This from today's Sunday Times on the reasons for the feud between Diana and the Queen Mother:
Tragedy of the princess she created and discarded
'She is the most successful sex symbol the British monarchy has ever known," wrote Penelope Mortimer in her biography of the Queen Mother. That judgment, from an intelligent and responsible writer, gave rise to no dissent when it was published in 1986 but was balderdash by 1997. In the intervening years Diana, whom the Queen Mother chose as a suitable consort for her beloved grandson, had soared into mega stardom and replaced the woman who had befriended, promoted and finally discarded her.
It is yet another Greek tragedy in the troubled story of the House of Windsor. In its destinies the Queen Mum had till then played a heroic and beneficent role. One error of judgment, well nigh impossible to foresee, destroyed much of her lifetime's dedicated work. It was a tragedy that had begun with the very best of intentions.
Prince Charles, who by his own testimony on all our television screens, had felt uncared for by his parents, had one sterling ally in his grandmother. In her eyes he could do no wrong. Like each Prince of Wales before him, he was feted wherever he went. The most eligible girls in the world were his for the taking. But it was a condition of his good fortune that he must marry and give the nation an heir. His 30th birthday came and went. The time was ripe for him to fulfil his dynastic destiny.
Now his grandmother made her ill-fated move. One of her oldest friends was her lady-in-waiting Ruth, Lady Fermoy. She had a granddaughter, Lady Diana Spencer, who was 11 years younger than Charles, shy, beautiful and innocent. In his shattering Westminster address at her funeral Earl Spencer reminded the world that his sister had been named after the ancient goddess of the chase. He did not add that she was also the goddess of chastity. In retrospect we can see that it was folly to throw such a child into the maelstrom of monarchy; at the time it seemed charming and romantic. The two elderly ladies could congratulate themselves on a match made in heaven.
It was, however, a match predicated on a fatally outmoded notion of morality and honour. For a royal to take a mistress was in the eyes of the Queen Mother par for the course. Edward VII, for example, had famously kept mistresses and his wife, Queen Alexandra, had turned a blind eye to them.
The Queen Mother liked Lady Furness, one of Edward VIII's mistresses, and had been incensed at the cowardly way he got rid of another, Freda Dudley Ward, by instructing the switchboard operator at York House not to put her through. So she was tolerant of her grandson's continuing idyll with Camilla Parker Bowles. She went further. She helped the clandestine lovers keep in touch by installing a private line at Birkall Lodge, her Scottish home on the Balmoral estate, for them to use. That line was in constant use, often twice a day when Charles was holidaying at Balmoral with his sons.
When the news got back to Diana it was just one of a whole string of shattering betrayals she felt she had suffered at the hands of the House of Windsor — but one of the most bitter. "I now have a hate-love relationship with the Queen Mother," she told friends. "I thought I could trust her. But this news makes me realise what a fool I have been."
Yet there were deeper reasons for the rift between them. The Queen Mother, reared in the trammelled Edwardian world, did not believe in the overt display of emotion; certainly not in its tactile expression. Diana was soon to find that she had an extraordinary gift for reaching out — to the sick, the poor and the disadvantaged. All the Queen Mother could do, in contrast, was smile and wave. It was no contest. Diana effortlessly upstaged her.
"One thing the Queen Mother does not care for is competition," wrote her biographer Michael De-la-Noy. Diana, he claimed, "discovered gifts she had no idea when she married that she possessed, and in a journey of self-discovery she determined to exploit them for the benefit of herself and others . . . it was a dazzling virtuoso performance such as the beloved Queen Mother herself might have envied. Which, unfortunately, she did."
The final rift came with the publication in 1992 of Andrew Morton's book Diana: Her True Story. It painted a vivid and distressing picture of Diana's marriage, and portrayed Charles in a less than attractive light. The Queen Mother saw it as the ultimate betrayal of her beloved grandson.
"At the Trooping the Colour in 1992 Diana was in the room from which the Queen Mother and other members of Royal Family watch at Horse Guards Parade and was virtually ostracised," wrote De-la-Noy.
"You could have cut the atmosphere with my sword," commented a senior army officer who was on duty there that day. Small wonder that in her celebrated television interview Diana referred to her battle against "the enemy".
So we come to the ghastly denouement of the tragedy. The Queen Mother, who had meant so well, done so much good to the monarchy and then unwittingly so much harm, walked gamely on her stick but otherwise unaided into Westminster Abbey for Diana's funeral service.
She sat stony-faced as Diana's brother, once a royal page, castigated the royal family in front of a billion people. The romantic dream the Queen Mother had spun for her favourite grandson had ended in a waking nightmare.
Englishman.
