Princess Diana lives on in her sons - what Prince Harry and William have done this week proves that
As over 50,000 runners drag their trainers through the streets of London today, three spectators will look on with particular pride and satisfaction.
For the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, the last week has been a triumph for their mental health charity, Heads Together – the official charity for this year’s Virgin Money London marathon.
First came Prince Harry’s extraordinary interview with the Telegraph’s Bryony Gordon, who is running in today’s ‘mental health’ marathon. As the first guest for her new podcast Mad World, the Prince admitted to nearly having a breakdown after the stress of his mother’s premature death. He confessed that he’d taken up boxing, and seen a “shrink” several times, to deal with his anxiety and the resulting aggression, which had left him “on the verge of punching someone”.
The royal candour intensified later that week, when Prince William talked openly with Lady Gaga about mental health. The Duchess of Cambridge visited a West London school specialising in mental health classes and all three appeared in a video where they discussed the importance of breaking the stigma around talking about your problems with the Duchess discussions the pressures of being a new parent and admitting that she ‘had no idea what I was doing in the early days with George’.
When the royal trio get together, they are an almighty media magnet. Of course, such emotional honesty from our Royal Family is not what we are used to or necessarily expect. It could have blown up spectacularly in their faces, if the mental health message hadn’t struck such a chord with a public who still remember two sombre young boys walking in their own mother’s funeral procession.
Sir Simon Wessely, Professor of Psychological Medicine at King’s College London, said Prince Harry’s interview had done more good, in 20 minutes, in teaching how people to grieve than he had in his 25-year career.
‘This openness is unprecedented,’ says royal expert Hugo Vickers, author of biographies of the Queen Mother and the Duchess of Windsor and who was in the Caribbean for Prince Harry’s royal tour last year. “He’s terribly popular and what Prince Harry said made total sense, but you wouldn’t find the Queen or Prince Philip doing it.
“Tim Heald, Prince Philip’s late biographer, said Prince Philip went to great lengths to make sure you didn’t know what he was thinking; while Prince Charles went to great lengths to show what he was thinking.”
“Prince Charles minds what people think of him. The Queen doesn’t waste time worrying about it. Prince Harry doesn’t mind so much either. He’s got nothing to lose by being so open. He’s of his time - it’s the modern way.’
Indeed, there has been a real revolution in royal behaviour. In an interview this week with CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably), William too waved goodbye to a millennium of buttoned-up British clichés, saying, "There may be a time and a place for the 'stiff upper lip', but not at the expense of your health."
The Royal Family used to be the natural home of the stiff upper lip. In fact, as Alex Renton’s new book about boarding schools, Stiff Upper Lip, reveals, the expression is an American one – first used in the US in 1815. But it was adopted with alacrity by the Royal Family, from Queen Victoria on.
“The Queen wouldn’t for one minute disapprove of Harry talking about these things,” says Hugo Vickers, “But she wouldn’t say them herself.”
It hasn’t been lost on anyone that the member of the Royal Family who is really responsible for this openness is no longer around. Princess Diana was the patron saint of openness – not just in her willingness to embrace unfashionable causes, such as HIV and homelessness; but also in her general demeanour, seamlessly switching from couture ballgown to baggy sweatshirt and baseball cap.
Thirty years before Prince Harry consulted a psychiatrist, his mother had therapy. A new biography, ‘Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life’, by Sally Bedell Smith, reveals that Charles also visited Diana’s psychiatrist, Dr Alan McGlashan, for 14 years.
At the time, Diana was criticised for what was then considered an avant-garde attitude, but her sons have keenly picked up her baton, when it comes to openness, empathy and warmth.
Diana’s extraordinary emotional appeal was reflected, on a massive scale, on her death, 20 years ago this August. The popular outbreak of grief was unprecedented, and unmatched since. It wasn’t just grief; there was an angry element, too, which led to the only significant drop in the monarchy’s popularity in the Queen’s 65-year reign.
The unusual thing about that tragic day in summer two decades ago was how quickly the mass mourning dissipated. I happened to bicycle past Kensington Palace on her birthday, July 1, last year. A grand total of five people were standing by the palace gates. A small posy of white roses was attached to the railings, alongside a small placard, reading, ‘Diana – England’s Rose’.
The strange thing is that, against all odds, Diana has been given the chance to rest in peace.
“At the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee [in 2012], there was barely any mention of her,” says Hugo Vickers, “She disappeared and has now been allowed to reappear as a historical figure. I hugely respect William and Harry for their approach. William gave Kate Diana’s ring, which is much better than it sitting in a vault.”
“She had a huge effect on a great number of people. It was somewhat tarnished by books and articles, but she is now finally being remembered in a respectful, discreet way.”
The passage of two decades has led to a more considered approach to memorialising Diana’s memory, too. Earlier this month, the White Garden, in Kensington Palace’s sunken garden, was opened in her memory, with a subtle combination of tulips, forget me nots and roses. The two Princes have also commissioned a statue of their mother, to stand in the grounds of Kensington Palace.
It’s all a long way from the bad feeling over the not so satisfactory Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park.
“It was a pretty disastrous thing,” says Hugo Vickers, “It didn’t work for a long time. At the end of the day of the unveiling [in 2004], the Queen said to Lord Spencer, ‘I hope you’re satisfied.’”
“He said, ‘Yes, Ma’am.’”
The Queen’s one-liner was taken as a response to Charles Spencer’s staggeringly outspoken address at Diana’s funeral, when he drew a sharp distinction between the Spencers and the Windsors: “We, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.”
The funny thing is, that is exactly how William and Harry have turned out, not least thanks to the affection and assistance of the Queen.
As the two Princes revealed in their frank interviews this week, the loss of the mother who created that openness in them still gapes wide.
Prince Harry said he nearly had “a complete breakdown” after “losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years”.
In this week’s BBC documentary on mental health and the marathon, Mind over Marathon, Prince William said, "The shock is the biggest thing I still feel 20 years later, about my mother. You never get over it."
Yet, how far these men have come from that awful day, 20 years ago, when, as boys, they had to walk behind her coffin. How sensitively they are treating the anniversary of her death. And how clearly, on the day of the Marathon, we can see how they innately understand how her mind and heart operated.
Harry Mount is author of How England Made the English (Penguin) available from books.telegraph.co.uk £9.99
