The royals - Kitty Kelley [233]
The Queen’s private secretary contacted Peter, Lord Palumbo, a close friend of Diana’s, to say that the Queen wanted to spare the Princess the ordeal of taking the stand. Lord Palumbo understood. Although Diana wanted to proceed, the Queen did not. So Lord Palumbo negotiated with a few of the lawyers involved and worked out a confidential arrangement that benefited everyone: the Princess looked victorious; the newspapers avoided regulation; the Peeping Tom escaped poverty. The basic terms:
1. The Mirror Newspaper Group agreed to issue a public apology, pay $40,000 in damages to charity in Diana’s name, and not to write about the case.
2. Bryce Taylor agreed to give Diana the photographs and negatives and issue a public apology. In exchange for agreeing never to discuss the case, he was to receive secret monthly payments totaling $450,000 from a blind trust. He did not know who provided the money but speculated on King Juan Carlos because the blind trust was incorporated in Spain. The final payment was made in June 1996. The trust also was to pay Taylor’s taxes and his legal fees.
3. Part of Diana’s legal fees were to be paid by the money that had been frozen by the court’s injunction; the fees not covered by that money were waived by Lord Mischon’s law firm.
4. All parties signed confidentiality agreements not to divulge the details.
When the settlement agreement was announced, the News of the World sighed in relief: “The Royal Family Is Safe.” A rash of stories in London’s other newspapers crowed mistakenly about “Di’s smashing victory.”
“I suppose we could’ve won,” said a Mirror editor, “but it would’ve cost too much. Not in terms of cash, but in hatred from the public, especially from our downmarket readership, which adores Diana.”
Although she looked like a winner in the media, the Princess knew she had been defeated. Most of her staff had resigned—her chef, her equerry, her dresser, her chauffeur, her detective. She struck back by firing her butler, Harold Brown, who had been with her since her marriage to Charles and stayed with her after the separation. Now she insisted he leave “as soon as possible” and give up his grace-and-favor apartment in Kensington Palace. When Princess Michael of Kent offered to hire the tall, courtly butler, who had spent his adult life in royal service, Diana said no.
Disturbed by her behavior, the Prince of Wales sent for the man. “I’m so sorry for what she’s done to you,” he said, “but I can’t interfere… I can’t even take you on myself. But I want you to know that I know what has been done. And the Queen has been informed about what the Princess has done.”
The butler was eventually hired by Princess Margaret, who told him to keep his rent-free apartment. “The Princess of Wales dare not tell Princess Margaret whom she can employ,” said a member of Margaret’s staff. “After all, Princess Margaret is royal by birth. Diana is royal by marriage. There’s a big difference. Even though Diana is senior to Margaret in terms of protocol, that’s just on paper. That isn’t the way it is. Princess Margaret is the Queen’s sister, and Diana can’t pull rank on someone who’s really royal, like she can on Princess Michael of Kent.”
By then Diana’s royal duties had been curtailed and her husband had rejected her offer to reconcile. He said he would rather immolate himself than live with her again. She felt ostracized by the royal family and hounded by the press. So she decided to withdraw from public life. On December 3, 1993, again in tears, she publicly announced that she wanted privacy.
“When I started my public life twelve years ago,” she told workers for the Headway National Head Injuries Association in a luncheon speech, “I understood that the media might be interested in what I did… but I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention would become, nor the extent to which it would affect both my public duties and my personal life, in a manner that has been hard to bear.” Then she dropped her bomb: “I will be reducing the extent of the public life I have led so far.”
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