innocence became one of her favourite defensive ploys, acquired, I supposed, in childhood to protect her fragile self-confidence, especially when she knew she was in the wrong. The trouble was, she unblinkingly employed it in defiance of any unwelcome facts – and usually got away with it.

Megalomania is no more attractive for being played out on a small scale, at least from the viewpoint of those in the firing line, and they come no smaller than the pieces on the nursery floor whose time is up. Their sin might be no more than Richard’s – a perceived allegiance to the ‘other side’. Like his, it need have no bearing on professional competence. It could be merely that they knew too much (whatever their proven discretion), or that they laughed too little (however quietly dedicated), or that they spoke too much sense (however loyally expressed), or that they shared too little in her misery (whatever the cause of their happiness). Or – the worst crime of all – they had just become boring. An exaggeration? Hardly. As her chosen instrument I officiated at too many of these playroom executions to doubt her intentions.

I remember the first. In 1990, a secretary convicted in absentia of most of the high crimes listed above stood at my desk awaiting judgement. She knew the sack was hovering over her. As Wodehouse would say, she could practically hear the beating of its wings. This was part of the process. Very few victims were given their P45 out of the blue. Usually there was a softening-up period in which the transgressor would be frozen out of the Princess’s affections. The warning signs were obvious.

‘Is Charlotte on holiday again?’ she would say to me.

‘Yes she is, Ma’am. In fact I sent you a note about it. You said you were quite happy. Is there a problem?’

‘Oh no,’ – innocently – ‘but she does seem to be having rather a lot of holidays … and we’re so busy. It just seems so unfair on everybody else …’ Her voice would trail off, leaving me to pick up a fairly typical clutch of veiled barbs:

- Charlotte is lazy. She may be taking no more than her holiday entitlement – or even less, it was not uncommon – but this inconvenient fact can be overlooked. Now, by royal command, she is lazy.

- I am incompetent. Why have I allowed a secretary to go on holiday when the diary is so busy? The fact that there is actually a lull in activity – hence the conscientious Charlotte’s decision to take leave this week – can also be overlooked. This is a pincer movement, designed to intimidate me from taking the victim’s side. Too often, I confess, I allowed it to silence me.

- The Princess, by contrast, is working very hard. You could dispute this, but only if you were ready to lose your job. In royal circles it is accepted as a matter of sacred truth that, by definition, all members of our modern royal family work terribly hard all the time – even if a cursory analysis of their daily existence might call this into question.

- She cares about the extra workload now shouldered by the other staff. Here was a classic example of ‘caring Di’ behaviour that was not quite what it seemed. By expressing concern for her remaining hard-working staff, she was actually isolating the absentee and preparing the ground for the execution to follow.

For added emphasis, the rest of the staff – even those notoriously less dedicated than Charlotte – would receive redoubled praise and interest from the Princess, now advancing on them with a careless laugh and a prepared ration of girly gossip.

It took a curious form of toadying to enjoy favours thus received, but some managed it. For most, though, it was enough just to keep your head down and hope that it was not going to be your turn as victim just yet. Perhaps it would not come at all. Such comforting thoughts came easily when the big blue eyes looked on you favourably. The gaze seemed full of trust and expectation then; quite incapable of measuring you for your professional coffin.

Being frozen out was a lingering death in which messages would be unacknowledged, memos ignored or even destroyed, and mere physical existence ‘blanked’. This was especially easy when chances to ignore a desperate bow or curtsy were so abundant. For people chosen for their sense of loyalty, it was a torture few could bear for long. Many saved the Princess the trouble of sacking them and quietly took their leave, usually with great dignity.

I looked at the unhappy secretary standing by my desk, and she looked back at me. We both knew she had done nothing to warrant her dismissal. We both knew life would be unbearable for her if she stayed. I could not contain my revulsion; I had to get outside. I took her for a walk round Green Park and asked her how the parting could be made easier for her. References, medical insurance, gratuity – I promised, and delivered, them all. Her quiet tears diminished me even further.

I ran into her again some years later. Being the sort of person she was, she had quite forgiven my part in the shameful charade. Curiously, and not untypically, she had forgiven the Princess too. It is an astonishing fact that such forgivability was freely conferred on the Princess by a sacked secretary and a besotted world. It was surely her greatest and most exploited talent.

The executions continued throughout my time with the Princess: two ladies-in-waiting, a butler, a cook, three secretaries, a chauffeur, a housemaid, two dressers, and others I cannot now recall. Most went quietly. When the time came, few had any regrets. The Princess saw to that, which I suppose was a form of unintentional kindness, if a cruel one.

In its extreme forms the softening-up process could be actively hostile. In one case, the Princess started a rumour about a secretary’s personal life, waited for it to gain currency and then cited it as damning evidence of unsuitability. (The secretary left, but only out of disgust.) In another she launched a bitterly resentful assault on a junior member of her staff whom she observed enjoying a happy relationship with another. (They are now married.)

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