Original subtitles

[ Tires screeching ]

So, I was in bed, asleep,

and I woke up 'cause my pager was going,

and it just said, "Car crash in Paris. Dodi dead.

Di injured. In hospital. This is not a joke."

And I heard it just coming back into our bedroom on the radio,

and I went downstairs, switched on the television

along with the nation and was just transfixed.

I was in this room.

I remember it vividly.

I would say when she died that everyone felt something.

I was asleep in bed, and one of my editors rang me up and said,

"Diana has been in a car crash."

♪♪

A lot of people felt that when she died

that a light was extinguished,

a particular kind of light which we've never had before,

and we actually haven't had since.

♪♪

At the moment that she was killed,

I think the British press,

the media were filled with a sense of both shame

and regret and horror because they felt,

"Is it what we have done that has led to this?"

♪♪

I went into the office via Buckingham Palace,

and people -- and it wasn't even light yet,

and people were already gathering at Buckingham Palace,

this big, silent crowd.

And Mary, my wife, being very sensible, said,

"Now, don't go over the top, Jeffrey.

Be very calm and very quiet and very dignified

in every interview you do."

So I said, "Fine. Good advice."

And then she watched Tony Blair

on television first thing in the morning,

and she looked at me just as I was leaving

and said, "It's impossible to go over the top, Jeffrey."

[ Laughs ] So I realized Tony Blair had changed the rules

when he called her the people's princess, and...

They regarded her as one of the people.

She was the people's princess.

And that's how she will stay,

how she will remain in our hearts and in our memories.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

The thing about the people's princess,

which has just become one of those phrases

with which, you know, the whole thing has become identified,

and I have no recollection of the discussion

about that at all.

The only mention in my diary is

we agreed it was okay to call her the people's princess.

Well, Tony Blair's speech up in his constituency

when he heard the news about Diana was absolutely excellent.

I mean, he was the one who produced the phrase

"the people's princess,"

which completely described how people felt about her.

Seldon: And these kind of expressions have a resonance

where they really strike the truth,

strike a chord in people.

Initially, there was a lot of hostility towards the media.

In particular, the press,

the tabloid press were being blamed for being the reason --

part of the reason why she was dead

because we bought the photographs

and the photographers pursued her.

I think there were parts of the press

that probably did feel a sense of guilt,

possibly a sense of responsibility

for what had happened.

Yes, well, I think it was immediately seen as shameful,

the way the paparazzi actually hounded her to her death,

didn't they?

And Diana's brother, Charles Spencer,

called her the most hunted woman in the world.

There is no doubt that she was looking for a new direction

in her life at this time.

She talked endlessly of getting away from England,

mainly because of the treatment

that she received at the hands of the newspapers.

I don't think she ever understood why her genuinely

good intentions were sneered at by the media,

why there appeared to be a permanent quest

on their behalf to bring her down.

It is a point to remember that of all the ironies

about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this --

a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was,

in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.

Lawson: In fact, I think it was grief, not anger.

I mean, if you were to say which of it --

I don't think there was a huge anger,

but there was a lot of grief,

and the extent of it was beyond what people had imagined.

Now, how much of it was vicarious,

how much was the genuine grief

that you feel if your own mother died

or your own sister died, I mean, that's another matter.

In other words, it could have become,

and some people saw it as, a form of hysteria.

The public reaction towards the queen

was quite uncharacteristic, and in fact, at times,

it was absolutely chilling in those initial days.

I've always thought that was a bit unfair.

The problem with monarchy is there are rules,

and the rules are so set down in stone...

that those even at the very top, even Her Majesty, obeys them,

so you can't have the flag at half-mast

for someone who isn't royal.

Now, we now think now,

"How stupid. Got that wrong, didn't you?"

Of course we do, and it's easy to do that

sort of being clever in hindsight.

Reporter: The absence of a flag at half-mast

at Buckingham Palace upset many people,

and the absence of the royal family,

who have remained at Balmoral throughout, has dismayed others.

What one needs to remember is that this was a family.

Diana's sons were up at Balmoral.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were,

at that point, just thinking of the boys,

and they had lost their mother, and their focus was on that.

Campbell: William said at one point in this interview --

he said that when they'd been up in Balmoral,

and we were conscious of this in London,

they were definitely being protected

from knowing what was happening in London

in terms of the public reaction.

Now, they'd have known it was, like, a massive deal,

but he said he was genuinely shocked when he came down

and saw these millions of flowers

and tens of thousands of people out in the streets.

Nicholl: By the point that she'd got back to London from Scotland

and actually seen the capitol in mourning,

you know, you couldn't help but be moved by that,

and as a queen who has always been

so in touch with her subjects,

I think she was able to recognize

that the palace did need to acknowledge

that there had been mistakes made with Diana.

The queen felt that they should learn from Diana

and that they should be more human with people,

more in touch with people than they had been.

Seldon: The nation needed to feel --

This is what Diana was sublimely good at.

The nation needed to feel that the royal family

truly understood the difficulties,

economic, social, that they were going through.

Nicholl: It has changed.

It has modernized,

and it's had to do that in order to keep up with the public

and in order to stay relevant.

I think, also, in order to justify its existence.

And how much of that is Diana?

Some of it -- not all of it, but certainly some of it.

Diana was almost not of the royal family.

I think she was herself.

She had a kind of -- something that rose above all that.

It was peculiar to her.

I'm not even sure people felt,

"Oh, this is a member of the royal family."

Diana became, if you like, something bigger,

and that was remarkable, but it was,

in some ways, a problem for the royal family

because there was something there that was bigger than them,

at least in terms of the public gaze.

No one had ever seen anything like it.

You have to remember that, you know,

Diana was an absolute icon in the '80s and '90s.

I remember, as a little girl, watching the royal wedding

and being completely bewitched by her.

She was the ultimate princess,

and she was just this constant presence in the media.

Many men,

politically, say, you know, "She doesn't have to speak,

and I'll fall on my knees and do as I'm told."

She had this unbelievable gift.

Very beautiful,

and she was very clever at that, as well.

Clever women have where they can make men do

as they're told, and she knew she had it.

I mean, she was capricious in that sense.

She knew she only had to ask for something,

and it would happen.

But on balance, I felt she used it for the good.

I think her charity work was remarkable.

I have it on very good authority

that the quest for perfection our society demands

can leave the individual gasping for breath at every turn.

This pressure inevitably extends into the way we look.

Eating disorders, whether it be anorexia or bulimia,

show how an individual can turn the nourishment of the body

into a painful attack on themselves,

and they have at their core a far deeper problem

than mere vanity.

She was a really interesting, very complex,

very bright woman, a much stronger woman,

a woman who talked openly about

things like eating disorders and mental illness,

and in a way,

that also is an incredibly important part of her legacy.

She both stood for a change in the way

that we might be in public and what we might talk about,

but she also facilitated that change.

Campbell: She was not educated, but she was very clever,

and she definitely had a really --

I think quite a deep, intense emotional intelligence.

I think she worked people out very quickly,

and she worked situations out quite quickly.

So I think that sense of her,

the world wanting to look at her and say,

"You have the perfect life.

You are the perfect fairy tale princess.

This is just wonderful," and actually her knowing,

"Mm, well, I'm a lot of the times not,

and actually I've got my own difficulties,"

and I think she did have an understanding

of people's inner feelings and inner torment.

I think she had quite a lot of that herself.

Lawson: And she had a peculiarly intense empathy

for people who were afflicted or suffering.

I think it probably came from her own sense

of her own suffering, and she was, in some way,

drawn to people's suffering to do something about it,

but that was a deeply personal thing.

The age of homeless youngsters is coming down.

Children as young as 11 have called on Centrepoint this year.

Some had been running from physical and emotional violence,

some from sexual abuse.

Somehow, she found a way of truly understanding

how they felt,

and that's not something you can manufacture.

It's just something you have, and she had it.

That particular gene was obviously

passed on to William and Harry

because whether it's their work with veterans,

whether it's their work with homeless people, AIDS victims,

they do have the most remarkable ability to identify with people

that they would otherwise have nothing in common with at all,

and there's nothing fake about that.

You can't engineer that.

It is genuine.

I think it very much comes from their mother,

and I think it very much comes from the fact

that they were exposed to so much of their mother's work.

I feel very closely linked to Centrepoint.

It is a charity with which both my mother and father

became passionately involved.

Indeed, it was while my mother was patron

that Harry and I had our first contact with Centrepoint.

I was much younger, better-looking,

and more naive back then.

Thought that'd get a little giggle.

But it began to open my eyes to the world

that so many young London people face.

Our visits with our mother ignited a deep and growing

interest for the great work the charity does for the homeless.

That example of selfless service

that Centrepoint represents has stayed with me,

and that is why it was the first charity

that I wanted to be associated with.

Since becoming patron, I've been privileged

to witness at firsthand and with the utmost admiration

the great work of its volunteers,

but I've seen something else, too --

the extraordinary courage of so many

of Centrepoint's young people in rising to meet

such seemingly insurmountable challenges in their lives.

I count myself enormously privileged

to be associated with such individuals

and with such an organization as this.

She was happy to take her sons, for example,

into homeless shelters

and expose them to issues she really cared about,

open their eyes at a young age.

I think she showed them that they had a unique position

which enabled them to raise awareness of

situations like that but also to bring comfort to people

and to be seen to be doing something positive

to improve their situations, and that's something

that they've obviously carried forward

and is very much part of their work today.

She was a complex young woman in many ways.

Kay: She could be very amusing and entertaining company

privately, away from the cameras,

but she constantly felt herself under extreme pressure

from within the royal family,

from within the wider public, and, of course, from the media.

She found it very difficult to try and balance

all these various aspects of her life

to allow herself some sort of privacy

and to fulfill the obligations she felt she had.

She had a very close relationship

with the editors of the tabloid papers.

She would see them. She would talk to them.

She wanted them on her side, naturally.

She was very shrewd in the way that she spoke to them.

She was very open to them, and those that she felt

were on her side, she was very, very helpful to.

Diana sometimes got a lot more than she bargained for

when she tried to steer press.

She was phenomenally gifted at doing it,

but the thing about press and about press narratives

is the idea of control as an illusion.

And it's maybe that awful cliché about, you know,

if you try to ride the tiger, you end up in its belly,

but there's no doubt that she was

a very active participant in what happened.

So it was bound to end badly.

She was so popular, she was such a magnet

that her photographs just sold papers,

and that's the secret, really, of why

she was the most hunted woman in the world.

I think she developed a relationship with the public

and a relationship with the media,

which was a bit different,

which was complicated and which, along the way, I think,

got her into some difficult places psychologically.

And then I think if you throw into that mix

what was then became the disintegration of the marriage

and the sense of people taking sides,

I think it became quite difficult for her.

There had been this idea that Prince Charles was an older man

who had cynically gone out to find a virginal bride

who he knew he didn't love.

He was in love with somebody else.

He was doing this for the monarchy.

In fact, I discovered that this was completely untrue

in the sense that he was as naive as his young bride

and as unprepared for the marriage.

It had already been quite well-known

that she had panicked before the marriage

and thought about pulling out,

but I discovered that, in fact, hehad done so.

Of course, as we know, they went ahead with it

but both with deep misgivings,

both knowing that this was quite possibly unlikely to work.

However, he did also try --

At the beginning, he tried very hard to make it work,

and they probably had about two decent years of marriage.

Well, I mean, Prince Charles reacted

to the news of Diana's death

with actually a tremendous compassion towards his sons.

He certainly put the children first,

and that showed all the way through

in the way he behaved going to Paris to fetch Diana's body.

It wasn't a question of her being carted back

by undertakers.

It was personal. He went to collect the body.

And he showed enormous consideration

for William and Harry in that.

♪♪

It was very moving.

It must have been so difficult for them

with all those crowds and noise,

throwing flowers and weeping and shouting,

but they managed it beautifully.

It was Harry who said how he had suffered years

of mental-health problems

which stemmed from the loss of his mother,

that experience of losing his mother at the age of 12,

of having to walk behind her funeral cortege

and coming to terms with her grief,

which he said had taken him, essentially,

the best part of 20 years to do,

that he'd spent two decades burying his head in the sand.

I think she represented a kind of womanhood.

I suspect that she had a much greater influence

on women than she did on men.

I think the difficulties that she had in her marriage,

though in some ways exotic

because of who she was married to

and the peculiar circumstances of it,

but the idea of how a woman who is somehow insecure

and may be condescended to

and may be not treated seriously,

how that woman asserts herself against obstacles

and people sneering at her in some way.

I think her triumph, if it was a triumph,

over that is something which I suspect

that many women now still look to and say,

"That is how a strong woman can overcome difficulties

put in her way by bureaucracies, by an establishment."

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

[ Indistinct chatter ]

♪♪

♪♪

Mayer: This notion of Diana as a wronged woman,

I mean, she certainly had a raw deal.

No woman should have been brought into

that kind of public role without the support systems,

without the press advice,

without some real insight into what to expect,

and she was young, and she was naive,

but she very quickly learned to give as she got,

and she was -- she became the master media manipulator,

something which he never achieved.

[ Indistinct chatter ]

Hello. Hello.

Lawson: The Duke of Edinburgh tried very hard.

As you know, there were those letters that he wrote to her,

and he was trying his best to help her

with the breakdown of her marriage,

and I think in some ways, she couldn't be helped.

I think it had almost gone beyond that

because of the way she felt,

and to be honest, there were also people

who maybe did not have her best interests at heart

whom she listened to, which was tragic.

I mean, she should never have gotten involved with the Fayeds,

but, you know, she did,

and I personally tried to warn her

not to get involved with them, and I failed,

and in the end, you can't stop someone if they're --

or it's very hard to stop someone

if they're on a path to their own destruction.

The relationship with Dodi Fayed,

I don't think anybody except for perhaps

Dodi and his family, took seriously.

It may have been her having fun.

It may have been her saying,

"Look, I can get along without you."

I don't think that it was

that much directed against the royal family,

though she will have enjoyed the fact that it upset people.

And I think Diana probably knew full well

that the royal family wouldn't like it.

Maybe that was one of the reasons why she did agree

to go on that holiday in '97 with the Fayeds

because she had offers to go away with other people,

but she went with Mohamed and his family.

You know, Diana was getting herself into something

that had the potential, really, to backfire quite badly for her,

and, you know, at the end of the day,

that's exactly what happened.

I'm not sure that she really had any solutions

in her personal life.

Her love for Hasnat Khan,

the doctor, a Pakistani doctor, had come to nothing,

and Dodi Fayed was obviously a path to nowhere,

so I don't think there was much going in her personal life.

I think it was more her future,

her own future in the way of life she wanted to lead.

I think her great hope was to sort of shine a light.

I mean, that's what she was. That's all she could do.

She was not a legislator.

She wasn't a politician,

although sometimes politicians accused her of acting like one,

particularly, for example, over the land mines.

In the early days of that land-mines campaign,

she was accused of meddling in things

she had no business meddling in.

In fact, she approached the land-mine issue

very much as a humanitarian.

She wanted to draw attention to something

that she felt deeply about.

Nash: She was the real deal in that she went out there

and put herself, you know, not quite in the firing line,

but, you know, she'd walked through land mines,

and she'd hold hands with lepers.

She would comfort people who were dying from AIDS.

She put her money where her mouth was, if you like,

and nowadays, we see all manner of celebrities

and public figures following in her footsteps.

You have the likes of Angelina Jolie,

George Clooney, David Beckham,

even Madonna, who are doing some great charity work

and using their elevated status to shine a spotlight on things,

but you have to remember that when Diana did it,

she was really breaking the mold,

certainly stepping into uncharted territories

for a member of the royal family.

I think Diana was extraordinary.

She certainly was classless.

She wasn't obsessed with millionaires,

as I'm afraid nowadays people seem to think money

is the most important thing, and that wasn't Diana at all.

She thought humanity and people being

who they should be was more important.

Campbell: The causes that she allied herself to

tended to be unfashionable causes,

but look at the progress that's been made on HIV/AIDS.

Look at the -- You know, one of the first things

that the Labor government did

was further action on land mines.

I mean, she was ahead of her time on some of those things.

She was a very active humanitarian.

I don't think the royal family had seen anything

quite like that.

The treaty that was signed just before her death

has pretty much seen the abolition of land mines

and is a cause now that Harry is taking on

to make sure that by 2025 there are no more.

There is no question that a huge amount

has been achieved in the last 20 years.

Land mines remain politically toxic weapons

in the eyes of people around the world.

Vast government stockpiles have been destroyed,

and production of these weapons

by the world's arms producers has all but ceased.

So I think the scale of her work is really only evident now.

It's taken this long to just see how remarkable

what she actually achieved was.

One of the most remarkable things she did,

I think it was in 1987, is that she went to a place

where people dying of AIDS were --

it's almost like a hospice, I think,

and she didn't -- she touched,

she clearly physically embraced someone with AIDS at a time

when that was thought to be some kind of death sentence

if you came anywhere near such a person.

I think that was transformative of the whole thing.

You have to remember that this was uncharted territory

for a member of the royal family to be going into a hospital

and holding hands with people suffering from HIV at a time

when they were generally shunned by society.

And I think you can actually trace a thread

going right the way back to 1987

when she broke those taboos over AIDS,

and I was there that day when she shook hands with those poor,

unfortunate young men at the Middlesex Hospital,

young men who subsequently died,

but she did that without wearing gloves.

Royals in those days wore white gloves, inevitably.

Certainly, in the respect that the lead-up

to Princess Diana coming was,

"Will she or won't she wear gloves?"

And she didn't.

I mean, I believed she wouldn't,

and she's lived up to what I had believed.

She knew the facts.

Now, she couldn't do anything about research into AIDS,

but she could help in drawing attention

to the inequities of it and, crucially,

raise vast sums of money, which she did over the years.

What is remarkable is she was cuddling people

when the royal family stayed 5 feet away from you,

and all you did is bow and let them pass.

She broke all those taboos and cuddled people with AIDS.

And I don't exaggerate when I say

I wondered if you could cuddle someone with AIDS

because I didn't know.

I hadn't got a clue.

but when I saw her cuddle someone with AIDS, I thought,

"Yes, of course you can cuddle someone with AIDS.

Obviously not a problem."

HIV does not make people dangerous to know,

so you can shake their hands and give them a hug.

Heaven knows they need it.

And so that ability to bring to people a feeling of simplicity

and honesty was incredible, absolutely incredible,

and I repeat, I think I think that

with Prince William and Prince Harry,

you just see an extension of it,

which would have been unacceptable 20 years ago.

HIV was a death sentence.

Treatment was not widely available

in the developed world, let alone in the poorer regions.

Stigma kept HIV-positive people

from talking openly about their condition

and kept vulnerable people from having the courage

to step into a clinic and ask for a test,

but thanks to the work of leaders in the fight

against HIV, people like Nelson Mandela,

Sir Elton John, Dr. Peter Piot,

the brave activists of TAG and ACT UP,

and like my mother, Princess Diana,

we have made huge progress.

[ Cheers and applause ]

William and Harry have had to deal

with an image of their mother projected in the press

of which they have no control over,

whether it's ex-lovers selling letters,

people recalling their experiences of their time

with Diana, working with Diana, loving Diana,

whatever capacity it's been,

and there have been former aides,

courtiers, and lovers who have cashed in on Diana's memory.

William and Harry have had to watch that

without having any control.

Harry has spoken quite recently about the fact

that he has felt conflicted in the past about his position.

He's not wanted all the scrutiny.

He didn't want to live in the goldfish bowl.

But they understand their power,

and they understand that they have this unique platform

through which they can spread their message and, you know,

in turn be used as weapons of soft diplomacy, if you like.

They can reach a far wider audience, perhaps,

than your average celebrity.

♪♪

Again, I talked to Prince William about this,

and he said, you know -- I said, "Do you buy this line

at all that she kind of, you know,

got herself into a lot of these difficulties

because she tried to play the media game?"

And he said, "Look, I think" -- his word was shenanigans.

He said, "I know there were shenanigans that went on."

But he feels that she was very isolated, very vulnerable,

not terribly well-protected

once the marriage started to go wrong.

Yeah, she said -- I thought it was pretty moving

the way that he said that he felt really sad

because he felt that that was the sort of role

that he and Harry could have played had they been older,

that, actually, as they became adults,

used, themselves, to this kind of goldfish-bowl existence,

that they'd have been able to protect her better

than she could protect herself,

and I think they did feel that she got used and exploited.

Well, I must say, I do think that they have been

very forgiving,

considering their mother was practically driven to her death,

and I think that the way they behave, the kindness

and compassion that they show is pretty remarkable.

She was, in some ways,

destructive of the role of family.

I don't mean deliberately or directly

because I think she was a monarchist,

but it was clearly her aim and intention

to make sure that the Prince of Wales

never became king,

and a lot of what she did in terms of her broadcasts

and the help she gave

with certain journalists and biographers

was to try as she could to prevent that ever happening.

Well, Diana made the statements about Charles' suitability

as a king in that infamous panorama interview

that she did with Martin Bashir.

I think, perhaps, retrospectively, she regretted

some of the things that she said in that documentary,

not least because they hurt her sons,

which was never her intention.

She didn't say that she didn't want Prince Charles to be king.

She said that she thought that hemay not want to be king,

which was a very mischievous thing to do,

and she was always very clever at sowing these little points

into her public utterances that would be picked up,

but that, of all of the ones that she did, was the one

with the greatest power of destruction.

She saw a very different side to Charles to the side

that the rest of us see,

but I think quite a bit of what she said

was probably fueled by anger and bitterness and resentment.

Mayer: And so she knew, in talking about the idea

that Charles himself might wish to take himself

out of the line of succession, that this was dynamite.

I don't think that she probably thought it through

in terms of what she really wanted

because no mother would really want for their eldest son

to have thrust upon them early the kingship,

but I'm sure that she knew it was something

that could damage him quite considerably, and it did.

He's been fighting that idea ever since,

that he doesn't really want the top job.

It's interesting how Charles has changed.

In 1997, he was not a popular figure.

He was seen as the man who inexplicably had chosen

to distance himself from this immensely beautiful

and vulnerable still-young woman,

and yet 20 years later, he has become a figure

whose inner quality of his life

has a much bigger public acclaim than it ever has,

and yet his ideas about nature, the environment, this country,

about humanity are seen to be no longer behind the times

but in many ways ahead of the times.

Nicholl: I think Charles' influence on his sons

is something that often gets lost,

and I think a lot of people might think

that she was solely responsible for raising William and Harry

and grooming them to become the young men that they are,

but actually, you have to remember that from the age of

12 and 15, they grew up without a mother.

Harry: Well done, brother.Well, thank you.

I think I deserve that.Shut up.

I nearly fell off my horse trying to hit you the ball,

and you missed it, spoon.Yeah, right.

"Spoon," did you say?

Spoon, yeah. It's not a swear word.

It isn't? You're sure?

Yes. Let's not mention the word that you invented, shall we?

No, no, no. No, we won't, Harry.

[ Laughs ] He "invented," yeah.

[ Laughing ] Please not. Please not.

One of those things you put your hands on.

No, Harry, absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

I couldn't agree more.[ Laughs ]

And the rounded men that they are today

is largely down to Charles.

I think he's often overlooked as a parent.

Charles had to step in and do the job of two parents

under the most unimaginably hard scenarios.

It wasn't an easy situation,

and I think sometimes he deserves more credit

than he's actually given.

I think the one thing that unified Diana and Charles

was how they wanted to raise those boys.

♪♪

Bradford: Well, of course Diana was very beautiful.

That always helps, and very photogenic, and she knew it,

and she knew how to perform for the photographers,

but this was not a fake.

Underneath it, she had very strong feelings

and great feelings of friendship

and encouraging people to talk to her,

to talk about their problems to her.

She really was a compassionate person.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

And I think if you think back through the pictures

that people remember,

I mean, there were millions of pictures of Princess Diana,

but there are some pictures, like the first time

that she held the hand of the guy who had HIV/AIDS,

walking through the minefield, the night that Prince Charles

was doing his big television interview

and she wore that amazing black dress

and just got herself on all the front pages

the next day looking, like, drop-dead gorgeous.

She thought in pictures, and I think that that was --

I don't think it was manipulative.

I think it was instinctive.

She knew the power of the picture,

and she knew the power of the picture to create

this sense of an empathetic person, which was real.

You couldn't fake that.

For people who are new to Diana's story,

it's one of endless fascination for them.

There's this incredibly beautiful,

glamorous woman who lived a remarkable life

and had a huge impact on the world.

[ Laughs ]

Hello. How do you do?

Hello. Hello.

[ Indistinct chatter ]

Oh, how nice.

Lucky me.

Hello.

Nash: People who are now just reaching their 20s

really want to know more about her.

They want to hear about her life and her legacy

and see what all the fuss was about, really.

It's very hard for them to imagine,

pre-the Kardashian era,

somebody who was quite that famous

in a time before social media.

She was, you know,

one of the first huge icons of our lifetime.

I think Princess Diana's death dared to make people think,

"Is the royal family a little out of date?"

The queen is now much more likely to take tea

with nursing staff in the canteen

rather than go to the boardroom.

Now, that is on one level,

but clearly, there have been other changes, too,

and I think this has been driven,

if you like, from the bottom up

because I think because of Diana's influence

and the way she approached her role,

if you like, the public have demanded

that the royal family adjust.

♪♪

But if you're asking me, "Is the modern royal family

very different to the one 20 years ago?"

Very different.

At a time when most institutions have almost gone

into reputational free-fall,

whether that's the banks, whether it's parliament,

whether it's politicians more generally,

whether it's sports stars,

the monarchy seems, to me, to buck the trend.

But I think a lot of that

has been about the way the queen has adapted.

I think there has been a kind of process of adaptation

that's gone on.

And, also, I think it's maybe that they got

all the really bad stuff happening to them

before everybody else.

But I think the combination of the queen,

what she called annus horribilis,

and then the Diana death and that moment during the week

when it all felt very, very vulnerable and shaky,

and then getting through that week,

and then I think they did kind of adapt after that,

just a little bit, not too much,

but enough to get themselves into a much better place.

[ Indistinct chatter ]

It was quite early on.

Yes. That's the interesting --

I think it's come over very strong, young man,

because the community's been to help.

[ Indistinct chatter ]

♪♪

Nash: William and Harry have spearheaded Heads Together,

along with Kate, very much in their mother's memory.

They've talked a lot recently about their own struggles

in coming to terms with the grief of losing her.

William has talked about the fact that,

you know, he still finds it to be mentally shocking now

even to talk about it 20 years on,

but he's really encouraged other people,

through his work with Child Bereavement UK,

for example, to talk all the time

and to talk about their lost loved ones

as much as they possibly can as a way to overcome that grief.

In fact, he's the one who encouraged Prince Harry to go

and seek help after, you know, his life descended

into what he describes as total chaos.

Harry is someone who didn't talk openly

about his mother's death for a very long time.

My sense is that William and Harry,

losing their mother at such a young age,

always so difficult for young people to do,

they were given vulnerabilities that unresolved issues

inside their psyches, and at some point,

and it traditionally comes out at the age that they now are,

they want to try and resolve those.

And I think the fact that their mother

was such an articulate person,

that helped them to have the confidence

to feel that they could talk in public

about the mental, emotional difficulties that they've had.

Talking can make us realize that we're not alone.

The opposite of talking is isolation and fear.

Sometimes, getting something off your chest

is an important step in coping with a situation

so you know that you're not alone,

you're not failing, that it's perfectly normal

to feel overwhelmed or sad at times.

Everybody does.

William and Harry have chosen to get involved

in those key charities, not so much as a result

of their mother's untimely death

but because they were issues that she was concerned in.

I think the fact that Harry has taken in interest in land mines

and in particular his other charities in Africa,

which would be very close to Diana's heart,

are just because they are Diana's children.

Well, neither of the boys,

as open as they've been in the series of interviews

that they gave about Heads Together,

have ever said it was because their mother herself

suffered from mental-health problems,

depression, bulimia, all of the things that,

you know, we know Diana did suffer from.

But I think it doesn't take a psychologist to work out that,

having gone through so many years of trauma and grief

and having to have gone through what they went through

so publicly, that a charity or an initiative

that is dedicated to mental health

and being more open about our problems,

being able to talk more openly about things like depression,

would resonate with both of the boys.

The three of us have learned a lot in the past few months

as we have met people.

The conclusion we are coming to

is that the more we talk about all of this,

the more collectively, as a society,

we can do to support one another.

The theme of World Mental Health Day

this year matches this.

It is mental-health first-aid for all.

To us, mental-health first-aid means getting in there early

to support people before what they're going through

becomes more serious or even clinical.

That support can be as little as a conversation

and a listening ear,

or it can be signposting someone to a professional service.

These actions may seem little, but they are vitally important.

I think the mental-health stuff is fantastic,

and I wrote a piece at the time

when they first said they were getting involved.

I said, "Well, you know, the republican in me

finds this really annoying that they can go into any cause,

and because of who they are, they get coverage,

they get heard, they get access to government,

whatever it might be."

But the mental-health campaigner in me was absolutely overjoyed

because it makes a difference.

There's no point denying it. It makes a difference.

But it only really makes a difference if you do it well.

And I would say that the Heads Together campaign

has been absolutely brilliant,

and I think it's definitely moved the dial.

Now, would they have got involved in that

if somebody else was their mother?

I've got no idea, but she was their mother,

and I do think it's part of her legacy

that that's the route they've gone down,

and I hope they stay down that route for a long time.

And possibly it took connecting

with a charity like mental health,

Heads Together -- possibly that's what it took for Harry

to publicly acknowledge that he'd also had problems.

I was told that he felt very strongly

that if he was going to spearhead this campaign

and encourage others to be open

and talk about their own problems,

then he knew he'd have to open up

and be honest in the process,

and he was, and in doing so, he was incredibly brave.

William, Catherine, and I started this campaign

because we saw that fear of judgement,

stigma, and outdated prejudice

meant that too many people stayed quiet

about their mental-health challenges,

and we saw that this fear of even talking about a problem

often meant the issues could quickly escalate out of hand.

How is it that for most, the first time mental health

is talked about is when they're already suffering?

Stigma cannot and must not be the reason

we shy away from equipping ourselves

and our families for the day that a dark cloud may appear.

Diana's legacy is a mixed bag

of what people would like it to be and what it actually is.

What people would like it to be is about emotional intelligence,

is about modernity.

What it actually is is something, I think,

even bigger about a complex woman in the public eye

and somebody who was so iconic, so famous

that she will always be with us for centuries, I think.

Well, I think the important thing is

that she provided an example of compassion,

and real compassion, as opposed to people paying lip service

to being nice or being charitable.

And I think that is an important legacy,

and I think that today's politicians fail

quite severely on that.

On the one hand, you know, she has this hugely glamorous image.

She was an icon of fashion, style,

very beautiful and graceful,

but I think, perhaps, her compassion is something

that really has lasted and has stood the test of time.

People really remember her having this presence, you know?

She walked into a room, and she'd light it up,

people often say of her.

She genuinely brought comfort to people

and made them feel special,

made them feel important when they were, perhaps,

going through incredibly difficult experiences,

and I think that's something

that most people remember her for.

Her legacy is twofold, really.

Her legacy is her sons,

and her legacy is the work that they are now continuing.

It was William who made the point that there is now

a young generation in the world who really don't know Diana.

They don't know the huge things that she achieved

and this amazing legacy that she's left behind.

She shone the spotlight on issues that would otherwise

have just stayed hidden beneath the carpet and neglected.

Diana's legacy has to be the way that she changed the monarchy

away from an austere, rather remote institution

into one which was far more personable,

seen as far more authentic, populated by younger royals

who could connect with the issues

that confronted every man and every woman,

and yet, they did that without losing the dignity

of the office of the royal family.

Kay: Diana's greatest legacy are her children

because they have turned out

to be remarkably well-adjusted young men,

and they've turned out to be very much like their mother,

and I think she is going to be casting the image

of the House of Windsor into the 21st century.

So I think that there has been a fundamental shift.

I think we'll have a much more caring,

more involved monarchy, not so insular,

possibly smaller and more compact

but more relevant, somehow.

I just feel the language that the boys speak is the language

that people recognize every day on the streets of Britain,

and I think that will increase its relevance going forward

and also ensure, I think,

the long-term security of the monarchy

because frankly, it has to change.

It has to adapt to meet changing times and conditions.

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