INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

Diana's pedigree was remarkably impressive, for she was descended from Henry VII and James I. She could also boast among her ancestors four fertile mistresses to Charles II and James II. Another Lady Sarah Spencer had been governess to Queen Victoria's children. George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland and Franklin D. Roosevelt were distant cousins, as was Winston S. (for Spencer) Churchill, and lighter branches of the family held the names of Humphrey Bogart and Lilian Gish.

She showed little interest in learning the Royal Family history. Oliver Everett, Charles's assistant private secretary, was asked to act as unofficial tutor, and he casually suggested she read James Pope-Hennessy's monumental and compelling biography of Queen Mary. Diana accepted the book and thanked Everett, but when he departed, she tossed the book aside: 'If he thinks I am going to read that boring old stuff, he has another thing coming!'

By 1990 she had amassed more than three thousand outfits, a fifty-yard-length of ball gowns, six hundred pairs of shoes and four hundred hats.

If cast away on a desert island her first three choices of music to have with her would have been Mozart's 'Mass in C' and the requiems by Fauré and Verdi.

She described Wednesday, 28 February 1996, the date on which she announced her decision to agree to an uncontested divorce, as 'the saddest day of my life.'

Her final lover, Dodi, rented a disco for two nights so that Diana and her children could dance in private.

The inscription on the gates of Kensington Palace in the days of mourning before the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, read 'To live in the hearts of those we leave behind is not to die.' (Thomas Campbell 1777-1844).

She was once asked what she would want as an epitaph on her grave. 'A great hope crushed in its infancy,' was her reply.

She was always punctilious about writing thank you letters and answering correspondence, a habit instilled in her by her father.

She said of her butler, Paul Burrell, that he was the one man in her life who had never let her down. She called him 'my rock.'

She was convinced that in another existence she had been a nun. It may be for this reason that she felt so drawn to Mother Teresa.

Once, after a film première, the Princess attended a party where she enjoyed a long conversation with Liza Minnelli. The Hollywood star talked at length about her difficult life and told her that when she felt down she thought of Diana and that helped her endure.

Was the first Englishwoman to marry an heir to the throne for over 300 years; Lady Anne Hyde married the future James II (from whom the Princess was descended) in 1659.

It is estimated that 31 million people in Britain, and two and a half billion people around the world, watched Diana's funeral on television.

She and Sarah Ferguson, the then future wife of Prince Andrew, attempted to gatecrash Prince Andrew's stag night, dressed as policewomen.

In June 1997, at the suggestion of her son Prince William, the Princess gave 79 of her own dresses to be auctioned in New York, raising millions of dollars for cancer and AIDS charities.

After attending finishing school in Switzerland, Diana began working in London as a nanny, governess and kindergarten teacher.

In 1995, Princess Diana gave a BBC television interview in which she admitted to having suffered from bulimia and to having committed adultery. She also suggested that the royal family was a cold and unsupportive one.

Left her Swiss finishing school after only one term because she was desperately homesick.

Was refused entry to the Royal Box at the 1981 Ascot because the gate keeper failed to recognize her.

Shortly before her wedding day, she discovered that Prince Charles planned to give Camilla Parker Bowles a bracelet inscribed with their nicknames 'Fred' and 'Gladys'.

Committed a faux-pas on her 1984 visit to Oslo by forgetting to turn at the top of the steps to the plane and wave goodbye to her hosts.

Her greatest luxury in life was to sit down with baked beans on toast and watch television.

Princess Diana comforted Elton John during the funeral of murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace in July 1997. By a tragic twist of fate he was to sing at her funeral service just a few weeks later.

A Garden Bridge across the Thames in memory of Diana, is being proposed by Joanna Lumley, the actress, who is canvassing support from leading figures in business and the arts. The proposed pedestrian walkway would link Whitehall with the South Bank of the Thames.