Life Worth Living (31 page)

‘I never want to be in love again,’ I told Mickey. ‘I’ve channelled too much energy into my relationships with men. From now on, I’m going to use that energy to plump up my own life. I’m going to write the Diana biography, and I’m going to get the baby.’

In December 1990 providence put me to the test. Massimo Gargia, the publisher of Best magazine, a French glossy, hosted a magnificent reception in Paris at La Conciergerie, the fortress abutting the River Seine where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned until her execution, to announce their awards for the
most elegant men and women in the world. As I walked up to my table to take my seat, I was introduced to a tall, blond, handsome Frenchman sitting three seats away from me. I didn’t catch his name, which I thought was Luc something or other, but what was unmissable was his reaction. He literally shook upon meeting me, as if he had grabbed a live electric wire. Moreover, it was a two way street.

Throughout dinner this Luc and I seemed powerless to avert our gazes from one another. I was mortified for his date until the man beside me told me that they were just friends. As soon as dinner was finished, Luc swapped seats with the man on my right and the flirting began in earnest. So intimate were some of the things we both said that I cannot repeat them. Suffice it to say that neither of us left the other in any doubt that we were already a bit in love. I was completely captivated. Luc had charm in spades, was relaxed in a way no British male ever is, and had such a wonderful sense of humour that he had me in stitches. Even when I was not laughing I was gently amused by his wit.

At some point it became apparent that he was actually named Elzear, and was none other than the Duc de Sabran-Pontèves. ‘I met a Sabran in London the other day,’ I said. ‘Gersande de Sabran. She came over with her husband [the Duc d’Orléans, the French equivalent of the Prince of Wales] and the Comtesse de Paris [wife of the pretender to the French throne, Gersande’s mother-in-law]. She played at a charity recital organised by the Norfolks. She was very sweet, and pretty too.’

‘That’s my sister,’ Elzear said.

Oh dear, I thought. How cruel fate is. It throws me this divine man just when I’ve decided that I never want to be in love again, and to make matters worse, he turns out to be one of the most eligible men in Europe. It was the worst qualification he could have. Someone of his standing, as handsome and attractive and seductive and eligible – and unmarried – would undoubtedly be major trouble somewhere down the line. Grand men and rich men are always spoiled, and I was too old to be training brats of fortysomething when I wanted my own, aged a few months or years. So when Elzear offered to take me back to the Royal Monceau, where I was staying, I declined, though I did promise to give him my number in London when he telephoned the following morning. Nothing came of my evening with Elzear, for I made things impossible for him from the moment we met, through innumerable conversations and an encounter at a later date in Paris, to our final conversation. I was all the things I loathe in spoiled men: capricious, moody, difficult, and, a first for me, unreliable. I would say I was going to do something, then not do it, either deliberately or unconsciously. Timing, of course, is all-important, and the timing was rotten, but I cannot in all truth say I regret the choice I made. While I was sabotaging my potential relationship with Elzear, things fell into place so effortlessly with both the baby and the book that I had no doubt I was fulfilling my destiny.

In June 1991 I went to Russia with Enzo D’Agostino for the confirmation of my godson, Alexander Trofaier. His mother, Maria Theresa, was an old friend of Enzo’s and mine, and his
father, Brigadier General Maximilien Trofaier, was the Austrian defence attaché in Moscow. To make me feel at home, Max and Maria Theresa asked the Jamaican Ambassador Arthur Thompson and his wife Eleanor to the reception following the ceremony. I hit it off with Eleanor Thompson immediately. When she heard that I was interested in adopting a baby, and that I was now considering a Russian child, she encouraged me. Arthur promised practical help through the embassy, and he delivered magnificently. Even after he was posted as ambassador to the European Union, Miss Dias, his former secretary, kept me up to date with the ever-changing rules and regulations governing Russian adoptions.

Because Enzo and I were in Russia for only a week, and our trip, organised through Intourist, left us with precious little free time, I was unable to initiate anything concrete then, but I sensed I had found the right place. Russia and its people impressed me mightily. They could not have been warmer, friendlier or more generous-spirited. They seemed to enjoy a higher standard of education than we in the West did. They were good-looking too, and I reflected that one would be hard put to find a better gene pool.

Resolving to return to Russia as soon as I had finished the Diana biography, I returned to London and worked like a slave every day from early morning until late at night. For a writer, there is usually a gap between handing in the manuscript to the publisher and beginning work with the libel lawyer and editor. Smith Gryphon wanted to release
Diana in Private
in the spring, so I had to make myself available early in the new year. I had planned what I regarded as a well-deserved break in Jamaica just before Christmas. Just after I had delivered my manuscript, Mickey telephoned me to say that our adored Auntie, Mummy’s only sister, had been diagnosed as having Hodgkin’s disease. While this form of cancer is usually responsive to modern chemotherapy, it was now so advanced that her chances were not promising. Auntie and her husband, Stanley Panton, flew to New York to Sloane Kettering, the world’s finest cancer hospital, where a course of treatment was devised which she opted to have administered in Florida. Meanwhile Smith Gryphon were selling the British serialisation rights to
Diana in Private.
Competition was fierce, but in the end Eve Pollard, the editor of the
Sunday Express
, won the rights by offering what was then the highest sum ever paid for a royal book: £100,000. Naturally, I was ecstatic about this coup. I told my publisher that my aunt might be dying, and that I had to extend my trip to spend some time with her.

‘Do what you have to,’ he said. ‘We’ll work around you.’

I was deeply appreciative of his understanding, and agreed to be back by the middle of January. As I flew to Miami to see Auntie, I reflected upon the vagaries of life. Here I was on the threshold of an exciting success, yet I might be losing one of the people I loved most. Would life be giving with one hand and taking with the other? Or would I be lucky, and have two strikes?

F
ew books can have reached the bookshop in the face of so concerted an attempt behind the scenes to sabotage them as
Diana in Private.

The royal family had of course known of the book for some time, not only because I had been entirely open in seeking official co-operation, but also because some of the people to whom I spoke were passing them information.

The royal family is one thing; their advisers are quite another. In February 1992 Richard Aylard, the Prince of Wales’ private secretary, had an early-morning meeting with Nicholas Lloyd, editor of the
Daily Express
and husband of the
Sunday
Express
’s editor, Eve Pollard. In the course of that meeting he assured Lloyd that there was no truth whatsoever in the rumour that the Prince and Princess of Wales’ marriage was in difficulties. Within days, Dickie Arbiter had rung Smith Gryphon demanding sight of my manuscript. When Robert Smith told me of Arbiter’s call, I rang him.

‘Just who do you think you are, demanding a copy of something to which you have no entitlement? Just because you work in Buckingham Palace, it doesn’t give you the right to throw your weight around. You might be very impressed with yourself, but you don’t impress anyone who isn’t a title-hunter. If you can’t speak to my publishers politely, don’t speak to them at all. Do I make myself clear? Good. Goodbye.’

Some days later, the
Express
’s office requested a copy of the manuscript from Smith Gryphon. We were then working with the editor, having already had it read for libel by Mishcon de Reya, now Diana’s law firm. Because of the highly explosive nature of the contents, Robert was reluctant to send it over to the
Sunday Express
until he had received an undertaking that it would be returned the same day. The
Express
gave the undertaking, but never returned the manuscript.

Days later, the Palace Press Office initiated a whispering campaign against me. One royal correspondent told me, ‘They went to each of us saying you were nothing but a Jamaican transsexual, and what could you know about what was going on?’ Royal correspondents, regrettably, are working journalists who have no real access to the upper reaches of society. They therefore never know who’s who or what’s what. They probably wouldn’t have known for instance, that being Jamaican certainly does not preclude one having an ear to the ground at Buckingham Palace. As for being a transsexual, most royal correspondents only come into contact with members of the royal household and the staff at the palaces (they’re notorious for buying secrets from servants), a hefty proportion of whom are gay. Indeed, the Queen Mother once quipped, ‘Will you queens down there stop what you’re doing and get the queen up here a drink?’

There is no doubt that a significant proportion of the population has sexual prejudices, and James Whitaker, the
Daily Mirror
’s corpulent, red-faced royal correspondent, duly obliged his readers with a poisonous front-page story dismissing me as a ‘Jamaican transsexual’.

I immediately sued for libel, but the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow, and it was three years before the case was settled and the
Daily Mirror
had to cough up damages, my legal costs, an apology and a retraction.

While Whitaker was doing his worst, the behaviour of Eve Pollard of the
Sunday Express
made me wonder whether she was interested in outshining her competitors by publishing the scoop of the century. This, after all, was the first book ever written to reveal that the Waleses’ marriage was over and catalogue their confidantes (his, Camilla Parker-Bowles; hers, private detective Barry Mannakee, the King of Spain, Princess Alexandra’s godson Philip Dunne, and the man she would later confirm she had been in love with, James Hewitt). It also broke the news that Diana was deeply unhappy; that she had bulimia and a history of making hysterical scenes; that she used alternative therapists and astrologers – and that she had stated that she wanted a separation.

I knew that Eve Pollard had cold feet when journalists at her newspaper started infringing the confidentiality agreement between itself and the publisher in a way that was likely to undermine the credibility of the book. This they did by ringing up people I had quoted and saying things like, ‘Do you know you’re quoted as saying such and such in a highly controversial book which is going to cause a scandal and get everyone concerned bad publicity?’

Most eminent or respectable people did not wish to be dragged into a press mess, and this was nothing but a crude attempt to get them to recant. It was hardly conducive to the success of a serialisation, especially one with the potential to be as newsworthy as
Diana in Private
. I telephoned Henry McCrory, the managing editor of the
Sunday Express
, and demanded they desist from damaging the book and my reputation, and that he abide by the confidentiality agreement. He agreed to do so. Nevertheless the following day a reporter and photographer turned up to check out yet another person whom I had interviewed for the book.

The constituent parts of the
Express
now began to pull in opposing directions. ‘The book is inaccurate,’ they said, and asked for a meeting, which was held at my flat in February. In attendance were Henry McCrory, deputy editor, Craig McKenzie, Justin Walford, the Express in-house lawyer, my publisher and myself. I tape-recorded the whole meeting, making sure that I got Justin Walford to annotate each tape. The inaccuracies they had come up with were inconsequential, preposterous things like one misspelled proper name in 434 pages of typescript. The Express was in any case working from an unedited manuscript, so they had no valid reason for objecting.

When they saw that they were not getting very far, Craig McKenzie tried to turn the screws on us. He brazenly told Robert Smith and me that the
Express
would damage the book unless we played ball. Playing ball involved taking the £50,000 they had already paid us upon signature of the serialisation contract and forgoing the £50,000 that was due on publication. In return, the
Sunday Express
would serialise the chapters covering Diana’s childhood and marriage. They would be skipping some of the sensational bits, but keeping the juiciest – driving down the price and currying favour with Buckingham Palace at the same time.

Thereafter negotiations between Smith Gryphon and the
Sunday Express
rumbled on in ever-increasing bitterness. Every time the publisher thought he’d struck a new agreement the
Express
sabotaged it. For instance, they substituted the word ‘worldwide’ for ‘British’ in the clauses governing the territory covered in the revised contract. Book serialisations are customarily sold separately to newspapers in each territory so we would have been losing a great deal of money had we gone along with that ‘revision’.

Finally, on 5 March, the negotiations broke down altogether. The
Sunday Express
then sued us for breach of contract, even though they were the ones who had initiated the breach. We promptly counter-sued, filing a claim that grew from the relatively modest amount of £50,000 to £5.5 million in damages, lost earnings and other monies owed by the
Sunday Express
to us.

Within days, the
Sun
, the popular Murdoch-owned tabloid, had bought the serialisation rights. The newspaper’s editor, incidentally, was Kelvin McKenzie, brother of Craig at the Express. A third McKenzie brother, Drew, worked as a stringer for the American tabloid, Star, which bought the American serial rights from the American publishers, St Martin’s Press. The extracts reproduced by this newspaper revealed that they were based on the original manuscript supplied to the
Sunday Express.

As the book’s publication date, 27 March 1992, approached, the media frenzy intensified. Newspapers and television companies from places as disparate as the United States, France, Japan, Australia, Turkey, Spain and Argentina were clamouring for interviews. Those whose requests were not fulfilled sometimes followed me around or ‘doorstepped’ me. ‘It shows people are interested. This is great,’ my publisher and my agent said when I complained about being hounded.

They changed their tune, however, when the newspapers resorted to the oldest scam in journalism to do an author out of a serialisation’s earnings. It works like this. A British journalist leaks the contents of the book to an American publication, which reproduces some juicy bits. Another British newspaper then picks up enough of the material published in the US to jeopardise the serialisation deal, which is nullified by pre-publication in Britain of the material in question.

The
Star
in America now published a story, in the same week as the British serialisation was running, revealing that my book
detailed Diana’s relationships with other men during her marriage and identifying them. This was picked up by the
News
of the World
, which ran a huge piece on the men named in the book. Although Kelvin McKenzie still went ahead with the serialisation in the
Sun
, he refused to pay us the £35,000 he had bought it for. This necessitated another lawsuit, and this too dragged on for two years before they were obliged to pay us the amount in full, as well as our legal costs.

Meanwhile, Peter McKay of the London
Evening Standard
got in on the act with an article demanding that Diana sue me. Although I had known McKay for years – he had even offered me my own column in the mid-1980s, when he was the editor of the Sunday edition of Today – he now tried to stir up an old hornet’s nest by accusing me of being a man. Again, I sued, this time for libel. What made me all the angrier was that Associated Newspapers, which now owned the
Evening Standard
, had known since 1975 that I had never been male. This had not stopped their gossip columnist, Nigel Dempster, from making insinuations to the contrary, with the result that in 1979, the editor, David English, had been obliged to provide an undertaking, a legally binding document, never again to repeat the libel.

My libel lawyer now issued a writ not only demanding an apology, a retraction and substantial damages, but also aggravated damages arising out of their breach of their own undertaking.

Associated Newspapers then made a mistake which would cost them dear. They confused the woman of 1992 with the girl of 1975. Stringing me along for three years, openly co-operating with Express Newspapers in an attempt to batter me into submission, they resorted to every trick in the book, and a few of their own invention. Their ploy was simple: to exhaust me financially and to undermine me morally. They bumped up the costs at every turn, filing needless motions and appeals, all of which they lost; they sought all my medical records, which the judge Sir Michael Davies and the court of appeal denied them, threatening to make the trial so sensational that I would be psychologically destroyed. Unfortunately for them, I was older, wiser, richer and tougher than I had been when we had first crossed swords.

Of course, they did not see things quite the way I saw them. From their point of view, they had a duty to defend the action as vigorously and fulsomely as possible. While I respected that stance I was nevertheless going to show them that the sweet and naïve little Georgie who had once approached Vere Harmonds - worth for a lady’s and gentleman’s agreement no longer existed. She had been killed, largely by press abuse, and in her place had arisen someone who was being forced to be a finely honed though reluctant warrior.

Eve Pollard, in the meantime, was throwing around every ounce of her not inconsiderable weight. In an apparent contravention of the confidentiality agreement, she gave an interview to Mark Llewelyn of the Murdoch-owned Channel 7 in Australia, in which she accused me of plagiarism, among other unwarranted assertions. Quite how I could have been guilty of this when
most of the material had never been printed anywhere she didn’t explain. When Llewelyn tried to repeat Pollard’s allegations in an interview with me, I retorted trenchantly. ‘I am not prepared to sit here and take rubbish from a puppy like you,’ I declared. And I rose from my seat and called over the security guards to chuck him out. To my consternation, but to the delight of the book’s publicity agents, that moment was beamed throughout the world. Which just goes to show that it pays to have integrity.

I had reached the stage of utter disgust with both toadying journalists and the Machiavellian palace. It is one thing to discredit an author who is trying to damage the monarchy with false claims, but quite another to vilify one who is merely recounting facts in a measured and fair-minded way. Once
Diana in Private
was released, the book just jumped off the shelves, shooting straight into the bestseller list. Thrilled though I was about this, it gave me no satisfaction that the palace had undermined not only my own credibility but also other long-term interests of the future king. For I knew that Diana had got another author, Andrew Morton, to write the damning and distorted tale which I had been fed, but been too even-handed to purvey, and that it would be published within a matter of months. By damaging the one writer whose version of events gave a balanced picture of the sorry state of the Prince and Princess of Wales’ marriage, and of both their characters, they had put Charles on the defensive. And as the whole world now knows, he has never recovered from being manoeuvred into that invidious position.

I was never happier to leave Britain and the machinations of the press and the palace behind than when I flew to New York in May to launch the American edition of the book. St Martin’s Press, the American publishers, put me up in a suite at the Intercontinental Hotel on East Forty-Eighth Street in Manhattan. This was my old stamping ground, from the days when Bill Swain had his nightclub above Kenny’s Steak Pub in the Beverly Hotel. It brought back many memories of a more pleasant and gentle time.

I snapped out of my reverie when Cindy Adams, the famous American columnist with whom I had an interview scheduled, called. She was everything most British journalists were not: correct, decent, fair and honourable. She had only one thing in common with them: she was incisive. Cindy understood that there were certain things I could not say, and worked her way around those lacunae with consummate skill. The result of her professional approach was a front-page story in the following day’s
New York Post
with the witty headline ‘
THE KING AND DI
’.