For a time and then she would call us, and we would go and join her.'Īpparently Harry's parentage was the butt of an ongoing family joke-and no one was immune from the unfounded speculation that Diana's onetime lover James Hewitt was Harry's real father. But also, part of it maybe this is all part of a plan. 'I just refused to accept that she was gone,' Harry said in the Jan. He admitted to Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes that he spent years telling himself that Diana had faked her own death. It would just be so unbearably tragic, I thought, if it was actually true.' I promised myself l'd never believe that, no matter what anyone said. Besides, I wasn't crying because I believed my mother was in that hole. 'It's OK, I reassured myself, it's OK,' Harry continues. I felt ashamed of violating the family ethos, but I couldn't hold it in any longer.' My body convulsed and my chin fell and I began to sob uncontrollably into my hands. He remembers 'as the flag came off and the coffin descended to the bottom of the hole, that finally broke me. (A relic from the First World War, someone said, which seemed right, since Mummy, much as she loved peace, often seemed a soldier, whether she was warring against the paps or Pa.) I believe I'll remember those few sounds for the rest of my life, because they were such a sharp contrast to the otherwise all-encompassing silence.'Įven watching Diana's coffin being buried on the grounds of the Spencer family's Althorp estate couldn't quite convince Harry that his mum was dead. Most of all I remember the sounds, the clinking bridles and clopping hooves of the six sweaty brown horses, the squeaking wheels of the gun carriage they were hauling. I remember keeping a fraction of Willy always in the corner of my vision and drawing loads of strength from that. Had the roles been reversed, he'd never have wanted me-indeed, allowed me-to go it alone.'Īnd so both brothers made the 20-minute walk, with their father, grandfather Prince Philip and their uncle. I didn't want Willy to undergo an ordeal like that without me.

This alternative plan was sent up the chain. He was fifteen, after all,' Harry writes. Amid differing opinions over whether Harry, still days away from his 13th birthday, and William, 15, should have to walk behind their mother's coffin in the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey, Harry recalls that another option was considered.

Bad Reputation by Nicole Edwards