Original subtitles

This year, the Royal House of Windsor

celebrates 100 years on the British throne.

They are now the most famous royal family in the world

and have prospered while other great dynasties have fallen.

They've seen their relatives overthrown, murdered and exiled,

overcome family feuds, fire and betrayal.

And they have always followed one crucial rule…

survive, whatever it takes, whatever the cost.

The Windsors learned the dark art of survival

in the days of war a century ago. They've never forgotten it.

Now Channel 4 can uncover their secrets,

with the help of family insiders, royal experts,

and some of the most closely guarded papers in the world.

We've combed through letters, diaries, government memos,

confidential royal reports, and for the first time,

cameras have been allowed into

the Queen's personal family archives at Windsor.

What we've found rips aside the mask of royal pomp

to reveal the human frailties and the secrets

of the family that built Britain's most powerful dynasty.

On 20th November 1997,

the Queen and Prince Philip arrived at a damp Westminster Abbey.

The rain has cleared.

The weather is finer and better than it's been all morning.

They were here to attend a special service

to celebrate 50 years of marriage.

The respectful and warm welcome was typical of the regard

in which Britain's longest-serving monarch is held.

It was a day filled with great joy and happiness.

But what is astonishing about these images is that just weeks earlier,

the Queen had faced the biggest crisis of her reign.

The Windsors had failed to imagine that a naive teenage girl

could grow up to mount a direct challenge to the Crown.

They were blindsided.

She went exactly against everything that they wanted and expected

for the consort of the future king.

Now, unpublished private papers

reveal how Diana took on the House of Windsor.

How she manipulated both her own image

and leading politicians of the time.

She knew that they knew that she was an asset to British diplomacy.

Private correspondence reveals the sympathy and support

of an unlikely ally at the very heart of the family.

"Charles was silly to risk everything with Camilla"

"for a man in his position."

No-one knew better than Prince Philip

just how hard it was for an outsider to come into the royal family.

Only for a restored House of Windsor to fight back,

secure in the knowledge that they had history on their side.

They are not just thinking of next week, next year.

They are thinking of 50 years, 100 years.

Billed as the wedding of the century,

the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer to Charles, Prince of Wales,

was a global TV phenomenon.

Beamed around the world, 750 million people in 74 countries tuned in.

Here is the stuff of which fairy tales are made.

But we have to remember,

the original fairy tales were pretty dark stories.

The royal wedding kick-started a global obsession with Diana.

Modern, approachable and photogenic, she was the People's Princess.

Yet Diana's individualism was a problem for the House of Windsor…

an uncomfortable echo of a prince

who had shaken the Crown 50 years before.

"I feel like a caged animal."

"It maddens me never to be out of the public eye."

These are the words not of Diana,

but of another who'd held the title of Wales…

Edward VIII, or David, as he was known before he was king.

A popular maverick prince, he often rejected the family code.

He was forced off the throne when he chose love over duty

and married the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson.

He was…

beautiful to look at, attractive to both men and women.

He had a kind of aura about him

which made people want to touch his flesh, to feel him.

It was a sort of mixture of royalty, of celebrity,

film-star good looks, and Princess Diana had all these attributes.

Both Edward and Diana broke one of the Windsors' most sacred rules.

As individuals, their personality and celebrity

threatened to overshadow the institution of the Crown.

I believe the magic of the royal family consists in distance

and the royal family is profoundly good at

being away from the gaze of the public

but at the same time,

being close enough to reflect the values of our world.

The Queen has never let her personality show.

Throughout her long reign,

she's had very fairly neutral expression, and nobody really knows

what she thinks or even feels.

If you don't show much personality,

there's not much that you can dislike.

On paper, the naive Diana was the perfect consort for the future king.

An innocent 19-year-old, she could be trained to follow royal protocol.

She was almost tragically uneducated.

I think her sole academic distinction

was to win a prize at school for the best-kept guinea pig,

so her mind was utterly unblemished by education.

The courtiers were amazed at her ignorance.

It was encyclopaedic.

At 31, Charles had gained a reputation

for being a playboy prince.

But he now needed a wife and heir.

Charles and Diana's

would be the last of the royal dynastic marriages.

Charles felt that he could impose his own personality on her

and she would become a kind of female complement to him,

so she was a toy, she was a kind of Barbie doll

as far as he was concerned.

In a TV interview, the 21-year-old Charles said,

"Whoever I choose is going to have a jolly hard job,"

"always in my shadow."

But behind Diana's shy smile lurked a troubled, complex character…

one Charles and the rest of the royal family

were ill-prepared to deal with.

Diana was damaged.

She needed to feel loved 100% of the time.

Charles, on the other hand, was a very needy young man.

He felt he was never good enough for his parents,

certainly never good enough for his father,

and his mother was rather absent because she was Queen.

And what he wanted in a marriage was a wife who would support him,

and in Diana, he didn't have that wife,

so it was a really, really tragic mismatch.

Diana's neediness stemmed from a troubled childhood.

A witness to her parents' acrimonious divorce,

she and her siblings were the subject of a bitter custody battle.

As a result, Diana's mother had to give up her children.

Diana later admitted she had been haunted

by the crunch of the gravel as her mother departed.

She was damaged, mentally, by her experiences.

And then moving into the royal family

was the worst possible scenario that she could have found for herself.

With Diana now part of the royal machine,

the 1980s saw her and Charles

elevated to the world's number one couple.

Wherever they went, they were mobbed, come rain or shine.

The reward for sitting it out

was a few words from a raincoat-and-brolly Princess.

And she spoke to each damp child.

It always surprised me that she was able to perform…

and it is a performance, you know.

You leave a palace, you have a car that waits for you.

You get into a private aircraft, masses of people wait for you,

and they were having to sort of play this royal role out

and try and convince people

that they were normal and everything was happy.

But in private, everything was far from happy.

Almost from the start,

the royal couple's relationship began to falter.

How are you enjoying married life?

Highly recommended.

She had terrible tantrums, terrible mood changes,

went into rages, floods of tears,

and Charles didn't know what the hell had happened

and he thought that in some way, it must be his fault.

Diana would later reveal she suffered from depression

and an eating disorder…

something the Queen would imply was the source of their troubles.

"She indicated to me that the reason why our marriage had gone downhill"

"was because Prince Charles"

"was having such a difficult time with my bulimia. She saw it as"

"the cause of the marriage problems, and not a symptom."

In public, too, Diana struggled with the constant press attention.

During the 1981 tour of Wales,

she burst into tears and refused to get out of the car.

And when she asked if the publicity would soon go away,

the palace press secretary gave an ominous reply.

"I'm sorry, it won't, and it never will."

"I wish I could tell you otherwise"

"but if I did, I would be telling you a lie."

Diana's experiences echoed those of Edward VIII

on his 1919 tour of Canada,

where the vast crowds and public adoration

proved to be a terrifying phenomenon.

"They again and again broke through and swamped the police lines."

"They snatched at my handkerchief."

"They tried to tear the buttons off my coat."

Such was the power of Edward's popularity

that he complained of a bruised right hand due to overuse…

a painful lesson the Princess would also quickly learn.

She was most at her ease with the children,

and perfectly prepared to get down to their level.

Just like Edward when he was Prince of Wales,

Diana's growing popularity boosted her confidence.

And what she lacked in bookish intellect,

she made up for in charisma.

She empathised, she was a champion for people who were damaged.

Because she was damaged herself,

she was able to reach out to those people.

Diana would soon reach out to those in power.

She began to turn political ambitions

into a potent weapon against the House of Windsor.

By the mid 1980s, the Prince and Princess of Wales were global superstars,

attracting vast crowds wherever they appeared.

But the disparity between Charles and Diana's personal appeal was all too obvious.

We want Princess Diana!

'The children made it clear, in the direct way that only children have,

'that it was the princess they wanted on their side of the road.'

When they made their tour of Australia,

somebody did a count of the number of photographs of her and of him,

and she occupied about 92% of the photographs and he was very much on

the sidelines.

Why were the press taking pictures of Diana?

Well, it's pretty obvious.

A, she was good-looking, B, she was sort of a fashion icon.

This was everything at that time in the '80s that was selling newspapers

and then subsequently magazines.

Charles had been a star all his life.

The golden rule… you never put more than one member of the family on a

podium at the same time because each one is a star in its own firmament.

Does Prince William have a favourite toy?

So Charles suddenly had this wife who was stealing the limelight.

He's got a plastic whale that throws things out the top,

little balls.

The one-sided attention put great strain on the marriage.

Diana spoke candidly of the effect on Charles.

"He was jealous. I understood the jealousy,"

"but I couldn't explain that I didn't ask for it."

The burden of keeping their troubles hidden began to weigh heavily on

Charles, too. He wrote to a friend…

"That is the total agony about the situation,"

"and I don't see how much longer one can go on trying to sweep it under"

"the carpet and pretend nothing is wrong."

It wasn't just Charles who was feeling the pressure.

The Windsors realised history was beginning to repeat itself.

Diana not only upstaged Charles,

but she upstaged the rest of the Royal Family.

Nothing had been seen like this since the tours of Edward VIII.

'And everywhere, it's a repetition …roads lined by cheering crowds,

'village streets packed tight with welcoming faces.

What made Edward and Diana popular was that they were unafraid to break

a royal taboo… revealing their own personalities.

Such unroyal behaviour only served to humanise their radical brand of monarchy.

Edward, in his autobiography, questioned the very idea of being born royal.

"The idea that my birth and title should somehow set me apart from and"

"above other people struck me as wrong."

Diana candidly drew on her childhood and her parents' divorce.

"The divorce helped me to relate to anyone else"

"who was upset in their family life."

"I understand it… been there, done it."

One of Diana's closest confidants was her Private Secretary, Patrick Jephson.

Following her death,

Jephson's private papers were donated to the Churchill Archive in Cambridge.

They've never before been filmed.

Now he's returned to see them for the first time in over 20 years.

It's, erm…

…quite a sentimental experience, actually,

looking at some of these papers.

I'm surprised by how much emotion it still has the power to stir up.

Looking back at his diaries reveals how quickly Charles and Diana began

to go their separate ways.

The entries in ink… these are the official engagements.

The ones that are marked with asterisks…

these were engagements that the Prince and Princess were going to do together.

When they were first married, they did most things together

but, as their marriage started to get into trouble, the asterisks tended to

reduce in number.

One of the most contentious choices Diana and Jephson made was which

charities she would support.

A large part of Diana's appeal was her willingness to tackle controversial issues.

Charity's always been a secret weapon of the monarchy,

but the charities that the Queen supported were uncontroversial charities.

Diana saw the possibility of getting much more publicity by dealing with lepers,

by dealing with the maimed, by dealing with Aids victims.

You know, I witnessed it on so many occasions… .people really down on their uppers.

You get someone like Diana to be able to sit down with them for ten, 15 minutes,

hold their hand… well, people said, hang on,

I never thought I'd ever speak to somebody like this in the Royal Family.

So powerful was Diana's challenge to the established royal order that

eventually the Queen herself intervened.

I just happened to be there when Diana came out from meeting with

the Queen, and Diana was crying. I said, what's up with you?

You know. She said, you just won't believe what's happened.

And she said the Queen had said, why don't you get involved in something nicer, something more pleasant?

People thought that she would be happier if she did easy, more traditional royal charities…

animal charities, for example. And she said to me one day, Patrick,

we'll do animal charities when we run out of people charities.

Diana's compassion was a trait she shared with Edward VIII.

When he was Prince of Wales,

during a trip to a world War I hospital in Belgium,

he controversially kissed a disfigured soldier.

British civil servant Sir Almeric Fitzroy recorded the event.

"Surely, an act of compassion entitled to live in history?"

"He who can so bear himself in the dread presence of extreme misery"

"must have a genius for pity."

While Diana's genius for pity came naturally, there was a personal cost.

To be engaged at an emotional level placed great demands on her own

emotional reserves.

There was nobody back home at the end of a long royal day saying,

kick your shoes off, darling, let me make you a drink.

Tell me all about it, you're doing a great job.

Charles' ongoing affair with Camilla Parker Bowles had long been an open

secret inside the House of Windsor…

…but, by the 1990s, a shift in Britain's political climate,

along with a slew of public scandals,

saw many of the Windsors' secrets exposed.

There was talk of this extensive parasitic royal family and the wheels

really were coming off the chariot.

The Royal Family really did look like a light that had failed.

The biggest test in the Queen's long reign would come in 1992 as the

House of Windsor literally went up in flames.

It was blow after blow after blow.

In January came the news about the Duchess of York's relationship with Steve Wyatt.

In February,

on the trip that was meant to signal the make-up of their marriage,

Diana had herself famously photographed alone

in front of the Taj Mahal.

Next thing we knew, Princess Anne's marriage was breaking up.

Then came news that the Yorks were in fact to separate.

And then in August came Squidgygate.

With both Charles and Diana now actively conducting affairs,

one of the original royal outsiders quietly entered the conversation.

Prince Philip, a man who had given up his naval career to stand in his

wife's shadow, wrote Diana a string of deeply personal letters.

"I can only repeat what I've said before."

"If invited, I will always do my utmost to help you and Charles"

"to the best of my ability,"

"but I'm quite ready to concede that"

"I have no talent as a marriage counsellor."

Here at last was written proof that this was acknowledged, recognised,

and that there was sympathy for her.

"We don't approve of either of you having affairs."

"Charles was silly to risk everything with Camilla"

"for a man in his position."

Never mind how Camilla might feel about that,

he was being supportive towards Diana, and no-one knew better than

Prince Philip just how hard it was for an outsider to come into the Royal Family.

Charles, too, was finding the situation almost unbearable.

On the 8th of November, 1992, he wrote to a close friend…

"The strain is immense and yet I want to do my duty in the way I've"

"been trained. I feel so unsuited to the ghastly business"

"of human intrigue and general nastiness."

"I don't know what will happen from now on, but I dread it."

Prophetic words…

as, just days later, renovations at Windsor Castle turned 1992 from a

bad year to a disastrous one.

'The sky aglow above Windsor tonight

'as 1,000 years of history takes flame.'

There was this extraordinary moment where the television cameras focus

on people bringing out from Windsor Castle treasure after treasure after

treasure after treasure.

It indicated, very much, the them and us.

The Queen has got this amazing ability to

appear calm and reflective…

…but I know that, in 1992, she was very profoundly worried by what was happening.

It was a very difficult time for her.

In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents,

it has turned out to be an annus horribilis.

The Queen called 1992 her annus horribilis,

but perhaps the fact that she did so in Latin really epitomised what was wrong.

But 1992 wasn't done yet for the House of Windsor.

On the 9th of December, the Prime Minister, John Major, stood up in

the House of Commons to make a statement.

It is announced from Buckingham Palace that, with regret,

the Prince and Princess of Wales have decided to separate.

But while the Prince and Princess of Wales had no plans to divorce,

for Charles and Diana, the gloves were off.

The Windsors would have to use the lessons of history to survive the crisis.

The '90s was a decade of great political change which also

ushered in a new age of celebrity.

24-hour news,

an explosion of newspapers and magazines and the start of reality

television all fuelled the hunger for personality.

We worshipped celebrity.

But most people have their moment of fame and then disappear.

This Royal Family cannot disappear.

And the now-separated Diana became the most famous of them all.

If they work themselves into a celebrity status,

then they're setting themselves up for a fall, and they can't afford to

do that because their moment of fame is as long as they live.

But Diana had little regard for the royal rule book.

She set about exploiting her global appeal for both personal and political ends.

The files of ex-Private Secretary Patrick Jephson now reveal how he

and Diana went about maximising every opportunity.

During a tour of Egypt,

ahead of a visit by Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd,

Diana went on the charm offensive.

She was the star of every dinner party, of every embassy event.

The ambassador's cocktail party become the most social activity in

the city that year.

British ambassadors,

British enterprise, saw Diana as a powerful new weapon for UK plc…

an international face for a traditional institution,

combining the best of all worlds.

Duty and beauty.

As they prepared to leave Cairo, Jephson drafted a letter for Diana.

Addressed personally to her, it was an attempt to seek a political role.

"I do hope my short tour will have made some contribution to your aims."

"Please be in no doubt of my gratitude for the opportunity such a visit"

"gives me to broaden my own horizons or my readiness to give my support to"

"our foreign policy in any way you think would be helpful."

She knew that they knew that she was an asset to British diplomacy.

While Diana's political ambitions were kept private…

…the story of her failing marriage was played out in public,

shattering yet another of the Windsors' most sacred rules.

The great secret of, say nothing, say nothing, smile sweetly,

but say nothing!

But neither Diana nor Charles were prepared to stay silent.

Each side leaked story after story.

They showed a marriage that had been a sham from the start.

It really did open up the windows into the palace in the most lurid light imaginable.

The absolute watchword is never complain, never explain.

And the whole mentality of Diana was to complain when her

marriage started going wrong and to explain why it had gone wrong.

She was free to not just flirt with the media but invent stories for the media,

to indulge in various affairs.

The press lapped it up.

Not content with just revealing personal details about her marriage,

Diana scaled down her charities to the most headline-grabbing.

Like a modern-day Florence Nightingale,

Diana seemed to be on a mission to cure the world.

Let us not wait to be asked, but let us act today.

Just being kind…

…is all the sad world needs.

Thank you.

"Yesterday's visit by the Princess of Wales was scripted brilliantly."

"It is the performance which the Princess has come to play to perfection…"

"mother figure to the world's needy."

Diana's touchy-feely approach provoked her critics.

Jephson's papers reveal how he warned her about her image.

Journalist Robert Hardman compared Diana to the more reserved Princess Anne.

"Visits are vital if the Princess is to maintain her world profile."

"But she will need to use them sparingly and vary the diet."

"Too much of what cynics call 'the Mother Teresa routine' could lead to"

"compassion indigestion."

Sent this up to the Princess …wrote a comment on it,

"What are Your Royal Highness' views on X Hardman's warning?"

And she wrote me a note back… typical, this, "I totally agree with 'X'."

"Change of diet would be very important!"

As part of varying the diet, Diana began to court Tony Blair.

Three years before he won a landslide majority,

he set about transforming an out-of-touch Labour Party.

New Labour, new Britain.

The country reborn.

Tony Blair was attracted to anyone who looked like a winner.

And so that would include

businessmen, football managers,

anyone who seemed to be a success.

He wasn't really interested in those people but he thought some of the

stardust would rub off on him.

And undoubtedly, he saw Princess Diana in the same way.

Blair and Diana were careful never to be photographed together.

But he acknowledged in his autobiography that they were both modernisers.

"Just as we were changing the image of Britain,"

"she was radicalising the monarchy."

"For someone as acutely perceptive and long-termist about the monarchy"

"and its future as the Queen, it must have been deeply troubling."

In November 1995,

the Queen was confronted by the most troubling event in the saga so far.

Diana had invited Panorama's Martin Bashir to Kensington Palace and was

about to reveal her alternative royal manifesto to the world.

There I was one day at lunch, saying to Diana, now,

I think, if you're smart,

you'll leave the other side to make mistakes and you won't give interviews.

And she sat there, saying, yes, Max, absolutely fascinating, Max.

At that moment, the Panorama cameras were setting up upstairs!

The interview was the most explosive and revealing ever by a member of

the Royal Family, and the footage reveals Diana played it for sympathy.

I don't think many people would want me to be queen, actually.

When I say many people,

I mean the establishment that I'm married into

because they have decided that

I'm a nonstarter.

Diana sat lonely on a chair, heavily kohled eyes,

tears gently falling down her cheeks,

saying how bitterly unhappy she'd been.

Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.

What one felt, watching her, was, you're out of your depth here,

you are stacking up trouble for yourself.

The footage shows that Diana openly questioned her estranged husband's

suitability to be king.

And because I know the character,

I would think that the top job, as I call it, would bring enormous

limitations to him, and I don't know whether he could adapt to that.

I should imagine the Queen was apoplectic when she watched that interview

and realised the extent to which Diana's anger was driving her to

wound the institution.

One thing we do know about the Queen is that she places the crown above

personal feelings.

Diana ended the interview with the phrase that would tragically become her epitaph.

I'd like to be a queen of people's hearts, in people's hearts.

I mean, goodness, it was milking it, but it was absolute dynamite!

She'd been built up.

She believed her own publicity.

I think she felt almost invincible,

but afterwards, I think, she really regretted having done it.

I thought that was the most terrible mistake.

A princess who chose to see herself as a victim and rather pathetic,

I didn't like.

If you're going to grab the world's attention,

you've got to have something good to say, and she didn't,

so I felt my time was up.

It wasn't just Jephson who'd had enough.

Diana's blistering attack on the royal establishment made her a pariah.

It was the Queen who must have felt the most betrayed and acted most ruthlessly.

She sent Diana a rare letter,

telling her that she and Charles should now divorce.

That's it. We have got to cut this woman lose.

We've got to…

…amputate this person from the family.

For the next 18 months, Diana's personal life spiralled out of control.

Stripped of her royal title,

she now suffered the same humiliation inflicted upon Edward VIII in 1936.

Following the Wallis Simpson scandal,

he was forced off the throne and consigned to a life of golf and gardening in exile.

After the divorce, she was completely lost.

She had nobody capable of guiding this unguided missile.

Abandoning many of those who had once advised and protected her,

Diana made new friends amongst some of the 1990s rich and famous.

In early 1997, she even got involved with New Labour's election bid.

The diaries of political spin doctor Alastair Campbell reveal the

details of a secret meeting where Tony Blair consulted Diana on how to

appear compassionate.

"We asked her for advice on pictures and she said"

"TB should go to meet the down-and-outs on the Bullring,"

"go to the London Lighthouse to meet Aids victims or visit a hospital."

But while Blair and Diana's meetings were kept secret,

Diana's love life was all too public.

Although few of her liaisons caused as much sensation as Dodi Fayed.

The images of Diana frolicking on Al-Fayed's 200-foot super yacht sent

shivers through the House of Windsor.

Dodi Fayed was said to have enough skeletons in his cupboard to stock a

rather large-sized graveyard.

He was a hopeless playboy of a character.

I mean, I dared to say to Diana, before I left,

what do you think you're doing?

And she sort of giggled and said, oh, well, it's fun.

Even her new political ally and Britain's new Prime Minister, Tony Blair,

had now turned.

A few weeks into his premiership, he mentioned to Diana that her new

romance was an issue.

He wrote later…

"She didn't like it and I could feel the wilful side of her bridling."

Yet, within weeks, the problem was tragically solved.

'The surgeons fought for two hours to restart her heart.

'This morning, they announced that Diana, Princess of Wales, was dead.'

Now plunged into an almost fatal crisis,

the House of Windsor would need to rely on its greatest asset to survive.

The death of Princess Diana stunned both the nation and the world.

If her arrival into the royal family had been spectacular…

her departure, crikey, was pretty spectacular too!

And very nearly brought about the end of the monarchy.

The week between Diana's death and the funeral was, I think,

the most interesting

and probably momentous week

in contemporary British history.

For six extraordinary days, shock was followed by grief,

which hardened to anger.

For the House of Windsor, Diana, who had been troublesome in life,

now proved almost fatal.

From now on, the British stiff upper lip

was to be cast to the wind

and we were all going to be allowed to bare our breasts

and cry and emote and share in public.

I've seen nothing ever like that in my life

before or since.

There was a lot of damage done to the royal family.

She was elevated into Saint Diana,

and I think we really have to be very cautious

about that interpretation.

The House of Windsor faced its deepest crisis.

It fell to Tony Blair to intervene.

Once the champion of Diana, he now took his chance to save the day.

She was the People's Princess and that's how she will stay,

how she will remain.

But while the country was united in grief,

the royal family were noticeably absent,

apparently holed up in the seclusion of Balmoral.

A person very close to the royal family phoned me up and said,

"Archbishop, can't you do something?"

"Couldn't you intervene to correct this picture of the Queen?"

Of course, that was nonsense.

To even do so would only really pour oil on troubled waters.

As the pressure mounted on the Queen, Tony Blair stepped in.

- He wrote later, - "There was no option."

"The tide had turned and something had to be done."

It seemed to fall to him to pull the Windsors

back from their bunker at Balmoral,

acknowledge the biggest exhibition of dying cut flowers

the world had ever seen… wring their hands publicly.

He seemed to be the man who was making that happen.

What I say to you now as your Queen and as a grandmother,

I say from my heart.

Worth bearing in mind how little

the Queen had to do to turn things round.

SHE didn't have to give an interview to Martin Bashir.

She had to appear at Buck House and say a speech

that lasted less than two minutes

and she was everybody's favourite granny again.

I, for one, believe there are lessons to be drawn from her life

and from the extraordinary and moving reaction

to her death.

With millions on the streets and billions watching around the world,

Diana Princess of Wales was laid to rest.

The Queen bowed her head.

It was a small gesture which had a powerful effect.

That's the Queen's great strength

as one of the great show women of all time

is that she understands that, you know,

when you have a track record of doing very little,

doing very little can say a lot.

Those closest to the Queen were also quick to acknowledge

her handling of the event.

Her sister Margaret, who did not bow, wrote,

"My loving admiration for you."

"How kindly you arranged everybody's lives after the accident"

"and made life tolerable for the two poor boys."

"I just felt you were wonderful."

The House of Windsor now knew the worst was behind them.

The Queen's cousin, Countess Mountbatten,

summed up the whole Diana saga.

"It was a tragic solution to a terrible problem."

They have a very long view of life.

They are not just thinking of next week, next year.

They are thinking of 50 years, 100 years.

And they know that what seems a huge trauma today,

will have faded into history.

Yet the Windsors had to admit some things needed to change,

and undertook a period of modernisation.

A family think-tank known as the Way Ahead Group

was charged with implementing the changes.

These were mostly cosmetic concessions

that a flag should fly on Buckingham Palace

and there should be less bowing and scraping

and less flummery, and this did have a certain impact.

Even Tony Blair weighed in,

recording some details of a private meeting he had

with the Queen at Balmoral.

Perhaps less sensitively than I should,

I spoke about the need to learn lessons

at certain points in the conversation.

There was a certain hauteur, but in the end,

she herself said, "Lessons must be learned."

The real test would come just weeks later.

As in November 1997,

the bells of Westminster Abbey prepared to peal out again

but this time, for a very different occasion.

Now the crowds gathered to witness a joyous family get-together

that for the Windsors, signalled a return to normality.

The absolutely extraordinary thing

is that it was back-to-business-as-usual

for the royal family, so fast.

Diana died on the last day of August.

The Queen and Prince Philip celebrated

their Golden Wedding in November.

There were fears of how the Queen would be received

so the festivities had been modified

to be more in tune with the times.

Ten ordinary couples who shared the same anniversary were invited.

The Queen and Prince Philip made longer,

more intimate public walkabouts.

I think Diana's death and

that outpouring of public hostility had lanced a boil.

Dissatisfaction with the royal family

had been building for a long time.

Now we'd expressed it, we'd made our feelings plain.

They seemed to have taken our feelings on board,

and now we could get back to the kind of emotion

that we're actually much happier with.

But while Diana is gone, for the Windsors,

she can never be forgotten,

as she has left an indelible mark on the family

in the form of William and Harry.

Two young boys, who had to endure very private grief

in front of billions.

You cannot help but feel that those young boys

must have been terribly, terribly traumatised.

They've never really explained,

let alone complained about what happened,

but to any emotionally intelligent onlooker,

that was a terrible thing to do to children.

While it remains to be seen exactly what style of monarchy

William will adopt, one thing is certain.

Both he and Harry are a potent reminder

of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Next time… We look to the future.

As the most outspoken heir ever prepares to take over,

his vision of monarchy

has pitted him against members of his own family.

Will the House of Windsor continue to thrive under his reign,

or will he bring disaster?