Di's mom slams 'betrayals'
2002-08-31 14:07
Princess Diana's mother used the fifth anniversary of her daughter's death on Saturday to rebuke former friends and associates who "betrayed" the princess's trust by selling lurid stories about her private life.
Frances Shand Kydd also bemoaned what she called the commercialisation of Diana's death in a car crash and appealed to the country to show more sensitivity to the feelings of the princess's sons, William and Harry, and other family members.
"I am certainly disappointed that since her death so many people she trusted have broken the trust, and, for financial gain, have spilled the beans," she said in a British TV interview from her home in Scotland due to be aired on Sunday.
"I believe that trust is for life...even if one half goes to the grave, it does not release you from the bond of trust," Shand Kydd added in remarks from the interview published in The Daily Telegraph. "It is sad for her that so many people failed her in that department."
She did not mention any names, but her remarks came shortly after publication of the latest revelations about Diana's private life in a tell-all book, "Diana: Closely Guarded Secret", written by a former bodyguard, Ken Wharfe.
The book was scheduled to hit the shops in time for the anniversary and describes the time the princess allowed Wharfe to see her naked, and how she once leapt off a balcony to escape the prying eyes of paparazzi photographers.
Wharfe's book is reported to have made William and Harry "incandescent" with rage.
There were no official ceremonies planned in Britain to mark the anniversary of Diana's death in a car crash in a Paris road tunnel on August 31, 1997.
Small groups of people gathered outside Kensington Palace, her London home, to lay flowers and leave messages - a stark contrast to the tens of thousands who flocked there in the days after her death.
But the legacy of change her death forced onto Britain's until now aloof royal family, and a continuing media obsession with her, her handsome sons, her ex-husband's lover and revelations by her staff, ensure she is far from forgotten.
"One of Diana's greater legacies to her sons and their successors is that she has made many things more acceptable in a royal context, and shown the old guard at Buckingham Palace that in fact a lot of stuff is wanted by the people as a whole," Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, said in a recent interview.