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dealing with media issues to drafting speeches came under our umbrella, as she used us to second-guess her small team of courtiers. It was exciting, exhilarating and amusing as this ill-assorted triumvirate helped shape the life and image of the world’s most famous young woman.
    At one of our first ‘editorial’ meetings it occurred to us that Diana would feel much more comfortable if her participation in the project was not acknowledged, thus giving her the opportunity to deny her involvement. The Princess was in fact the last of us to realize the importance of ‘deniability’, and it was, according to my notes, not until 4 January 1992, when the book was well under way, that she asked James, almost as an afterthought, to make sure she was kept in the background. ‘She knew from the start that the enterprise was not without risks,’ Colthurst said. ‘But with the proviso that she had deniability she became much more excited.’
    This strategy did give us an extra problem in that it became absolutely vital that we verified the Princess’s every claim independently. The emotional torrent that was her first interview raised many sensitive, not to say libellous, issues, particularly about Camilla Parker Bowles. This was my task for the next year – interviewing Diana’s friends, acquaintances and employees in order to acquire corroboration to underpin the original thesis. Some in her circle, like Carolyn Bartholomew and James Gilbey, were aware of her involvement although they did not know the full extent of her cooperation. When, for example, I interviewed Carolyn she told me that Diana had been ‘besotted’ with Prince Charles before they married. Just to make sure she called Diana to check that the word reflected her feelings. ‘I said the right thing, didn’t I?’ she asked. ‘Yes. I was. Totally,’ Diana said with emphasis. While Carolyn wasalmost in with us, most of the others in Diana’s circle were out of the loop and she had to choose her words with care when they called her to ask if they should speak to me. With many she was noncommittal, with some downright negative – ‘Don’t touch it [a proposed interview] with a bargepole,’ she counselled her masseur Stephen Twigg. (Thankfully, he ignored her advice.) When I eventually interviewed James Gilbey at his Knightsbridge apartment in November 1991, he was explicit about what she wanted to achieve with the book: ‘She wants to make her point loud and clear. She doesn’t want any beating about the bush. She wants people to know the grief she has had to endure and the way she’s been abandoned.’
    After her first session with James Colthurst, Diana knew that she had crossed a personal Rubicon. She had thrown away the map and was striking out on a journey with only a hazy idea of the route, let alone the destination. But she was determined to continue, and as the months passed she became increasingly energized by the process, suggesting topics herself, such as her bulimia, which she wanted to put into its proper context. While I busied myself with the Princess’s friends, James continued with his interviews: ‘Usually we chatted in the morning, then had lunch and sometimes had another session in the afternoon. But by then she had had enough. There were lots of interruptions especially when Paul Burrell [then her under-butler] and other staff were around. She clearly didn’t trust them so then we would move on to general conversation when they entered the room.’
    (It is worth pointing out that, after he published his memoir in 2003, Burrell told the American talk-show host, Larry King, that in 1991 he and Diana used to discuss the secret interviews that were taking place for Diana: Her True Story . Straight-faced, he told millions of American viewers: ‘I knew about it. I was there and I knew it was happening. I helped the Princess to have a voice. And that’s the only time that she could ever sort of say how she felt and thought. It [the