Original subtitles

(cheerful music)

NARRATOR: In October 2016,

news broke that Prince Harry had a new love interest:

MAN: Meghan!

I'm such a big fan!

NARRATOR: American actress Meghan Markle.

You, guys, thank you so much.

When it was revealed she was dating Prince Harry,

she became the most googled woman on the planet.

MEGHAN: As naive as it sounds now,

I did not have any understanding

of just what it would be like.

I tried... I tried to warn you as much as possible.

NARRATOR: Meghan became an immediate target

for the world's media,

who approached friends and family

hunting for any information on her past.

EMILY: Meghan had been very upset

by some of the coverage.

She then came to London in a friend's private jet.

And came to Kensington Palace and was kind of in tears

about some of the really mean comments.

I was told that Meghan felt from an early stage

that the press, the British press...

She felt it was out to get her.

EMILY: Harry's told me he has read stuff on newspapers

and he has found it really difficult to try and ignore it.

But when your girlfriend is in tears crying,

what are you going to do? The knight in shining armour

rides to her rescue and says, "Right, enough is enough".

NARRATOR: Harry's response

was an unprecedented official statement,

condemning media treatment of Meghan.

It said a line had been crossed

and that Meghan had experienced

a "wave of abuse and harassment",

with "outright sexism and racism

from social media trolls".

EMILY: Very strong language from Harry

You could hear his voice. Angry, very angry.

It took everyone by surprise. They didn't tell anyone else.

They just did it.

I know from other very senior aides,

I mean eyebrows were really raised about it.

PENNY: In the past, the attitude of the Palace

was never complain, never explain.

All of that has changed, I think, with the young Royals.

William and Harry grew up

watching what happened to their parents' marriage,

watching the part that the media played in that.

They saw their mother harassed to the point of tears, time and again.

They grew up utterly determined

that they would protect themselves

and particularly their loved ones.

Palace aids have told me this, ad infinitum,

and it... It's not... It won't be a surprise

that William and Harry think the press,

particularly photographers, killed their mother.

When Harry feels his girlfriend's under attack,

when William felt his girlfriend's under attack,

when William feels his kid's totally off limits,

you have to understand

that that's where those feelings come from.

JOURNALIST: How are you coping with the press attention?

You can tell. (chuckles)

Are you bearing up with it well though?

It must be quite a strain with all of us.

Well it is, naturally.

NARRATOR: From the moment she burst upon the royal scene,

the media was obsessed with Princess Diana.

KEN: Diana was so popular,

putting a photograph of Diana on a front page

could double your circulation.

NARRATOR: Ken Lennox photographed the royal family

for over half a century.

In 1982, he took a set of pictures

that generated national outrage

I mean I regret taking these nowadays. I do.

That's the kind of thing it was.

I never did anything that before or since.

NARRATOR: Charles and Diana were on a private holiday

in the Caribbean

and Ken was dispatched by the Daily Star

to land a royal scoop.

KEN: I'm about three quarters to a mile away.

I'm between my knees and shoulders in water,

with a big long lens,

a bit like a drainpipe

with a bit of glass at either end of it,

and, to keep it steady,

I tied it onto a tree at one end

and much to my surprise

Diana and Charles, Lord Romsey,

walked down the beach, Diana was in her bikini

and I took some photographs.

(camera clicks)

NARRATOR: Ken's pictures appeared on the front page

of the Daily Star

What made them so sensational was not just the intrusion,

but that Diana was photographed four months pregnant.

I mean, today, you'd think, "What's the problem?"

She had her clothes on, who cares?

But here was the woman who would one day

be Queen, we thought,

with her pregnant tummy on display to the world.

Really shocking at the time.

NARRATOR: But back in the Caribbean,

Ken Lennox was oblivious

to the impact his pictures were making.

I phoned the office and said,

"I've got better stuff,

I've got Diana and Charles kissing,

just their heads are bobbing in the water,

Diana's throwing a towel over Charles's head

and she's hugging him".

Silence.

"Is there something wrong?" He said, "Yes.

Your Editor has just been fired

because they've been published".

I felt I sick.

I think the Palace was appalled.

It's rare for the Queen to make a statement,

but she called it "the blackest day

in the history of journalism".

NARRATOR: But wind the clock back fifty years

and the Royal Family had an iron grip

on the British press.

PIERS: During the 1930s,

the traditional social hierarchy

where the Crown was at the apex

of the social pyramid

was still largely accepted.

In Britain, there wasn't really, at that time,

much of a... sort of an appetite

for salacious news.

It was still a very deferential society.

EDWARD VIII (on radio): Two hours ago

I discharged my last duties as King and Emperor.

NARRATOR: Even on the brink of the abdication,

the British press remained subservient

to the royal family,

unwilling to report on the scandalous relationship

between the King and Wallis Simpson

that had been brewing for months.

The abdication was a complete bolt from the blue

for most of the British public.

This fabulous photograph just sums up

the sense of complete shock.

"The King, grave issues", "The King and Mrs Simpson".

People had no idea about this.

It does seem extraordinary today

that something as big as this could stay secret

for as long as it did. For months!

In the summer of 1936, you had the King

going on holiday and cruising the Mediterranean

with his lover. It was all over the papers.

In America, all over the papers around the world.

The British public had no idea.

NARRATOR: The conspiracy of silence

was orchestrated from the top.

The King went along to his friend, Lord Beaverbrook,

who controlled the Daily Express group,

and Beaverbrook agreed there'd be a gentleman's agreement

that the British press should not publish any scandal

about the King and Mrs Simpson.

And the press honoured that.

NARRATOR: In The National Archives at Kew

royal biographer Robert Hardman

has uncovered an astonishing document

which reveals the extent

of the Establishment collusion to conceal the scandal.

This is a telegram from a South African journalist

back to his office with...

one of the great scoops

really of the twentieth century.

King has abdicated, leaves England tomorrow, stop.

Arrangement may possibly be altered

but that is agreement reached tonight.

Now this is dated the 6th of December.

It was only three days earlier

that the British public had any inkling that their King

was about to marry this divorced woman.

As a journalist reading this,

you can just feel his excitement

at having this extraordinary scoop,

sending this back to the office.

he knows his editor is going to be going, "Ye gods!

Clear the front pages, this is dynamite".

Except, of course, the story

never reaches his editor.

What's happened is a post office clerk

has spotted this, has passed it to his superior,

it's gone right up the chain

to the very top of the Post Office.

From there it's gone to the Home Secretary

and they've decided, "We won't let this go through.

We're going to stop this. This news must not get out".

NARRATOR: The journalist was then summoned

for an official interrogation.

Here we have the Home Secretary's account

of his meeting with the journalist

and really is sort of read the riot act.

He says, "There was no truth in the statement

it contained and if it had reached South Africa,

and had been telegraphed back here,

the reactions might have been of a most serious character".

Here is the government intervening

to stop a journalist reporting that the King is abdicating,

and then, a few days later, the King abdicates.

This is very heavy-handed censorship.

NARRATOR: But that total control of the press

couldn't last forever, and, by the 1950s,

royal embarrassments

were becoming harder to conceal.

ROBERT: Suddenly the door of this chalet flew open,

and out ran the Duke of Edinburgh

followed by a flying tennis racquet,

a pair of shoes, and a rather angry Queen.

NARRATOR: Over the past century

the royal family's relationship with the press

has often been challenging.

Every generation has to come to terms with...

With an entirely new media climate,

what the young Royals put up with today would have been absolutely

inconceivable to their father, let alone the Queen.

NARRATOR: At the start of the Queen's reign,

the press could still be relied on

to toe the royal line.

While researching the Queen's 1954 tour of the Commonwealth,

royal biographer Robert Hardman

uncovered revealing evidence

of the royal family's power over the press,

that was nearly lost to history.

ROBERT: I tracked down a doctoral thesis

on that tour and in there was this extraordinary story.

This was the longest royal tour in history.

It had been going on for months.

The Queen and Prince Philip were given this chalet

in the Australian State of Victoria

where they could spend the weekend.

And they were supposed to... Basically it was time out.

It was a fairly idyllic hideaway

and they'd forgotten the fact they were due to be filmed

by a Commonwealth broadcasting unit.

Suddenly the door of this chalet flew open,

so the cameraman thought, "Well, okay we're starting",

turned on the camera, started filming,

at which point out ran the Duke of Edinburgh

followed by a flying tennis racquet,

a pair shoes and a rather angry Queen.

There was a sort of deathly silence.

"What did we just see?"

The Queen's press secretary was there in no time.

The cameraman knew before he'd opened his mouth

what the question was going to be and, in those days,

there was absolutely no question.

He undid the back of the camera and handed over the film.

I mean these were just very different times.

NARRATOR: But three years later one lone voice of dissent

managed to break through the press code of silence.

JANE: Lord Altrincham owned a magazine

called The National and English Review.

And he wrote an article which he published

in which he criticised the Queen.

This is 1957.

And he said the Queen is

like a sort of prim schoolgirl.

He said that she had the debutante stamp,

and suffered from a woefully inadequate training.

PIERS: He criticised the courtiers for being stuffy

and snobbish and tweedy. That was his word.

Tweedy. And... (chuckles)

They were tweedy.

And he said that her speaking voice

was a pain in the arse.

I want to tell you all how happy I am to be amongst you

and how much I look forward to my journey through Australia.

If you do listen to early clips of broadcasts

of the Queen at this time,

she does sound a little bit like schoolgirl.

It's all very sort of... rehearsed.

SARAH: This article got picked up everywhere.

The reaction was absolutely

that the author was a cad.

His criticism of the Queen hit home

because she was still in her honeymoon

and nobody had really criticised her then.

NARRATOR: Lord Altrincham even defended

his views on national television

where he was grilled by legendary news anchor Robin Day.

To judge from your article,

you expect the Queen to have the qualities of a wit.

You would like her to be a better orator,

you would like her to be a TV personality,

in addition to being a diligent, dutiful

and devoted monarch and a mother.

What I'm suggesting is

that in her public speeches

and appearances, spontaneity

should be the key note.

All I would like to see is the Queen's own...

character coming through.

And I know that if her character is allowed to come through,

the effect will be terrific.

NARRATOR: But Lord Altrincham's appeal fell on deaf ears.

Lord Altrincham became a sort of figure of hate

and he had awful sorts of anonymous letters

threatening him.

He was lucky not be challenged to a duel.

NARRATOR: As he was leaving the television studios

after his interview,

Lord Altrincham was physically attacked.

PIERS: An ex-solider slapped Lord Altrincham

flat in the face.

He was fined, I think... A pound... Something...

And the judge sort of said, "Well, 95% of the population

would agree with what you've done".

And he, himself, said

he only did what Prince Philip would have done

had he been able to do it.

SARAH: The irony is that, in the long term,

Lord Altrincham may actually have done the Royals a bit of a service.

There was an awareness that even the Queen

needed to move with the times.

NARRATOR: In the wake of Lord Altrincham's criticisms

the royal court cut back on outmoded traditions,

including cancelling the debutante's ball

But the Palace's changes were glacial

compared to what was happening outside in the real world.

(crowd screaming)

NARRATOR: Deference and restraint were giving way

to the freedom and revolution of the Swinging '60s.

(joyful music)

NARRATOR: One unpublished picture

taken by veteran photographer Ken Lennox

in the early '60s shows how the royal family

were still out of sync with the public mood.

This is a shot of the Queen arriving

by royal train in Aberdeen,

and she's got the corgis and she's stepping off a train.

Now, that's the Queen pregnant.

(nostalgic music)

KEN: This is a very unusual picture.

In those days, you didn't publish photographs

of the Queen being pregnant.

They were very much sort of private use and so on.

The public would have loved to have seen the Queen pregnant.

But there was a barrier, there was a protocol,

and things were done in a certain way.

I mean it was almost Victorian.

The Royal family had not had a great time during the sixties.

They were being lampooned,

they were increasingly seen as remote and aloof.

(applauses)

PIERS: The monarchy is an oil tanker.

It takes a lot to switch course.

But, very gradually, it did switch course.

NARRATOR: In 1968,

the royal household came up with an idea

that would show the British public

the Royals were just like them.

Prince Philip was rightly aware

of the importance of modernising the monarchy,

stopping it from being perceived

as being sort of fuddy-duddy and out of date

and tweedy and all the things that Lord Altrincham had said

the previous decade.

And the obvious sort of new media of the time was television.

NARRATOR: The result was an intimate

fly-on-the-wall documentary

that caused a sensation when it was broadcast,

but has remained under lock and key ever since.

The idea was that people didn't appreciate what the Queen did

so this documentary was to show her at work.

In every aspect of her very dutiful life.

And also at play. You know, show her as a domestic woman.

WESLEY: It was an incredibly bold thing to do.

To be followed by television cameras

for an entire year in very private moments.

It was amazing to see them having barbecues,

practising the cello...

It had an audience of about 25 million

and it made a very powerful impression.

NARRATOR: But almost as soon as the documentary was broadcast

the royal family had second thoughts.

PIERS: The Queen, who has copyright over it,

put the shutters down and it will not be shown again

unless the Royals agree and they never have agreed.

NARRATOR: The royal ban remains so complete,

the only footage still widely available

is a few grainy black and white clips.

THE QUEEN: Shall we go and let the puppies out?

PRINCE ANDREW: Yes, try!

Try, try, Mum. You must.

- Yeah, you must. - (indistinct blabbering)

We'll see if she's...

If she's allowed out in the snow.

On the one hand, the access these cameras were given

is still extraordinary.

On the other, you've got Prince Philip standing there

at the barbecue up in Balmoral,

the Queen doing the dishes.

It's almost too ordinary.

PIERS: The problem was that letting daylight in upon magic

was a dangerous business.

The received wisdom was that this film had ultimately,

despite its success,

been a mistake from the Royal's point of view.

That it had somehow vulgarised them, cheapened them,

and, worse still, it had opened the door

to other intrusions into their private life,

which might not be so flattering and so carefully choreographed.

NARRATOR: And in a few years, one senior royal

would become the object of just such unwelcome press scrutiny.

Princess Margaret is always in the newspapers,

she's always going to outrageous parties.

PENNY: She had no sense of self-preservation,

let alone decorum.

She was off her pedestal.

NARRATOR: During the late '50s and '60s,

one member of the royal family

captured the attention of the British press

like no other.

PENNY: Princess Margaret was a gift to the press.

She loved to party, she loved to drink.

She smoked and had a long cigarette holder.

She was glamour personified, and yet she was royal.

This was a very intoxicating combination.

NARRATOR: In May 1960, Princess Margaret married a man

who embodied the spirit of the new decade:

Antony Armstrong-Jones.

Princess Margaret first met Tony at my wedding.

He was the photographer.

NARRATOR: Lady Glenconner was Princess Margaret's

childhood friend, lady-in-waiting,

and life-long confidante.

LADY GLENCONNER: He was the up and coming photographer.

But he was just a photographer.

He wasn't allowed to have lunch with us.

I think he did have lunch on his own.

My father called him Tony Snapshot

in a rather sort of rude way.

Of course, when they became engaged,

a lot of us were absolutely amazed, actually.

Suddenly, she thought, "This is the life".

She'd always been very interested

and keen on film stars and all that.

Tony Armstrong-Jones really was

a figure from the Swinging '60s.

He was in that scene,

so he helped to usher Margaret into that world.

NARRATOR: As press fascination with them increased,

Princess Margaret and her husband

became international celebrities.

Can Hollywood with all its stars and glamour be impressed?

Absolutely.

Just like any other town and especially if it's royalty.

REPORTER: After a party until three in the morning,

the Princess and Lord Snowdon were visiting

one of Hollywood's dream factories.

It was, if you like, a kind of typical society set up.

They were both well off.

They were treated with extraordinary deference,

given unearned privileges,

and inevitably under these circumstances,

both of them behaved badly.

Tony Armstrong-Jones was only

on extremely loose terms with monogamy.

He was one of these people who flitted from lady to lady.

He was essentially a playboy.

Princess Margaret started having affairs

with various people

and the gossip columnists started reporting them,

which was, I think,

the first time that this had happened.

NARRATOR: In 1968,

a young Australian media mogul

arrived to shake up the British newspaper Establishment.

SARAH: Rupert Murdoch's

taking over The Sun and The News of the World

would prove hugely important

for the relationship between press and palace

because Rupert Murdoch was no admirer of the Royals.

He understood that in the new media world

you could make money

by intruding into people's lives.

And the royal family were kind of easy pickings.

I'm sure the Murdoch press

could be very deferential when it suited,

but they then turned when the story turned.

PIERS: The marriage, which had been seen

as a happy, royal romance,

pretty soon deteriorated into...

a vast, long...

drunken squabble.

NARRATOR: As her marriage fell apart,

and press attention became more intrusive,

Margaret took refuge

on the Caribbean island of Mustique.

(happy music)

LADY GLENCONNER: Biggest mosquitoes you've seen.

It wasn't called Mustique for nothing.

And it was steaming hot out there.

NARRATOR: The island was owned by Lady Glenconner

and her husband Colin Tennant.

LADY GLENCONNER: We hadn't given them a wedding present.

And Colin said,

"Do you want something in a little box

or would you like a piece of land?"

"Oh, I think I'd like a piece of land", she said.

But we also gave it to Tony too because Tony always after that

said we'd only given it to Princess Margaret,

which is not true.

And he called Mustique "Mistake",

which was rather tiresome of him.

PIERS: Life out there was a kind of permanent party

in which infidelity and drunkenness

and bad behaviour

was the rule rather than the exception.

NARRATOR: In the early 1970s

one young man became a frequent house guest

at Princess Margaret's island villa.

- JOURNALIST: Roddy! - Yes.

JOURNALIST: This way.

Roddy Llewellyn was a rather good looking,

rather charming,

rather hippy gardener.

He became Princess Margaret's toy boy.

He clearly had assets

about which we can know little or nothing,

but he appealed to her.

NARRATOR: Roddy Llewellyn was introduced

to Princess Margaret by Lady Glenconner.

I realised very quickly

that they had absolutely fallen for each other.

And Roddy came and...

talked to me, and he said, "I absolutely think

Princess Margaret is the most wonderful person

I've ever met and she's so beautiful.

So I said, "Don't tell me, Roddy, tell her".

Perhaps I shouldn't have, but anyway I did.

But he was so kind,

and I think she had a very happy time with him.

NARRATOR: But the affair was not to stay secret for long.

Even on the island of Mustique,

Princess Margaret could not escape the press.

SARAH: In 1976, came the famous photograph,

you know, bikini, cigarette, drink...

Having a wonderful time with a man who was not her husband,

who was almost two decades younger,

and perhaps it was those photographs

that really tipped the Snowdon marriage into divorce.

PIERS: The monarchy was supposed to be

the head of our morality.

It was supposed to be

"The presentation of ourselves behaving well".

Well, in Princess Margaret's case,

it was the presentation of ourselves behaving badly,

and the press loved all that.

PENNY: She had no sense of self-preservation,

let alone decorum.

She was off her pedestal.

NARRATOR: But rather than outrage at press intrusion

the Mustique pictures provoked outrage

at Princess Margaret's behaviour.

SARAH: The '70s were a hideously tough economic decade.

Perhaps that's why there began to be

more discussion, more hostile discussion,

of the extended royal family

and the amount it cost,

and the privileged lifestyle

it seemed to be living.

PENNY: That time,

she along with others were paid for by the Civil List,

and therefore the taxpayer was paying for her lifestyle.

It was perhaps the beginning of people questioning

what the monarchy was all about

and should it be financed by the public?

And were they really any better than us?

ROBERT: The threat to the monarchy

is not republicanism, it's not extremism,

it's not even the media.

The greatest threat is irrelevance.

The minute you start to be irrelevant,

you start to lose interest and, then,

it's a short road from there to what's the point?

NARRATOR: But if the Royals in the '70s

was in danger of being seen as remote,

in 1980 a new star arrived

to make it seem relevant all over again.

REPORTER: We thought he would

be announcing on his 32nd birthday.

Have you any comment to make about that?

- No. - PHOTOGRAPHER: Lady Di.

(giggles)

In the '80s there is a complete sort of revolution really

in the relationship between the press and the Royals

and we have the cult of celebrity.

And then, at the centre of all this, is Diana,

who is amazingly, probably rather unexpectedly photogenic

and who becomes an absolutely central narrative

of the '80s and '90s.

KEN: To make a mess of a photograph

of Diana you have really got to be bad.

NARRATOR: Ken Lennox started photographing Diana

from the moment she was linked with Prince Charles.

KEN: Most photographers

were at least a little bit in love with her.

Because, here was this woman in front of you

who looked gorgeous, photographed beautifully,

and you got your stuff in the paper,

and you got praise from back in the office

and all you had done was photograph

one of the most beautiful women in the world.

NARRATOR: Until the 1980s,

courtiers strictly limited press access to the royal family.

But with the arrival of Diana, everything changed.

Buckingham Palace

couldn't get enough of this fabulous publicity

and suddenly they were very proactive.

And they wanted to push Diana

and it went on like an avalanche.

I'd heard that Diana had had a new hairstyle.

Next day the Palace phoned me up and said,

"Ken, the Princess is doing a little thing

for the Red Cross, private visit,

would you like to go along?" "Oh, yes, please".

And I'm watching her,

and she's so aware and she realised after a few minutes

I hadn't taken anything,

and she looked at me and said, "What?"

And I said, "One, two, three".

So I could see the...

And she did one, two, three.

Then burst out laughing.

She was doing a photocall

in front of three hundred people at a Red Cross meeting.

NARRATOR: And when the royal fairy-tale

started to go sour,

Diana's mastery of the media

became her secret weapon.

Diana was extremely canny,

she was no fool,

nobody's fool at all.

She had the media wrapped round her little finger.

The shot in front of the Taj Mahal

is an absolute classic.

There she is in front of this beautiful building,

all on her own.

Poor, sad Diana.

NARRATOR: In 1992, Charles and Diana

were on an official tour of India,

when this single image was seized on

by the world's media as evidence of their collapsing marriage.

Now Charles had been to the Taj Mahal

twelve years before, and said,

"One day I would like to bring my wife here".

Well here they were in 1992 in India

and she was at the Taj Mahal and he was in Bangalore.

We were looking at...

herbal remedies,

Prince Charles and I, that day

at the request of the President.

And so there was a job to be done.

NARRATOR: Baroness Lynda Chalke

was Minister for Overseas Development,

and accompanied Charles and Diana

throughout the tour.

LYNDA: If you move around a country,

as we did, there are just so many people

who want to see you both.

You know, you're going to have to split up

and go around separately.

(sad music)

SARAH: Now in fact, it would be perfectly normal

for Charles and Diana

to have separate engagements on that day,

but she was photographed there,

alone, looking wistful,

and the picture just said it all.

Charles didn't have a chance to fight her at her own game,

because, you know, he was a man who was in his forties,

losing his hair,

he didn't have the star appeal or the glamour that Diana did.

The public saw her as this hugely sympathetic, empathetic,

lovely creature who'd been spurned by this curious man.

I was back at base,

in St. James's Palace and Kensington Palace,

and I got daily phone calls from the Princess.

Well, I mean, she was unhappy, everybody was unhappy,

the lady-in-waiting was in tears...

It turned into an exercise in damage control.

NARRATOR: Patrick Jephson was Princess Diana's

private secretary at the time

and managed the fallout from the photograph

That image of the Princess sitting alone in front of the Taj Mahal

was damaging in many ways, but...

I suppose, from my perspective,

it was also quite helpful, because...

I knew that Diana was very unhappy in her marriage,

I felt that she was being very unfairly treated,

and I had sympathy with her in trying to get that message out

to the outside world.

The fact that she could sit down

in front of the Taj Mahal and not say a word,

and yet convey that message very clearly.

I thought it was a very powerful example

of Diana's great ability to convey a message just with a photograph.

(tense music)

NARRATOR: But the media that Diana used so brilliantly

would ultimately become her downfall.

SARAH: The use of the press is always a double-edged sword

and so Diana found.

KEN: I got a phone call from a photographer.

They said they'd pictures and they'd send them to me.

And I agreed to pay close to a million pounds.

NARRATOR: On the 31st of August 1997,

Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in Paris,

her car pursued by paparazzi photographers.

The use of the press is always a double-edged sword,

and so Diana found.

There can't ever had been another royal

and probably never will be again,

for whom the media play such a...

vital and vitally destructive part in their story.

It would appear that every proprietor and editor

of every publication that has paid

for intrusive and exploitative photographs of her

has blood on his hands today.

Unbelievable.

I just couldn't imagine Diana had been killed.

NARRATOR: Ken Lennox was the picture editor

of The Sun newspaper on the night Diana died,

and was immediately offered photos of the crash.

KEN: I got a phone call from a photographer in Paris,

who said there'd been a crash and that Dodi was hurt,

Diana was OK because

he had a picture of her talking to the doctor.

So, they'd said they'd pictures and they'd send them to me,

they wanted a lot of money from them.

The photographers all come together

and decided if they clubbed what they'd got together,

sold it exclusively, it was much more valuable

than each of them going to different newspapers.

So, I went into Wapping.

I looked at them and I agreed to pay

close to a million pounds.

I thought that she would be as right as rain

within a couple of days

and we'd have this fantastic exclusive.

And very quickly the announcement came through

that the Princess of Wales had died.

(sad music)

(sighs)

I can't believe after 20 years it still affects me.

NARRATOR: Suddenly, one of the biggest

photographic scoops of the decade

had become a toxic liability.

First thing the editor said to me

when he come into the office, he came in about

quarter to seven in the morning

and he said, "where are the photographs now?"

I said "I've removed them".

And he said, "for God's sake,

don't let anyone get near these,

it's your responsibility".

- (tense music) - MAN: This is it, this is it!

NARRATOR: In the hours following the crash,

paparazzi who had been chasing Diana were arrested.

I blame the Sun newspaper.

NARRATOR: And across the world there was an angry backlash

against the media and photographers.

It was you, the press that killed her.

- You're the scum. - WOMAN: Yes.

NARRATOR: The pictures bought by Ken Lennox

remain locked away to this day.

They actually belong to the photographers that took them,

but they don't want to know anything about it.

I put them into a blind,

which means my solicitor

has given them to another solicitor

who is not known to me.

And he has made arrangements for them to be safeguarded.

And instructions are, if I die,

hopefully the Royal Photographic Society will come along

and safeguard them, because they're part of a history

and as a photographic history

you can't destroy them.

(calm music)

After Diana's death, the Press Complaints Commission

drew up a code of conduct and it reined in

the worst excesses of the media.

British newspaper editors agreed

not to publish invasive photographs from paparazzi.

NARRATOR: During school and university,

the young Princes were left in relative peace.

But sometimes their own behaviour

meant the palace once again lost control of the narrative.

(tense music)

NARRATOR: In his late teens and twenties,

Prince Harry's hard partying

made him a tabloid target.

SARAH: The evolution of Prince Harry

has been quite extraordinary.

It's really not so long ago

that he was being photographed going to a party in Nazi uniform,

brawls outside nightclubs,

that game of strip poker.

And yet now he's everyone's favourite royal.

(chatter)

NARRATOR: The key to Harry's public rehabilitation

was a remarkable instance of media cooperation...

(engine running)

NARRATOR: ...that enabled him to serve with the army

in Afghanistan... in secret.

If you recall, every Christmas,

the Queen and the Royal Family go to church at Sandringham

and there's always great coverage of who is there.

Well, Prince Harry was not there that Christmas,

but there was no speculation in the media,

"where's Prince Harry?" because they all knew.

NARRATOR: The mastermind behind the operation

was General Lord Dannatt,

then head of the British army.

We had to get around the problem

of the media speculating,

and speculating so accurately that we could not deploy him.

So, I thought "let's call together

the main television, radio, newspapers,

and see whether we can find a way to get him there".

And we agreed that, "look,

if we tell you exactly what he'll be doing,

where he'll be, when he's going,

give you access to him with a pool of journalists,

but you say nothing until he comes back.

Then we've achieved our aim, he's achieved his aim

and you've achieved your aim, you've got your story".

Pretty much all the British media signed up to that.

NARRATOR: But just a few weeks before Prince Harry's

tour of duty was due to end,

his cover was blown by an Australian news outlet.

Harry was absolutely boiling mad.

He was pulled out of Afghanistan

and he absolutely hated that.

LORD DANNATT: I do recall on one occasion,

he sat in a deep armchair in my house

and we'd given him a gin and tonic and his...

his shoulders slightly slumped and said, "Well,

the trouble is, I'm just not like other young men".

You know, he knew

that he was special and couldn't be treated in the same way.

- (crowd chatter) - Nice to meet you.

NARRATOR: The press would prove equally challenging

for Harry's brother.

For the four years William was a student

at St Andrew's University, he was left in peace.

But as soon as he graduated,

the media spotlight was back on him...

(laughs) Big wide world.

NARRATOR: ...and on his girlfriend Kate Middleton.

KATIE: Kate's life was never the same.

Her family, her friends, her teachers,

anyone who had had anything to do with Kate Middleton

suddenly found themselves being called upon,

having their doors knocked by reporters and journalists.

It was never going to be an easy relationship.

REPORTER: Serene and poised in Malaysia today.

But behind the veil, we're told there's fury.

Stay there! Stay there! Stay there.

NARRATOR: A year after they were married,

in the middle of a high-profile overseas tour,

Kate and William were rocked by the publication

of topless pictures taken while they were on a private holiday.

That was paparazzi, a kilometre away, long lens.

Pictures never saw the light of day in the UK,

but they certainly saw the light of day in the French press.

KATIE: William was apoplectic.

Kate was absolutely devastated.

She dealt with it I think far better, actually.

She put on her best face, she got on with her engagements,

but William was absolutely seething.

PENNY: I think it's not at all surprising

that he should have taken such prompt and strong action.

He went straight to law

and sued the magazine for invasion of privacy.

NARRATOR: William's legal action was successful

and the royal couple was awarded 92,000 pounds in damages.

But any sense of success will be tinged by the knowledge

that millions of people will have seen

intensely personal images of them.

It's not that he wanted the money,

because the money went to charity.

It was making the point, "don't mess with us

because we'll mess with you".

NARRATOR: Over the past century

the Windsor Dynasty has used the press

and been used by it.

It's a difficult, often fraught relationship.

And one that the next generation will need to manage with care.

KEN: William does the right thing,

when babies are born he stands there,

turns his head to the cameras,

puts his family on show,

but he thinks it should stop there

and he's done everything to make sure it stops there.

SARAH GRISTWOOD: The younger royals will expect

to be able to step on the stage,

perform their duties, and then step off it again.

Whether the press have the same expectations

is another question.

The idea that we'll only be interested

in the good work they do, and of course it's good work...

but not interested in everything else about them, is unrealistic.

You're going to be a public figure,

Harry, William, for 50, 60 years.

So, don't worry about tomorrow's headlines.

Play the long game.

(crowd cheering)

ROBERT: The Queen's old adage is

"we have to be seen to be believed".

It's always been a problem with the modern monarchy,

how do you square the quest for normality with being

one of the most famous people on earth?

(triumphant music)

NARRATOR: Next time, we look at how the Queen

has handled some of the greatest disasters

of her reign.

Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

The flames seemed to be 200 feet high.

INDIA: My brother and I actually heard the bomb go off.

NARRATOR: And find out what it takes to be the Queen

when your family and the nation are tested to the limit.

PENNY: Being Queen, being monarch, is a very lonely job.