Spectator Books: Diana, Her True Story, by Andrew Morton

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2019

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

In this week's books podcast I'm joined from Los Angeles by Andrew Morton -- the Royal writer who scooped the world with the inside story of Princess Diana's marriage. To coincide with the publication of a revised and expanded edition of Diana, Her True Story -- including new material recovered from the tapes they smuggled out of Kensington Palace -- he looks back on those days and that story, and discusses how Royal reportage has changed. Why didn't they call it "Diana: The True Story"? Does he worry that that sort of public exposure during a divorce battle was risking the happiness of the children caught up in it? And what was it like when -- before his source was known -- people were publicly calling for our man to be sent to the Tower of London?

Hosted by Sam Leith.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Books podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator,
0:08.4	and I'm very pleased this week to be joined by Andrew Morton, the royal reporter who had what I think
0:13.8	most people would agree is the Royal Scoop of the 20th century when he published Diana Hertrie's
0:20.0	story in 1992.
0:22.1	That book published originally with a covert cooperation of Princess Diana,
0:26.6	completely blew open the Prince of Wales's marriage and the difficulties in it.
0:31.5	Now, 25-odd years on, there's a new edition being published,
0:35.4	Diana, her tree story in her own words, a new edition from Michael O'Mara, which is revised and expanded and updated. And Andrew, you've, this is kind of,
0:43.9	you're returning obviously to, you know, the subject that really completely blew things open.
0:50.3	How was it going back to kind of revisit this? How different does it look now?
0:55.4	Well, at the time, I just thought that it would be one book, you know, in a litany of works about Diana over the next, you know, 50, 60 years.
1:06.5	Nobody expected her to die as she did. So going back to what she had to say,
1:13.6	going back to all the memos and the speeches
1:16.1	and all the other paraphernalia of life with her
1:19.6	assumed a greater importance
1:21.0	because obviously she's no longer with us.
1:23.4	And you realise yourself as well that, you know,
1:27.3	we're not going to live forever.
1:29.1	So best to go back over the material and make sure that it's all in proper order for people who come after me.
1:37.0	Well, there's a new material as well, isn't that?
1:39.2	I mean, you used some sort of techniques to scrub up the tapes.
1:42.4	You found more stuff.
	...

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