Questions about sources

[Menarue]

That was a very strange episode, not the train, but Lord Fermoy practically advertising the fact that his niece was a virgin, surely this is a very strange way to act and Jo is right in thinking it was an act of desperation, the crown was so close when Sarah apparently said the wrong thing and now that the crown was within reach again they would stop at nothing, even a public declaration from an uncle on the subject of his niece´s virginity.

 

[Charlotte1]

The train incident: Tina Brown makes quite a convincing scenario that it was not Camilla but Diana on the train that night, because she found a witness who could verify that the car which brought the "blonde guest" belonged to Diana's mother. Brown claims that Diana stayed at Camilla's (she has a witness for that as well - and shows that in fact Diana could have driven up to Camilla's that night instead of going to bed, as she claimed she had done)) that night and was encouraged by Camilla to drive over to spend an unsupervised evening/night with Charles.

"The woman on the train' story quoting Stephen Barry "Royal Service' who actually was on the train that night he stated that there was no woman on the train. Charles was never alone as he had his private detective with him. Charles did try to get the editor who published the story to retract it, but he refused. So it's now gone down in folklore as there was a woman on the train.

 

[Jo of Palatine]

Oh, I don't know. Maybe we should try to find all sources available about the "Train incident" and see what's coming out of it. Tina Brown obviously did that for her book, colecting all kind of sources and then started to dig into the incident.

As for Stephen Barry: when he wrote his book, the image of the Wales marriage was still intact. So what was he to do? if he wrote that it had been Diana, he would show openly her lying, manipulating side, as she and her family had publicily claimed it wasn't her. But the editor of course would have told him that he had to put that episode into his book as it was a "Royal mystery". So at that time there are many reasons why barry wouldn't name either Diana or Camilla as the "lady on the train" but declare that the incident simply didn't happen. Bradford and Brandreth are convinced it happened and they did quite thorough research while Tina Brown even used detectives to find the guard who could identify the car.

 

[Charlotte1]

Bradford and Brandeth state it was Camilla on the train. Brandeth I think quotes Bradford as his source, she in turn names the person ( I don't have the book with me) who stated many years later that it was Camilla, but that person wasn't on the train. With the benefit of hindsight history tends to be moved somewhat by whatever slant an author wants to be put on. All 3 authors' sources are somewhat tenuous, even Tina Brown's guard made no positive identification that he saw either Diana or Camilla board the train.

So even with knowing when Stephen Brown wrote his book, he being a primary source ( he was on the train) and no other primary sources being as strong as he, I would go with his version of events. Plus Barry also pointed out that Charles was very discreet when it came to his sexual affairs, ( not carried out as BP as there is no privacy there, all his rooms went along a corridor) he used friends' country homes where there was a lot more privacy. That then would rule out a tryst on a train which wasn't private, Charles was with his staff ( valet, detective) in country homes, the valet didn't come with him and his detective left him at the door, Charles could be alone. Had Charles really wanted to sleep with either Diana or Camilla then he would have chosen somewhere more private and practical than the royal train. As witnessed by when C & C were carrying out their affair it was at the country homes of sympathetic friends.

 

[Jo of Palatine]

Yes, but we don't talk about a "tryst" necessarily. The fact that the lady was on the train does not mean she was Charles' lover. If it had been Diana, then she and Charles could well have used this as an opportunity to spend time alone to get to know each other better. I think it has ben written by quite some reliable biographers that the marriage bed tunred sour for Charles and Diana pretty soon after the wedding, so in all probability they didn't have intercourse pre-wedding. Sounds crazy, but this still happened in the 1980ties.

We should not forget that Charles was in a very difficult situation pretty soon after meeting Diana. He liked her, he felt he could maybe offer for her but the public/media was after them very quickly (and with Diana's help, as we know today). A person like Charles (as shown in the Dimbleby-biography) and of course his friends surely had an interest in him meeting the girl without anyone else around, just to sit and talk and get to know each other. Diana OTOH had her own agenda: to force his hand before she could make a fault like her sister had done.

So both had an interest to meet that night in private - enjoying a privacy that no house party could give them because even then they had their duties towards the host and hostess.

As for the detective and Barry not saying anything: Charles' detectives IMHO never breathed a word about the prince's doings and Barry, as I said before, had an interest to keep his mouth shut as well.

I mean: nothing untoward happened. Barry could well have witnessed Charles and Diana talking the whole night through on drinking water! Why should he comment this happening as long as the Wales' marriage was still intact? And why should the detective have said anything? It was his job to be discreet and to protect Charles: Diana surely back then was no danger at all.

 

[Charlotte1]

Well back to the train! Found Sarah Bradford's book, she doesn't offer up much as evidence. Here's what she had ( pg 70) Journalist James Whitaker stated 'on the record' that as a follow up to the 'woman on the train' story he went up to where the train had been at the siding and paid some money to the signal man to look at the log, a person was logged as getting on the train at the station down the road-a woman. Also that politician Woodrow Wyatt wrote a Christmas card to Sunday Mirror editor Bob Edwards in 1986 and wrote "it was Camilla" Woodrow Wyatt conveniently died in 1997 ( I looked it up) so there's no way to verify what he meant.

Back to Stephen Barry, there were actually 2 protection officers on the train, he also stated that when the train pulled into a siding the local police surrounded it. ( His take was that Diana would have had to have been Houdini to get on without being seen).
There would have been more people around to have talked on the record that Diana or Camilla were on the train. The Protection officers could have remained quiet, but local police? The signal man has never been identified nor the log verified, also it was at the 'station down the road' that the woman was logged as getting on the train, therefore could have been anyone come to work in the carriages.
At this stage in his courting Charles was seeing Diana alone at Highgrove, Barry would drive her down and then leave them alone. There was no other staff at Highgrove as it was still in its about to be renovated state.

Will try and find exactly what Tina Brown offers up as evidence to compare. I'm still leaning to the idea that the story is folklore.

 

[Jo of Palatine]

Will try and find exactly what Tina Brown offers up as evidence to compare.

Here's what I found - Anchor edition in PB from 2008:

p. 156: Diana at Highgrove, pre-wedding: "His valet Stephen Barry recalls them having tea together and later a light supper on a card table in the sitting room before driving back to London. A member of Charles' s staff, sonia Palmer, hints that it was more than tea. "Stephen used to say Diana always left iwth a glow and her hair freshly brished. Why did she neet to brush her hair if they were discursing on philosophy?"

Insert by me: We don't know if Stephen really used to say that. But if so: is it in his book? Or did he omit it for the same reasons as he omited the truth about the Train?

Brown goes on: "The tired old virgin thing again: the investment in that aspect of the fairy story had become so intense that it developped a life of its own. On the night of November 4, 1980, Diana attended Princess Margaret's fiftieth-birthday party at the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly. What she did or did not do on two nights afterwards sent the Palace machine into near-hysterical overdrive....

From p. 157 to 164 Brown details the background of the Train incident and concludes: "Diana had now entered the zone of spin and would have to live there till the end of her life."

Another quote from the book, page 160:
For a number of reasons I have become convinced that it was indeed Diana on the Royal Train. If it was Camilla, why didn't Diana include the incident in her remorseless narrative of marital torture and betrayal in any of her confessional gut-spilling for Andrew Morton or Martin Bashir? Her later discovery that Charles was planning to give Camilla a bracelet became an operatic incident in her long list of hurts. For a girl on the verge of engagement it would have been a devastating discovery to find that her boyfriend was secretly two-timing her on the train while she was tucked up in bed at Coleherne Court..." Brown details her report with information from the Mirror, who had made a thorough investigation into the case and whose editor back then is still convinced that the research was serious and sucessful....

 

[agogo]

Too many books quote, "a friend", "a palace source", "an observer" and so on..........This allows the author to publish gossip without accountability.

 

[Lumutqueen]

Well that is the point about royals books, they can never publish who their source is.

 

[Mermaid1962]

Sarah Bradford had very few anonymous sources in her book about Diana.

Well that is the point about royals books, they can never publish who their source is.

 

[georgiea]

Sarah Bradford had very few anonymous sources in her book about Diana.

Tina Brown's Princess Diana book used a lot of Sarah Bradford's book as her source.

 

[Denville]

well if Sarah B's book is accpeted as well written and fairly accurate, if Tina B copied a lot of it, then surely HER book si also pretty accurate? I think that she is problaby right about its being Di on the royal train. If she went to the trouble of checking out details and found the log with the number of Di's mother's car, surely that's a fair bit of research and evidence. And yes I think that it is possible that C and Di spent some time together on the train just talking.. and getting to know each other..It doesn't mean that they slept together. I thin that they didn't until the wedding night.. as for brushing her hair and doing her make up most women woudl do this..

 

[aigulminimalist]

I cant find "daily mail" article or a story it says something like:
"Charles’s birthday gift to Camilla that Diana described as ‘like a dagger to my heart’."

Has anyone ever read this?

 

[Osipi]

I don't read the Daily Fail articles about anything for the most part. Its not on my list as a "credible source" of anything.

 

[aigulminimalist]

I don't read the Daily Fail articles about anything for the most part. Its not on my list as a "credible source" of anything. [emoji3]

I dont know exactly who is the author of the article.
It might be Tina Brown because someone else wrote on another forum:
<<Tina Brown wrote an article that it was all about the hurt from Camilla's birthday. The necklace she called "a dagger to my heart" and was described as being "breathless...almost like a child">>

 

[Osipi]

The story doesn't ring a bell with me. Just from the tone of that comes across from the information presented, it sounds like Diana, once again, playing things up for the press to garner attention.

It wasn't the first time. Diana discovered a gift of a bracelet for Camilla from Charles before they were ever married. That should have raised red flags right there that Charles and Camilla were close and intimate friends that had been involved with each other. She went into the marriage anyways. Diana had a serious problem with anyone getting attention from Charles. I remember reading that it was a sticking point with her that, one time, Charles offered to get his mother and grandmother drinks before asking Diana. This woman was excellent at making mountains out of molehills and filling the mountain with evil, nasty creatures.

We see, over the years, that Diana wanted exclusive attention from the man she was involved with and manipulated things to make that so. So, I wouldn't take that "dagger in the heart" statement as anything other than what it was. A play for attention and sympathy and pity.

Just my take on it.

 

[Mermaid1962]

I wouldn't doubt it. In Morton's "Her True Story", Diana tells about her protection officer saying, on the evening before the engagement announcement, "This is the last night of freedom in your life, so make the best of it." She remarks that this statement felt "like a sword through my heart." It sounds like the kind of image Diana would have used.

I dont know exactly who is the author of the article.
It might be Tina Brown because someone else wrote on another forum:
<<Tina Brown wrote an article that it was all about the hurt from Camilla's birthday. The necklace she called "a dagger to my heart" and was described as being "breathless...almost like a child">>

 

[aigulminimalist]

if I'm not mistaken "dagger to my heart" was after the divorce.
it was a reaction to camilla 50 bithday highgrove party.

 

[Osipi]

That would have been the summer Diana died. She was very aware of the party that Charles was throwing for Camilla at Highgrove and Diana did her best to upstage the event with photo calls with the press while she was on vacation with the Al-Fayeds. One only has to look at the fact that one of the last people to talk to Diana before the fatal accident was Richard Kay of the Daily Fail. She was still very much set on keeping her profile alive in the tabloids.

 

[Denville]

The story doesn't ring a bell with me. Just from the tone of that comes across from the information presented, it sounds like Diana, once again, playing things up for the press to garner attention.

It wasn't the first time. Diana discovered a gift of a bracelet for Camilla from Charles before they were ever married. That should have raised red flags right there that Charles and Camilla were close and intimate friends that had been involved with each other. She went into the marriage anyways. Just my take on it.

Diana discovered the bracelet that Charles was giving to Camilla just before the wedding. She was upset, but actually Chas gave presents to other friends before he married, for some reason. so I don't see that she was likely to clal off the wedding over a bracelet even if she did get upset about it.
and there is certainly a story that toward the end of her marriage, Charles gave Diana soemthing cheap as a present and gave a diamond necklace to Camilla. Is that what you mean?

 

[Osipi]

Diana discovered the bracelet that Charles was giving to Camilla just before the wedding. She was upset, but actually Chas gave presents to other friends before he married, for some reason. so I don't see that she was likely to clal off the wedding over a bracelet even if she did get upset about it.
and there is certainly a story that toward the end of her marriage, Charles gave Diana soemthing cheap as a present and gave a diamond necklace to Camilla. Is that what you mean?

This is the first I've heard of that story. I was just referring to the incident before the wedding. Can't remember which book it was in (perhaps Steven Berry, the valet) but it was reported that Diana was quite a bit more than upset about the bracelet gift (I believe it was a C&C initials entwined).

 

[Curryong]

Towards the end of the marriage there is a story in one of Diana's bios that Charles gave Diana a cheap straw hat with plastic fruit on it for a present, something he had picked up no doubt at a Royal engagement somewhere or other, and at the same time gave Camilla some quite valuable jewellery.

 

[Denville]

Yes I think that both stories are well known and pretty definitely true.. yes Diana was very upset about the bracelet given to Camilla, but Charles DID give gifts to other friends at the time, not just her.
and there is a story that he gave Diana something cheap for a present towards the end of the marriage, but Gave Camilla something valuable.

 

[Pranter]

This is the first I've heard of that story. I was just referring to the incident before the wedding. Can't remember which book it was in (perhaps Steven Berry, the valet) but it was reported that Diana was quite a bit more than upset about the bracelet gift (I believe it was a C&C initials entwined).

And IMO that was in very poor taste on Charle's part. I'd of been pissed.


LaRae

 

[Denville]

And IMO that was in very poor taste on Charle's part. I'd of been pissed.


LaRae

he sent presents to other friends, not just Camilla. BUt I appreciate that it is upsetting to find an old girlfriend getting a present rather more than his giving presents to other friends. However I was responding to people seemingly suggesting that Diana "should have seen a red light" and that she didn't call off the wedding over this issue.
It was a problem, but IMO it certainly wasn't such a problem that they would have been allowed to call off the wedding. And It might not have been a "red light" that the marriage was starting off badly, depending. Charles might have simply intended it as a farewell gift to a woman he had been deeply involved iwht and loved.. and he and Diana were tehn starting their married life..

 

[MARG]

This is the first I've heard of that story. I was just referring to the incident before the wedding. Can't remember which book it was in (perhaps Steven Berry, the valet) but it was reported that Diana was quite a bit more than upset about the bracelet gift (I believe it was a C&C initials entwined).

First I've heard of it too. Good grief, it's like Chinese whispers. Every distorted story is further distorted by those who "read it somewhere" and dutifully pass it on. ?

 

[Denville]

the story is in Tina Brown's biography of Diana. Why is htat a "distorted story"?

 

[Osipi]

Its very possible that I did read about the straw hat thing and its slipped my mind. The memory isn't what it used to be. I wouldn't call it a distorted story either and perhaps I chose the wrong words in stating I'd not heard of it. I'll probably run into the story should there come a time I dig all the Diana books out again and reread them.

I don't find it terrible that Charles skimped on a gift for Diana and put more thought into the one for Camilla at the end of his marriage. It just shows the pecking order of esteem in Charles' mind at the time.

Perhaps the biggest "red light" going into the marriage for Diana was that she actually spent so little time with her husband to be. When she did, a lot of those times did involve the Parker-Bowles and she must have known that they were considered close friends. Who knows? Diana was an enigma unto herself for the most part. We'll never figure her out.

 

[Denville]

well it seems ot me pretty cheap,with all the money he has, that he could not buy Diana a decent gift, however little he cared for her. He could easily have asked an aide to buy something. to give her something cheap and tacky, and give his mistress a diamond necklace may be understandable in one sense but it is bad behaviour.
and if Diana should have realised that she had spent very little time iwht her husband before getting engaged, what about him? Why not blame him for not considering that he had not spent a lot of time with Diana and didn't know her that well...

 

[Pranter]

To me the final straw would of been the entwined C&D present...that suggests something that shouldn't be from a man fixing to marry.

Just another red flag in a line of them. They should of let her call it off when she raised the issue with her sisters.


LaRae