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een Lord Chamberlain to both Edward VII and George V; her grandmother, Lady
Cynthia, wife of the 7th Earl, had been Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen Mother, as
had her great-aunt, Lady Delia Peel, who had been much beloved by both Elizabeth and
Margaret; while another great-aunt, Lady Lavinia, was a great friend of and exactly the
same age as the Queen Mother, having shared a governess with her as a child. The
Spencers, said a descendant, had a special voice when talking about royalty – ‘They’re
coming.’ Diana’s family on her mother’s side, the Fermoys, were also closely linked to
the royal family, having been their next-door neighbours at Sandringham since George V
had rented out Park House on the estate to Diana’s grandfather, the 4th Baron Fermoy.
Diana’s grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, had been a lady-in-waiting to the Queen
Mother since 1956 (one of Queen Mary’s first thoughts on leaving the deathbed of
George V had been to inquire about ‘Lady Fermoy’s new baby’ – Frances, Diana’s
mother). Diana’s father, the 8th Earl, always known as ‘Johnnie’ Spencer, had been
equerry to the Queen’s father and to the Queen herself.
‘On paper’, as one of Elizabeth’s friends later said bitterly, ‘it seemed the ideal match.’
There were, however, family characteristics on both sides of Diana’s parentage that had
she been a brood mare might have given Elizabeth reason to question the desirability of
such a mating. ‘The Spencers are difficult,’ a relation said. ‘It’s the Sarah Jennings 1
genes. As a family they like to live among dramas. There’s never a moment when
they’re all speaking to each other. Spencers are not as others – they’re not
straightforward.’ Had Elizabeth studied Diana’s immediate family on her mother’s side
and the recent formbook of both her parents, she might not have been so pleased. It was
not a happy story. Her father, Johnnie Spencer (then known as Viscount Althorp), had
been on the worst possible terms with his father, the 7th Earl, ‘Jack’ Spencer, who had
lived at Althorp, resolutely guarding the house and its past and rarely seeing his
grandchildren. Diana’s family on her mother’s side, the Anglo-Irish Fermoys, had shown
signs of instability; her uncle, who was to surprise the world at the time of her
engagement by issuing press statements stressing his niece’s virginity, later shot himself.
In Norfolk society, perhaps the most traditional, unchanging and ‘backwoods’ in the
whole of England, Diana’s mother was condemned as a ‘bolter’ – a phrase taken from
Nancy Mitford’s novel, The Pursuit of Love.
Diana’s mother, the former Hon. Frances Roche, was the parent she most resembled,
in looks and character. She was and is, as one of the Spencer relations testified, ‘one of
the strongest personalities I’ve ever met. She is attractive and full of vitality, she is
funny and very outspoken. Men are bowled over by her physical presence.’ As a
debutante Frances was a year younger than the rest but ‘took the place by storm’. ‘She
could have done anything she wanted but became engaged at 17.’ The man she wanted
was Johnnie Althorp, despite the fact that he was twelve years older than she was and
already engaged to the beautiful Lady Anne Coke, daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester,
a great friend, shooting companion and Norfolk neighbour of King George VI. (Lady
Anne, a maid of honour at Elizabeth’s Coronation, later married Margaret’s friend Colin
Tennant.)