MAIL ONLINE: At the age of 13, Prince William faced the daunting prospect of becoming a new boy in a school that was almost ten times the size of his old one. That was hard enough.
What made his transition to Eton far more of an ordeal was that no one — from masters to pupils — could fail to be unaware of the open warfare that was tearing his parents’ marriage apart.
Unlike his prep school, where the head often pretended the news-papers hadn’t been delivered, multiple sets arrived on the premises daily — and William could simply no longer be shielded.
So it was doubly unfortunate that, almost immediately after his arrival, his mother’s love life was once again making lurid headlines. This time, the man in question was the England rugby captain Will Carling, whom William had met several times with Diana.
For a boy trying to handle his first weeks at a big school, it was excruciatingly hard to bear.
But there was worse to come, as his house master Andrew Gailey soon discovered. While William was still settling in, Gailey learned that the Princess of Wales was recording an interview in secret for the BBC.
Concerned for his pupil, he phoned Diana and told her it was imperative to explain to William, face-to-face, what she was intending to do.
‘Is that really necessary?’ she said. It was, he said — but she refused to come. The next day he phoned again and was even more insistent. Reluctantly, she agreed to go to the school.
In the end, the meeting between mother and son lasted no longer than five minutes. Diana told William that the programme she’d recorded would not contain anything controversial.
It would make him proud of her, she assured him. And before he had a chance to ask any questions, she left. There’s no doubt she anticipated a magnificent triumph. ‘It’s terribly moving,’ she told her private secretary, when he asked what the programme contained.
On November 20, 1995, a large proportion of the nation sat glued to their TV sets in disbelief as Diana gave the performance of her life on Panorama. » | Penny Junor | Friday, May 04, 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: William 'deeply upset' by Diana's Panorama interview: The young Duke of Cambridge was left “deeply upset” by the Panorama interview in which his mother lifted the lid on her marriage to the Prince of Wales - after she had assured him it would contain nothing controversial - according to a new biography. » | Saturday, May 05, 2012
