On the 59th anniversary of Diana, Princess of Wales’s birth, Royal Central takes a look back at the life of a remarkable woman who would become known as the ‘People’s Princess’.
Diana Frances Spencer was born on 1 July 1961 at Park House within the royal Sandringham Estate. She was the fourth child to be welcomed by John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer and his wife, Frances Shand Kydd.
Born into the wealthy British aristocratic Spencer family, who had made a fortune as sheep graziers in the 15th century, Diana counted King Edward III, King Henry VII, King Charles II and Winston Churchill among her ancestors.
Diana’s family had many links to the British Royal Family. Her grandmothers, Cynthia Spencer and Ruth Roche acted as ladies in waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Diana was even named after a distant relative who was once touted as a potential Princess of Wales.
[getty src=”3239372″ width=”594″ height=”395″ tld=”com.au”]Diana had two older sisters, Lady Jane Fellowes and Lady Sarah McCorquodale, and a younger brother Charles, who arrived three years after her birth. She also had an older brother, John, who died shortly after birth.
Diana was christened on 30 August 1961 at St Mary Magdalene Church at Sandringham. One of her godmothers was Lady Mary Colman, a niece of the Queen Mother.
Being of similar age, Diana and her younger brother, Charles, became childhood playmates of Queen Elizabeth’s youngest sons, Princes Andrew and Edward.
Diana’s idyllic Norfolk country childhood was shattered in 1967 when her parents separated, and her mother began a new relationship with Peter Shand Kydd. A bitter divorce followed with her father, eventually winning full custody of all their children.
[getty src=”3087787″ width=”415″ height=”594″ tld=”com.au”]Diana began her education at home with a governess, before attending two schools in Norfolk. She excelled at music, dancing and swimming but struggled academically.
In 1975, her father became Earl Spencer, and the family moved from Park House to the Althorp Estate in Northamptonshire. Diana then started to use the title Lady Diana Spencer. The Earl also remarried; he married Raine, who was the daughter of the romance novelist, Dame Barbara Cartland.
[getty src=”83982395″ width=”594″ height=”391″ tld=”com.au”]Following her education, Diana spent a year at a finishing school in Switzerland, before moving into a London flat with girlfriends. She tried her hand at several jobs, including working as a cleaner and a dance instructor before taking a position as a teacher’s assistant in Young England School in Pimlico.
In 1980, Diana attended a country house party, which the Prince of Wales, Charles, also attended. She had previously encountered the oldest son of Queen Elizabeth a few years earlier when he had dated her older sister, Sarah.
[getty src=”138688398″ width=”594″ height=”413″ tld=”com.au”]At just 19 years of age, Diana began to be courted by the 31-year-old heir to the throne. The pair took several trips to Cowes and Balmoral as well as dates in London, seeing each other about a dozen times before he proposed.
At this time, Diana became subject to a high amount of media attention with paparazzi beginning to follow her every move. Her avoidance of the camera earned her the nickname “shy Di”. The intense interest in her life would only increase throughout the years and led to her being called ‘the most photographed woman in the world’.
Prince Charles proposed to Lady Diana on 3 February 1981, after about six months of courtship.
[getty src=”1224328848″ width=”474″ height=”594″ tld=”com.au”]He presented her with an 18-karat white gold ring topped with a 12-carat oval Ceylon sapphire surrounded by 14 solitaire diamonds made by British Jeweller Garrard that she had selected. The ring reportedly cost £28,000 at the time. Diana later said she chose it as it reminded her of her mother’s ring.
Prince Charles’s engagement was announced on 24 February, and Diana appeared before the cameras as a royal bride-in-waiting just hours later.
Early cracks had already started to show in the relationship, suggesting their romance would not go on to be the fairytale craved by the public and media. When asked during an interview if they were ‘in love’ Diana shyly smiled and responded: “Of course.”
[getty src=”173966101″ width=”594″ height=”393″ tld=”com.au”]Prince Charles added: “Whatever in love means.”
The following month, Diana accompanied Charles to a charity event as her first official royal engagement. The charismatic future princess proved a natural with the crowds.
The pair wed in front of a crowd of 2,650 guests in a lavish ceremony held at St Paul’s Cathedral on 29 July 1981. The bride wore a stunning taffeta wedding dress made with silk and antique lace and 10,000 pearls, created by husband-and-wife design team David and Elizabeth Emanuel.
[getty src=”71520536″ width=”594″ height=”381″ tld=”com.au”]She accessorised with an 18th-century Spencer family tiara and a 25-foot veil, with the elaborate ensemble barely able to fit in the carriage.
Diana was accompanied by the aisle by her father, who was in poor health following a stroke. She later recalled that it was the “proudest day of his life.”
The ceremony was broadcast on television around the world with nearly a billion people from 74 countries tuning in to see the “wedding of the century.”
The marriage was tumultuous from the start, with Diana later admitting to royal biographer Andrew Morton that she had discovered just days before the wedding that the Prince was still involved with a former girlfriend, Camilla Parker-Bowles.
[getty src=”78977410″ width=”594″ height=”432″ tld=”com.au”]Following the wedding, Diana and Charles moved into a residence at Kensington Palace and kept a rural retreat at Highgrove House.
They welcomed two sons, Prince William on 21 June 1982, and Prince Henry, who was called Harry at his mother’s insistence, on 15 September 1984.
While Diana would take on hundreds of patronages in her early years of royal life, it was her work helping to destigmatise HIV and AIDS that she was most proud of. Diana would help to change long-held public misconceptions over how the disease was transmitted when she opened the UK’s first purpose-built HIV/AIDS unit at London Middlesex Hospital in April 1987.
[getty src=”76214611″ width=”388″ height=”594″ tld=”com.au”]In front of the world’s media, the Princess of Wales reached out and shook the hand of a patient, without wearing any gloves. The simple gesture publicly challenged the notion that HIV/AIDS was passed from person to person by touch.
Diana also revolutionised the way royal children were parented, being an affectionate mother, who took her sons to theme parks and McDonald’s and tried to bring some ‘normalcy’ to their upbringing.
She also took the young princes on visits with her to homeless shelters and AIDS hospitals.
[getty src=”157809899″ width=”594″ height=”416″ tld=”com.au”]Following years of unhappiness and affairs on both sides of the marriage, Diana’s separation from Charles was formally announced in December 1992 by British Prime Minister John Major, who read a statement from the Royal Family to the House of Commons.
Next, a public mud-slinging match played out in the media which became known as “The war of the Waleses.”
The public scrutiny and embarrassment became too much for Diana, who announced she was retiring from public life at the end of 1993. She continued to do charity work behind the scenes and made a partial return by November 1994.
[getty src=”73389945″ width=”594″ height=”439″ tld=”com.au”]A year later, Diana fired the final shot in the War of the Waleses, giving an explosive interview to Martin Bashir where she expressed doubts over her former husband’s suitability to be king and discussed the couple’s extramarital affairs.
Following the bombshell interview, which was watched by more than 22.8 million viewers, Queen Elizabeth wrote to the couple, advising them to divorce.
The divorce was finalised on 28 August 1996, with Diana receiving a lump sum payment of £17 million and an annual allowance of £400,000.
Causing her much grief, Diana lost the style of Her Royal Highness and was instead to be styled Diana, Princess of Wales.
[getty src=”51420457″ width=”594″ height=”401″ tld=”com.au”]Three days after her divorce, she resigned from over 100 of her patronages, retaining just six. She kept her position as patron or president of Centrepoint, the English National Ballet, the Leprosy Mission, the National Aids Trust, London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children and the Royal Marsden Hospital.
At the time, Diana explained that she had made the decision “with great sadness” but wanted to concentrate her efforts on fewer causes. However, Diana would soon find a new cause to champion – she wanted to rid the world of landmines.
[getty src=”829955066″ width=”594″ height=”410″ tld=”com.au”]After becoming a patron of HALO Trust, images of her walking an Angolan minefield in January 1997, in a ballistic helmet and flack jacket were seen, worldwide.
A few months later, Diana struck up a romance with Egyptian film producer and playboy Dodi Al-Fayed. The couple were relentlessly trailed by paparazzi when they holidayed in August on his yacht in the South of France.
On 31 August 1997, at just 36-years of age, Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi were killed in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris while fleeing paparazzi. Their driver, Henri Paul, also lost his life.
[getty src=”1041873042″ width=”594″ height=”407″ tld=”com.au”]The sudden and unexpected death brought an outpouring of grief from around the whole world. Millions of people visited Kensington Palace to bring flowers, cards and gifts, which they left at the front gate of her former home.
Controversy would ensue for days after, with people turning on the British media and Queen Elizabeth for not immediately publically responding to the tragedy.
On 5 September, the day before Diana’s funeral, The Queen broke her silence and made a televised address from Buckingham Palace.
[getty src=”1041872912″ width=”594″ height=”382″ tld=”com.au”]“No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew her, will remember her. I, for one, believe there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death. I share in your determination to cherish her memory,” she said of her former daughter-in-law.
On the morning of 6 September, Diana’s funeral procession commenced from Kensington Palace, her coffin resting on a gun carriage drawn by six horses.
She was closely followed on foot by her brother Charles, sons William, 15, and Harry, 12, former father-in-law Prince Phillip and the Prince of Wales for the four-mile procession to Westminster Abbey. The casket was adorned with white flowers and a single card, addressed to “Mummy” from Prince Harry.
[getty src=”829950052″ width=”594″ height=”397″ tld=”com.au”]Thousands of mourners packed the street to pay respects while 2.5 billion people tuned in over the world to watch the funeral which included a powerful eulogy from Earl Charles Spencer and a performance of a rewritten version of “Candle in the Wind” by Elton John.
Diana was laid to rest later that day on an island on the Althorp Estate – the Spencer family’s ancestral home in a smaller, private ceremony.
Gone but not forgotten, today Diana is remembered as a mother, a tireless campaigner for those who could not speak up for themselves and a fashion icon.
After her death, Diana was credited by the Halo Trust for the success of the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, which opened for signatures months after her death in December 1997.
[getty src=”1177529948″ width=”594″ height=”381″ tld=”com.au”]The international treaty, which has been signed by 122 countries, prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of landmines. While the world is still a long way being completely rid of landmines, Prince Harry continues her work today with the charity.
After Diana’s death, her sapphire and diamond engagement ring was left to Prince Harry, who eventually gave it to his older brother, Prince William to present to his long term girlfriend, Kate Middleton in late 2010 when he proposed.
The couple, now known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, also honoured Diana when they named their second child Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana.
Prince William also continues his mothers work, becoming a patron of British youth homeless charity Centrepoint in 2005.
The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund also granted over £100million in funds to charitable organisations in the UK and around the world to help improve the lives of disadvantaged people between 1997 and 2012.
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