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Edinburgh Live
Edinburgh Live
National
Abbie Meehan

Prince Harry asked to drive through Paris tunnel where Diana died 'at same exact speed'

Prince Harry has revealed that he asked his driver to travel through the same tunnel where his mother Diana met her tragic end - at the same speed she was travelling at.

In his new memoir, Spare, the Duke has been extremely open about a lot of struggles he has suffered with throughout his life. One of these is his denial, blocking out and subsequent realisation of his mother, Diana's death.

The former Princess of Wales tragically died on August 31, 1997 in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris, France. Dodi Fayed, Diana's partner, and Henri Paul, their chauffeur, were also found dead inside the car.

READ MORE - Harry says William 'plotted revenge' in Scotland after King Charles' decision

Harry was just 12-years-old when he lost his Mummy, and spent years calling her death a "disappearance". And he described his realisation in his new book, when he visited Paris for the Rugby World Cup Semi-Finals - as England competed.

In the book, Harry wrote: "The World Cup provided me with a driver, and on my first night in the City of Light, I asked him if he knew the tunnel where my mother...

"I watched his eyes in the rear-view, growing large...Yes yes. He knew it.

"You want to go through the tunnel? At sixty-five miles an hour - to be precise. Sixty five? Yes.

"The exact speed Mummy's car had supposedly been driving, according to police, at the time of the crash."

Harry described how they "weaved through traffic" to reach the tunnel, going "over the lip at the tunnel's entrace, the bump that supposedly sent Mummy's Mercedes veering off course.

"But the lip was nothing. We barely felt it."

Harry continued to explain: "I'd always imagined the tunnel as some treacherous passageway, inherently dangerous, but it was just a short, simple, no-frills tunnel.

"I looked out of the window: Again. The driver stared at me in the rear-view. Again?

"Yes. Please. We went through again. It had been a very bad idea.

"I'd had plenty of bad ideas in my twenty-three years, but this one was uniquely ill-conceived. I'd told myself that I wanted closure, but I didn't really.

"Deep down, I'd hoped to feel in that tunnel what I'd felt when JLP gave me the police files - disbelief. Doubt.

"Instead, that was the night all doubt fell away...I got the closure I was pretending to seek. I got it in spades.

"And now I'd never be able to get rid of it."

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