News Thread for the Late Princess Diana, part 2

[sharon_rose]

Diana memorial to close, again

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/eu...ial/index.html


Tuesday, October 12, 2004 Posted: 1416 GMT (2216 HKT)

LONDON, England -- The problem-plagued fountain built in memory of Princess Diana is being closed again -- this time because the surrounding grass has been turned into a swamp by water-splashing visitors.

The £3.6 million ($6.6 million) memorial in London's Hyde Park, which opened three months ago, will shut for an unspecified period in the next few weeks so the turf can be replanted.
And now the landscape architect who created the memorial has acknowledged the fountain has design flaws.

American Kathryn Gustafson says she did not expect so many people to flock to the memorial -- nor how many would run, splash and even wash their dogs in it.

"I feel we made a mistake letting people walk in the water. I apologize for that," Gustafson told Britain's Guardian newspaper.

"I thought people would picnic near the memorial, walk by and run their hands through the water, think about their lives, think about Diana," she was quoted as saying.

The fountain, which suffered a series of setbacks in construction, has come in for public criticism since Queen Elizabeth II opened it on July 6 -- almost seven years after Diana's death in an August 1997 car crash in Paris.

But a week after the ceremony, a blocked pump halted the water flow and it was closed for repairs.

Days later, three people -- including a child -- were sent to hospital after slipping in the fountain.

In response, its granite surface was roughened to give it more traction. At the same time, a security fence and cameras were installed and guards were posted at the site -- as were signs warning against walking or running in the water.

In the meantime, maintenance costs soared. The UK government estimates the cost of maintaining the fountain at $250,000 for the first year and $211,000 for each year after that.

Gustafson says she hopes criticism of the fountain will subside and the fence will eventually be removed.

"We just need time to solve the problems," she said

[Reina]

Well I don't have a scanner, but I work at the library and i will see if i can do it there, but not now b/c I have two midterms and a ppr to do. otherwise I would do it in a jiffy. But the pics are sooo great. which royasl do you want to see?

[Reina]

But yesterday I saw Earl SPencer on Larry King live. I think he is at peace and that life for him is better which I am thankful for. But it is so sad that his sister had to die. SHe would have been about 43. But she lives on in her sons. But I have to say that after seeing that I have a crush on Prince William again!!!

[maryshawn]

I was so surprised to see on EBAY.UK, an authenticated couch of Diana's is for sale! It's pink and was sold to current owner weeks before her death.....I had to look at it. Wish I could buy it but have no way of getting from UK to States. It's also quite large. If anyone interested in taking a look, I think it will be on for three more days! It's upto $900 something USD. Wonder how high it will go????

[maryshawn]

How cool to see it!!! Thank you for posting article and photos. I am a bit surprised it hasn't been snapped up! Is it overpriced for that area?

[kelly9480]

The article comes from 98. It probably has sold by now.

[wymanda]

Ex-secretary chronicles life with Princess Di



Monday, November 15, 2004 Posted: 1:50 PM EST (1850 GMT)

NAME: Patrick Jephson

BOOKS: "Shadows of a Princess: An Intimate Account by Her Private Secretary," "Portraits of a Princess: Travels with Diana"

(CNN) -- Patrick Jephson was private secretary to Princess Diana before becoming a writer.

After the princess was killed in a car crash in Paris in August 1997, Jephson penned a book about Diana, which became a New York Times best seller.

But members of the royal family were not pleased. A statement to Britain's Sunday Times before the release of "Shadows of a Princess" read:

"Her Majesty and His Royal Highness do not want a book of this kind to be published, a view which was conveyed firmly to Mr. Jephson in February, 1998.

"The Queen and the Prince of Wales deeply deplore Mr. Jephson's decision to proceed with the publication of his book."

But Jephson insisted that his book was intended to protect Diana's memory.

"During her lifetime, I was discreet and utterly loyal," he said. "Since her death I have been dismayed by the indiscriminate comment she has received, much of it inaccurate, some of it apparently intended to diminish her memory."

Jephson's second book, "Portraits of a Princess: Travels with Diana," details time he spent with Diana during her trips overseas and includes never-before-seen photos.

Jephson's work in television includes a two-part series for Britain's Channel 4 called "Charles: The Battle with Diana."

[sara1981]

Originally Posted by wymanda

Ex-secretary chronicles life with Princess Di



Monday, November 15, 2004 Posted: 1:50 PM EST (1850 GMT)

NAME: Patrick Jephson

BOOKS: "Shadows of a Princess: An Intimate Account by Her Private Secretary," "Portraits of a Princess: Travels with Diana"

(CNN) -- Patrick Jephson was private secretary to Princess Diana before becoming a writer.

After the princess was killed in a car crash in Paris in August 1997, Jephson penned a book about Diana, which became a New York Times best seller.

But members of the royal family were not pleased. A statement to Britain's Sunday Times before the release of "Shadows of a Princess" read:

"Her Majesty and His Royal Highness do not want a book of this kind to be published, a view which was conveyed firmly to Mr. Jephson in February, 1998.

"The Queen and the Prince of Wales deeply deplore Mr. Jephson's decision to proceed with the publication of his book."

But Jephson insisted that his book was intended to protect Diana's memory.

"During her lifetime, I was discreet and utterly loyal," he said. "Since her death I have been dismayed by the indiscriminate comment she has received, much of it inaccurate, some of it apparently intended to diminish her memory."

Jephson's second book, "Portraits of a Princess: Travels with Diana," details time he spent with Diana during her trips overseas and includes never-before-seen photos.

Jephson's work in television includes a two-part series for Britain's Channel 4 called "Charles: The Battle with Diana."

he is totally BIG ****! but i cant believe he did that! he told in statement about that but he did that! i knew it! but he never doing his job like Paul Burrell who been writing books before!

Sara Boyce

[glossypinky]

On November 29th,on Dateline NBC at 10pm,a new documentary about Princess Diana will be aired.More rare,never-before-seen videos of her will be shown.It will be two hours long.
Here's an article.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds17202.html

[Australian]

From Australian news website- news.com.au


Di tape tells of 'killing'
From correspondents in New York
November 27, 2004



A US television network will broadcast a never-before-seen video tape of Diana, Princess of Wales, next week in which she suggests a member of her staff was "bumped off" after she fell in love with him.

Happier days ... Charles and Diana on their engagement.
NBC said today the two-part program starting on Monday would include excerpts of interviews Diana recorded with communications consultant Peter Settelen in her living room, discussing her childhood, marriage and struggle with bulimia.

Earlier this year, NBC aired audio tapes Diana secretly recorded for a 1992 book that exposed the turmoil of her marriage to Prince Charles, whom she divorced in 1996.

The princess was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

NBC said Diana met Mr Settelen in September 1992, in the aftermath of the book by Andrew Morton, and had engaged him to train her in public speaking, a process that involved an on-camera interview to inspire confidence.

Excerpts of the program released in advance include comments by Diana on the lack of sympathy from her mother-in-law, the Queen, when Diana went to her having discovered that Prince Charles was having an affair.

NBC said one section of the interview was "on falling in love with a member of her palace staff, presumed to be Royal Policeman Barry Mannakee, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1987".

"It was all found out and he was chucked out," Diana is quoted as saying. "And then he was killed. And that was the biggest blow of my life, I must say.

"And I think he was bumped off. But, um, there we are. I don't ... we'll never know, he was the greatest fellow I've ever had."

The two-hour special, which also features an interview with Mr Settelen, is to be broadcast in two parts over two weeks. "This unusual tape, recorded in Diana's living room, hidden for years after her death, and fought over for months in the British courts, offers a view of the princess quite different from the formal public face she usually put forth," NBC said.

Reuters



(News.com.au

[Dennism]

A royal ballet of saints, fools and sadists
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent, Telegraph
27/11/2004

The boundaries of taste are ever flexible, but they are likely to be pushed to extremes in the West End next year by a spectacular £1.5 million ballet-cum-musical on the subject of the life and death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

The show, wholly sympathetic to the princess, is equally
unsympathetic to Camilla Parker Bowles, who is cruelly portrayed as a dominatrix in jodhpurs laying into the Prince of Wales with a whip.

The Royal Family resemble open-mouthed fools. The prince is weak but also devious, while his mother is neurotic and never at ease unless wearing her crown.

The princess and Dodi Fayed, who are portrayed as saintly figures martyred by the British establishment, are shown dancing passionately together before their deaths.

But before over-hasty judgment is passed, it should be said that the show, Diana the Princess, is not the hastily thrown together product of a pair of cheapskate backstreet American producers.

It has been created by Peter Schaufuss, one of the most influential and innovative figures in European ballet and a man who was a very close friend of and mentor to the late princess when her marriage was crumbling.

Though Prince Charles and Mrs Parker Bowles emerge badly from the two-hour entertainment, Schaufuss's mission, say his friends, is to elegise the princess rather than to bash the monarchy.

The ballet was staged in Denmark early last year but Schaufuss has bided his time before bringing it into the lion's den in this country. The only British newspaper critic to have seen the two-hour show has called it "scandalous" but also "hilarious".

Schaufuss, a Dane who danced with the Bolshoi and the Royal Ballet in London before he was artistic director of English National Ballet, has in the past five years created similar projects about Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

He calls these unconventional big-scale works "musicals without words". But they are also contemporary dance pieces, and critics – floundering for words – have nicknamed them "dance-icals".

The soundtrack for Schaufuss's romp is a wild fusion that is part-princess, part-royal: ear-splitting numbers from The Cure, the post-Punk Goth band who provided the music of choice for all anguished souls in the 1980s, together with Sir Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations and Pomp and Circumstance.

The first half of the show, according to those who saw it performed by Schaufuss's dance company in Jutland, starts with the 20-year-old Diana as a girl about town, then caught up by her whirlwind romance.

It is in the second half that the mood becomes dark, opening with her famous observation that "there were three of us in the marriage". The prince and Mrs Parker Bowles cavort like teenagers in love and the princess is in despair.

The finale – after Dodi and Diana's dance of death – spares the audience the car crash.The princess's body is wrapped in the Royal Standard to be carried off stage to a recording of Earl Spencer's funeral eulogy at Westminster Abbey.

The last scene sees Princes William and Harry walking sadly across the stage towards a brighter future.

The show, which reportedly received standing ovations in Denmark, will run at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, for a week in March and then move to the West End.

As in Denmark, the princess will be played by Shaufuss's third wife, Zara Deakin, a former pupil at the Royal Ballet School. Their son, Luke, plays Prince Harry.

Shaufuss, who was fired from English National Ballet in 1990 in a coup engineered by its chairman, Pamela, Lady Harlech, is better placed than most to tell the princess's life on stage.

Through the mid-1980s, the princess, who had once dreamed of being a dancer, secretly took dance lessons with Schaufuss and his troupe.
ENB was conveniently situated only a few hundred yards from
Kensington Palace and, morning after morning, the princess would arrive quietly by car at a back entrance.

Schaufuss said last year: "The whole company was desperate to keep her visits secret because we all knew her dancing was one of the few avenues of escape she had from the hell that was her married life."

The pair became very close – Schaufuss has disclosed that he would often slip into Kensington Palace to sit with the Princess in the kitchens drinking wine left out by the butler Paul Burrell – and she was patron of the company from 1989 until her death.

While running ENB, Schaufuss had a reputation as a great womaniser but he has refused ever to answer questions about any romantic attachment with the princess.

Though insiders admit that the show is bound to cause controversy in England, Schaufuss said last year: "I never intended to create a scandal. I have no need to cash in on anybody."

In a short statement yesterday, he added: "I would never have faced this tremendous challenge had I not known the person behind Princess Diana to the extent that I did." The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, would not comment on the project. "We never get involved in anything of an artistic nature like this," said a spokeswoman.

[wymanda]

This just illustrates to me how neurotic Diana was. Not only that she obviously failed to realise how explosive this kind of thing could be in the wrong hands!

I will also say, shame on the American network who were prepared to pay money for the tapes and on the American public who's desire to watch this trash gave the network a reason to want to buy them!

Originally Posted by Australian

From Australian news website- news.com.au


Di tape tells of 'killing'
From correspondents in New York
November 27, 2004



A US television network will broadcast a never-before-seen video tape of Diana, Princess of Wales, next week in which she suggests a member of her staff was "bumped off" after she fell in love with him.

Happier days ... Charles and Diana on their engagement.
NBC said today the two-part program starting on Monday would include excerpts of interviews Diana recorded with communications consultant Peter Settelen in her living room, discussing her childhood, marriage and struggle with bulimia.

Earlier this year, NBC aired audio tapes Diana secretly recorded for a 1992 book that exposed the turmoil of her marriage to Prince Charles, whom she divorced in 1996.

The princess was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

NBC said Diana met Mr Settelen in September 1992, in the aftermath of the book by Andrew Morton, and had engaged him to train her in public speaking, a process that involved an on-camera interview to inspire confidence.

Excerpts of the program released in advance include comments by Diana on the lack of sympathy from her mother-in-law, the Queen, when Diana went to her having discovered that Prince Charles was having an affair.

NBC said one section of the interview was "on falling in love with a member of her palace staff, presumed to be Royal Policeman Barry Mannakee, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1987".

"It was all found out and he was chucked out," Diana is quoted as saying. "And then he was killed. And that was the biggest blow of my life, I must say.

"And I think he was bumped off. But, um, there we are. I don't ... we'll never know, he was the greatest fellow I've ever had."

The two-hour special, which also features an interview with Mr Settelen, is to be broadcast in two parts over two weeks. "This unusual tape, recorded in Diana's living room, hidden for years after her death, and fought over for months in the British courts, offers a view of the princess quite different from the formal public face she usually put forth," NBC said.

Reuters



(News.com.au

[bluetortuga]

Oh when will this saga end? i am sick of the "Diana" revelations from the grave. I guess the Wales family is a more sick, corrupt, and neurotic bunch than once thought. It's frightening that some day one or two of them may become head of state. Diana is dead and gone. But the rest of them should be stuffed in a barrel and rolled straight off a cliff. If this sordid behavior continues great Britain may become a republic after all

[maryshawn]

Well, I can't recall who I was posting with at the time the first one was aired but I hate to say we were both right--except this time Peter Settleton moved even faster than I'd predicted! I said he'd drag it out for a few years, I think--but I was wrong. This is months and weeks! Is it being aired anywhere besides the US? It's shameful and disheartening and it has to stop! Are these the same tapes the family had possession of but had to return to this turkey? How fat do his wallets have to get before he's satisfied he's had enough airtime/money off her death? I saw him on an interview shortly after her death and didn't like him then......out of work actor who parlayed his "talent" into being a speech coach! If you ever have the distinct "dis"pleasure of seeing this guy, you will see how he comes across as being soooo into himself and how he did this or that for Diana, his inspiring words about pretending to be a "hooker" of all things!, his condescension is sickening! I was pleasantly surprised to see the Sunday TV guide did not mention the show! Ha! Maybe the ratings will be hideous ('tho realistically I doubt it) and we will stop being subjected to Peter Settleton makes money off Diana ever again!!!!!! Let's all write him and ask how much he is contributing to her causes (he doesn't have to go through the family's fund)......Sorry, had to vent!

[royal_sophietje]

Well, the Dutch tv-station SBS6 plans to broadcast the Diana-tapes....

[Elspeth]

Well, I can't recall who I was posting with at the time the first one was aired but I hate to say we were both right--except this time Peter Settleton moved even faster than I'd predicted! I said he'd drag it out for a few years, I think--but I was wrong. This is months and weeks!

Not really surprising, though. As time goes by, more and more young people don't really remember much if anything about Diana; I'm not sure if it was this board or another one where someone said she was talking to her youngsters about Diana and was very surprised that the reaction from one was "who's she?" and the reaction from the other was indifference. If people want to cash in, they're going to have to do it sooner rather than later, unless they wait for major anniversaries or for Charles's accession or something.

[sara1981]

i cant believe its would be air again! maybe same or different? i have been watch that Diana's secret tapes on NBC and CBS both about that! i hates that sames things!

Sara Boyce