Previously unheard tapes of Princess Diana claiming the then-Prince Charles said he was “disappointed” after Prince Harry’s birth because he “wanted a girl” have been revealed for the first time.
Diana made the recording while speaking to James Colthurst in the 1990s for her biographer, Andrew Morton. In total, she recorded seven hours worth of audio. The tapes were then used by Morton to write and publish the watershed 1992 book, Diana: Her True Story.
The clips, released just one day after the 26th anniversary of her death in a car crash, are due to feature in an upcoming documentary, Diana: The Rest of Her Story, according to ABC’s Good Morning America.
In the recording, Diana makes the claim that Charles told her stepmother, Raine Spencer, at Harry’s christening: “We’re so disappointed, we wanted a girl.” According to Diana, Spencer “snapped his head off”, letting Charles know that he “should realise you are lucky to have a child”.
“Ever since that day, the shutters have come down. That’s what he does when he gets somebody answering back at him,” Diana is heard saying in the tapes.
It wasn’t the first time Diana’s stepmother and Charles had a falling out. In the tapes, she says Charles “won’t even talk to mummy”.
The tapes also feature Diana speaking about her strained relationship with her stepmother. Ms Spencer married Diana’s father John in 1976 after her mother Frances Shand Kydd left. After John’s death in 1992, she left the family seat of Althorp due to her strained relationship with stepson Charles.
Diana said her relationship with her stepmother was, at times, just as strained.
She explained: “I was so angry. I said ‘I hate you so much. If you only knew how much we all hated you for what you’ve done. You ruined the house. You spent daddy’s money. I have said everything I possibly could. Raine said: ‘You have no idea how much pain your mother put your father through.’
“I said: ‘Pain, Raine? It’s one word you don’t even know how to relate to. In my job, I see people suffer like you never see. You call that pain?’ I said: ‘You’ve got a lot to learn.’ I remember really going for her gullet.”
Diana and her siblings had a difficult relationship with her stepmother, referring to her as “Acid Raine” and often singing “Raine, Raine, go away!”
The upcoming documentary is said to be a follow-up to the 2017 documentary about Princess Diana called Diana: In Her Own Words.
The producer of both documentaries, Tom Jennings, discussed the initial public reaction to the first documentary while speaking to ABC, saying: “When the first film came out, people were blown away because they had not heard Diana talk like this before,” according to the Daily Mail.
“It is important as part of Diana’s legacy to allow more of those tapes to be heard,” he claimed.
The Independent has contacted Buckingham Palace and Tom Jennings for comment.
