Remembering Princess Diana

Twenty years ago next week, a shy, aristocratic girl living in a flat in Earl's Court and working as a nursery assistant became princess of Wales in the mother of all weddings. From day one Diana was a superstar, the undisputed numero-uno covergirl, an honest to goodness enchantress, and photogenic as hell to boot.

But as the world watched in wonderment, it soon became apparent that Diana Spencer was something more than just a beauty. She was what the Brits call an independent spirit that does not conform, a loose cannon. Until Diana, royal spouses were meant to cut ribbons when they opened hospitals, produce male heirs and female children, and never, ever say anything controversial. Almost immediately it became clear that Diana was ill-fitted for such a role. She kissed total strangers in AIDS hospices, danced to Duran Duran, admitted that polo bored her stiff and, after her marriage hit the rocks, went on television and talked about eating disorders, love affairs and the unhappy state of her union.

Her admirers hugely outnumbered her critics, but even the latter had to admit that her spontaneous reactions to the weak, the sick and the abused were genuine and humane. After Diana held hands with and kissed dying AIDS patients, attitudes changed. No longer were sufferers treated like medieval lepers. When she went to Africa to draw attention to the landmine peril, people took note. Who, after all, approves of innocent children being blown up for decades after a war? Her real legacy, however, had more to do with her honesty about her own inner turmoil than with her style or charity work. Once Shy Di let the genie of touchy-feely out of the magic lamp, it was clear it would never go back in.

Personally, I was against her from the day it became obvious she had taken a lover. I am a firm believer in the double standard: the man can but the woman cannot?commit adultery, that is. After she went public with her marriage problems and began to be used by antimonarchists in Britain, I went ballistic in my London Sunday Times column and called her the greatest threat to the monarchy since Oliver Cromwell. Then a funny thing happened. I was seated one table away from her at a friend's ball and she sent for me. "Do you really think I'm mad?" she asked, looking deep into my bloodshot eyes. "All I know is that I'm mad about you," came my answer, however slurred. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as they say, one that lasted until her death. In fact, I spoke to her just before the fatal Paris trip with the unspeakable Dodi Fayed. "Will you be wearing a chador soon?" I asked her. "You've got to be joking," she said, "you know why I'm doing this, it's all one big act."

When Diana first came to my London house she made sure she was not followed?for my sake. Otherwise the paparazzi would camp outside for the duration of my life. I asked Charlie Glass and some other close friends for dinner, and it soon became a weekly habit. She did not drink, smoke or eat meat. She never stopped marveling at the prodigious amounts of booze my friends and I consumed, but through me she met?and seduced to her cause?many influential newspaper editors. She was not well-read at all, but smart and surprisingly streetwise. (My only fight with her was about Bill Clinton; she was pro.)

Diana's inherent weakness?one that led to her death?was, I suppose, her passion for illusion. She developed a crush on Prince Charles as a schoolgirl, decided to marry him, bragged to schoolmates that she would and carried it off. Deeply unhappy after her divorce, she choreographed a trip to the Riviera with a poor man's Rudolph Valentino?with the cameras in mind, so the folk back home could see her looking happy. But this time fate turned ugly. The photographers she cultivated throughout turned out to be her nemeses.

Diana was both magical and manipulative. One minute she was devoting herself to a sick person, the next ringing a friend to have him or her leak things against her royal-in-laws to the gossip columns. She would burst into tears at invasions of her privacy, then tip off the photographers to where she'd be going for dinner. It all had to do with fantasy, illusion and the fathomless complexity of her nature.

History will judge her better than her in-laws because in death?like Nelson?she won the war against them while losing the battle. She will always be known as the People's Princess, a crock if I ever heard one, but a publicist's dream. Human lives are not judged by their length. The impact she made will figure in any historian's writings of the period. Those of us who love and wish to preserve the institutions or values she threatened will be long forgotten while her fame endures. Death has absolved her, and the mistakes she made have already faded. July 1 would have been her 40th birthday. My souvenirs of her are a couple of letters and a pair of cufflinks. And the fact that I was among the very few of her friends not to bask in her fame in return for telling her what she needed to hear.