Queen Elizabeth’s Five Days At Balmoral After Diana Di*d Were Far More Painful Than You Think

Queen Elizabeth’s Five Days At Balmoral After Diana Di*d Were Far More Painful Than You Think

When Princess Diana died in Paris, Queen Elizabeth II stayed at Balmoral for 5 days. William and Harry were with her. London filled with flowers, and the flagpole over Buckingham Palace stayed empty. Most people remember those 5 days as coldness. A queen who put protocol before grief. But those 5 days were far more painful than that. And much of the pain she chose for herself. Her own advisers pressed her to fly a flag at half-mast. And she refused. She had the newspapers taken out of the house, so the boys would not see what was being written. By Thursday, the front pages were asking where she was. And when she finally spoke, a man in Downing Street later claimed one of her words as his own. The week begins before dawn on that Sunday. In the boys’ bedrooms at Balmoral.

At the end of August 1997, the Queen was where she was every late summer. At Balmoral, the castle her great-great-grandmother had bought in the Scottish Highlands. She was 71. Prince Philip was with her, and so was her mother at Birkhall, a few miles away on the same estate. The Prince of Wales was there with his two sons. William was 15, Harry was 12, and in 2 weeks he would be 13. Their summer holiday was nearly over. That Sunday they had been due to go back south. Their mother was in Paris with Dodi Fayed. Shortly after midnight Paris time, the car carrying them crashed in the tunnel under the Pont de l’Alma. In Scotland, it was still Saturday night.

At about 1:00 in the morning, a telephone rang in Crathie One Lodge, a house on the estate where the Queen’s Deputy Private Secretary was asleep. His name was Robin Janvrin. The call came from the British Embassy in Paris. Janvrin dressed and went straight up to the castle. The Prince of Wales was woken and told there had been an accident. For the next few hours, the plan was that he would fly to Paris to see her in hospital. Then a second call came. At 4:00 in the morning, French time, the doctors at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital had declared Diana dead. She was 36. At 9 minutes past 5:00, Buckingham Palace issued a statement of exactly two lines.

“The Queen and the Prince of Wales were deeply shocked and distressed by this terrible news.”

In County Durham, the Prime Minister had been awake since just before 2:00. Tony Blair had been in office for 4 months. Before dawn, he had drafted his own statement on the telephone with his press secretary, Alastair Campbell. At half past 9:00, he spoke to the Queen and to the Prince of Wales. A little later, outside the church in Trimdon in his constituency, he called Diana the People’s Princess. Years afterwards, in his memoirs, he admitted the phrase now sounds corny. That morning, it went around the world.

When Princess Diana died in Paris, Queen Elizabeth II stayed at Balmoral for 5 days. William and Harry were with her. London filled with flowers, and the flagpole over Buckingham Palace stayed empty. Most people remember those 5 days as coldness. A queen who put protocol before grief. But those 5 days were far more painful than that. And much of the pain she chose for herself. Her own advisers pressed her to fly a flag at half-mast. And she refused. She had the newspapers taken out of the house, so the boys would not see what was being written. By Thursday, the front pages were asking where she was. And when she finally spoke, a man in Downing Street later claimed one of her words as his own. The week begins before dawn on that Sunday. In the boys’ bedrooms at Balmoral.
At the end of August 1997, the Queen was where she was every late summer. At Balmoral, the castle her great-great-grandmother had bought in the Scottish Highlands. She was 71. Prince Philip was with her, and so was her mother at Birkhall, a few miles away on the same estate. The Prince of Wales was there with his two sons. William was 15, Harry was 12, and in 2 weeks he would be 13. Their summer holiday was nearly over. That Sunday they had been due to go back south. Their mother was in Paris with Dodi Fayed. Shortly after midnight Paris time, the car carrying them crashed in the tunnel under the Pont de l’Alma. In Scotland, it was still Saturday night.

At about 1:00 in the morning, a telephone rang in Crathie One Lodge, a house on the estate where the Queen’s Deputy Private Secretary was asleep. His name was Robin Janvrin. The call came from the British Embassy in Paris. Janvrin dressed and went straight up to the castle. The Prince of Wales was woken and told there had been an accident. For the next few hours, the plan was that he would fly to Paris to see her in hospital. Then a second call came. At 4:00 in the morning, French time, the doctors at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital had declared Diana dead. She was 36. At 9 minutes past 5:00, Buckingham Palace issued a statement of exactly two lines.

“The Queen and the Prince of Wales were deeply shocked and distressed by this terrible news.”