Princess Diana Revealed She Was “Desperate” to Make a Major Change in Her Final Phone Call
Princess Diana Revealed She Was “Desperate” to Make a Major Change in Her Final Phone Call
Rachel BurchfieldMon, August 31, 2026 at 12:40 PM UTC
0
Princess Diana in Washington, D.C. on June 17, 1997.Credit: GettyThe Gist -
Princess Diana died in a Paris car crash at just 36 years old on August 31, 1997—29 years ago.
The Princess of Wales’s friend and journalist Richard Kay was Diana’s final phone call before her tragic accident.
Kay said that she was focused on Prince William and Prince Harry, looking forward to seeing her sons again after being apart on separate vacations.
Princess Diana’s friend, journalist Richard Kay, was one of the last people to speak with her on August 30, 1997, not long before the August 31 car accident in Paris that claimed her life at just 36 years old.
The subject of their conversation was largely Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, who she was excited to see on August 31 after they’d been at Balmoral with Prince Charles as she traveled abroad. Speaking in the Diana documentary (and via People), Kay said that the Princess of Wales was “desperate to try and make a fresh start and do something different,” adding that she was looking “to explore a different kind of royalty” in her next chapter.
Princess Diana, Prince Harry, and Prince William in September 1995.Credit: Getty
“I spoke to her that night,” Kay said. “[The] police said that the last call she made was to me.” Diana, he said, was “in quite a good place,” but really “wanted to come back and see her boys.”
Just 10 days before her death, Diana told friend Rosa Monckton that she had a regret involving her sons—the November 1995 BBC Panorama interview with Martin Bashir, which was ultimately the catalyst to push Queen Elizabeth to ask Charles and Diana to, after three years of separation, get a divorce after all.
Diana was in Greece with Monckton in August 1997, in what would become their final vacation together. “She told me she regretted doing it [the interview] because of the harm she thought it had done to her boys,” Monckton told People.
Advertisement
Princess Diana, Prince Harry, and Prince William.Credit: Getty
As the outlet put it, the conversation “revealed something essential about Diana in her final days: her overriding concern remained the emotional well-being of William, then 15, and Harry, 12.” Her regret wasn’t about the interview itself, but how it may have affected “the two people she loved most,” the publication reported. (It was later discovered that interviewer Martin Bashir used forged documents and deception to secure access to Diana in a 2021 inquiry led by Lord Dyson.)
Even as William and Harry are locked in a yearslong rift lasting up to the present day, Diana’s former private secretary Patrick Jephson said that both the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex have much to learn from their mother, who died 29 years ago.
Princess Diana, Prince William, and Prince Harry in August 1987.Credit: Getty
“If they study Princess Diana’s life carefully—and I hope they often do—William, Harry, and their advisers will know that she left them many good examples to follow, and also a few important warnings to heed,” he told People. “Public affection and the rich rewards of royalty must be earned with self-sacrifice and service.”
“I’m sure they are grateful that every day she can still guide, comfort, and inspire them along the difficult path they were born to follow,” Jephson added.
on InStyle
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
