Royal Honeymoon

Princess Diana would have been fifty years old on 1st July. I spent that day building my website – this page, you’re looking at now – and remembering the day our lives collided.

Here’s the story.

The day Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer announced their engagement, I was a very young radio reporter in the South of England. The second the news broke that the Royal couple would be spending their wedding night at Broadlands – an elegant country house home once owned by Lord Louis Mountbatten – my news editor turned to me and said, “Off you go! Three minute colour piece for the six o’clock bulletin.”
This turned out to be easier said than done.

I arrived at Broadlands to find the place deserted. No tourists. No well-wishers. No citizens dancing in the village streets of Romsey. Not even a Union Jack in sight. Just me, my tape recorder (these were the Olden Days) and a microphone.
“No story here,” I declared in a phone call to the news desk.
“Then don’t bother coming back.”

At that time, Broadlands was open to the public, so I paid my admission fee and armed myself with the official guide book. Broadlands, I learned, had once been owned by Henry VIII. Great! I could spin that fact out for all of five seconds, at the start of my report. Then I would be able to mention the gardens had been designed by Capability Brown, that there were Greek and Roman treasures in the Sculpture Hall, paintings by Van Dyck on the walls and a magnificent collection of Wedgwood that had a room all to itself. OK, so I would be able to take our listeners on an audio tour of Broadlands. Things were looking up.

After I had done my intro – “Hello and welcome from Broadlands, once the home of King Henry VIII… remodelled to its current splendour by former Prime Minister Lord Palmerston… frequently visited by Her Majesty the Queen… and now the Hampshire honeymoon choice of Prince Charles and his fiancée, Lady Diana Spencer…” – I headed for the river. Not to throw myself in, but so I could explain how the River Test, flowing through the elegant grounds of Broadlands, was world-renowned for its salmon and trout fishing. “…although it’s most unlikely that His Royal Highness will have time for a spot of fly fishing once he arrives…” Having made certain I was unobserved, I lobbed a few stones into the river: the sound effects would come in useful once I was back in the editing suite.

Everything was going well. I reckoned I had almost enough for three minutes, including a few words from a tourist I had captured en route to the aforementioned Wedgwood Room: “What a lovely couple they make, and what a great honeymoon choice!”
Just one more segment to record, then I’d be done. I was on my way back towards the drawing room, composing my final words – “Broadlands has been part of British history for centuries. And now, a new chapter opens.” – when I saw it. A sign at the start of a corridor that proclaimed: NO ENTRY. No-one was in sight. No-one could stop me.

What would YOU have done?

Not a moment’s hesitation. I crossed the red velvet rope, tiptoed down the possibly Persian carpet, turned left and found myself inside a majestically intimidating bedroom, complete with majestically intimidating bed.

SCOOP! “…who knows who has spent the night in this room before. Henry VIII? Perhaps Lord Palmerston. Winston Churchill? Florence Nightingale – she is reputed to have been a frequent visitor, as was the artist Sir Joshua Reyn––”

A heavy hand descended on my shoulder, and roughly thirty seconds later, I was ejected from Broadlands with the words, “Never, EVER come back, do you understand?” ringing in my ears. The News Editor was pleased with me, that day.

All these years later, I’m not so proud of myself. I remember, too, how Jack Hollander, the hero of my book The Power Behind The Throne pays his admission fee for Buckingham Palace, unaware of the deception that is about to engulf him – and change his life forever.

And on Princess Diana’s birthday, which coincided with Prince William’s North American tour, I couldn’t help but think how proud his mother would have been of him, and how much she would have liked her new daughter-in-law.

I just hope the new Royal couple don’t have to deal with too many unscrupulous reporters in the years ahead.