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ealized, was not her type of girl. She was turning out to be emphatically not the
country lover Charles had thought she was. She was interested in clothes, dancing and
shopping while horses and dogs, hunting, shooting and fishing, the royal pastimes,
bored her. ‘The Queen didn’t really like Diana very much,’ an aide said. Later, when her
behaviour became eccentric to the point of rudeness, Elizabeth simply did not
understand her. Although a kind person, she is not an imaginative one. Since
Buckingham Palace had never seemed intimidating to her, she assumed that Diana
would adapt to its atmosphere. She was unused to close contact with girls of Diana’s age
and had little idea of how they might react to these unusual surroundings; she could not
comprehend the feeling of smallness and insignificance which invades outsiders within
those walls. For ‘Duch’ Spencer, who felt destined to command and be in control, the
experience was devastating. No one, she later said, bothered about her, no one was
assigned to really show her the ropes. (Senior Palace staff regarded these allegations on
the part of Diana as ‘monstrous’. ‘We were all so delighted with her and longing to help
her – she was so pretty and charming. The Queen allocated Sue Hussey…’)
A month later Charles left for a five-week official visit to Australia and New Zealand,
then to Venezuela and the United States, leaving his fiancée officially in the care of four
men who were supposed to help and guide her in her role as prospective Princess of
Wales. They were
his Private Secretary, Edward Adeane, son of the Queen’s former Private Secretary,
Michael Adeane, two ex-Foreign Office men, Francis Cornish, the Prince’s Assistant
Private Secretary, and Oliver Everett, who had been specifically recalled to the Prince’s
staff to act as Diana’s unofficial Private Secretary; then there was Michael Colborne, a
former Petty Officer in the Navy who had left the service in 1975 to join the Prince.
Their field of advice could, however, only be limited to public life. Diana had a desk in
Colborne’s office and, having virtually nothing else to do, was frequently there. She
seemed, to their embarrassment, haunted by Camilla Parker Bowles. She would openly
seek their help: ‘I asked Charles if he was still in love with Camilla Parker Bowles and
he didn’t give me a clear answer. What am I to do?’ Elizabeth, busy and remote in her
area of Buckingham Palace, was unaware of this aspect of her son’s fiancée’s problems.
The Prince’s staff were too loyal to tell her and, if they had, it is doubtful whether she
would have been sympathetic. Her attitude would have been, ‘Charles has asked her to
marry him. He has told her about Mrs Parker Bowles and has given her up. Diana must
get on with it.’ She also thought that Frances Shand Kydd, who was helping her daughter
over her wardrobe, was the person to be responsible for her daughter’s morale.
Increasingly, however, Diana’s problems obtruded themselves on Elizabeth’s notice,
although she attributed them to the normal bride’s pre-wedding nerves and the huge
pressure of publicity upon a nineteen-year-old girl who was being treated like a film
star. Diana lost weight and was frequently in tears. During Ascot week at Windsor, just
two weeks before the wedding, the problems were obvious to everyone. ‘Diana was
going through a terribly difficult time of adjustment and was feeling very
claustrophobic,’ an observer said. During tea at the back of the royal box at the races