Skip to main content

Princess Diana’s voice is returning in a new documentary. This time, there are hours of private recordings. A new three-part documentary, Diana Unheard, will feature parts of the tapes the public hasn’t heard before. The recordings date back to 1991. In them, Diana reportedly talks about Prince Andrew, her sons, and even the line of succession. 

She also talks about Queen Camilla. One of the recordings captures a tense moment between the two women. Kerene Barefield, Creative Director of Love Monday TV, told Deadline that her story has often been told from just one angle. 

“The media always gave us this tragedy that Diana was sad and lonely and she was manipulated,” she said. But Barefield added, “These tapes don’t tell that story at all. They tell a story of an incredibly brave woman who had agency and knew what she wanted and how she was going to get to it.”

Diana reportedly confronted Camilla at an event. This happened after Camilla had “been downstairs with Charles for a long period of time.” The princess later recalled what Camilla allegedly told her. 

“She (Camilla) said, ‘You’ve got everything that you’ve ever wanted, you’ve got all the men in the world fall in love with you, and you’ve got two beautiful children. What more do you want?’ So I said, ‘I want my husband,’” Barefield recalled.

The tapes actually go all the way back to 1991. That’s when Diana recorded private conversations with her friend, Dr. James Colthurst. He reportedly acted as the middleman between Diana and royal biographer Andrew Morton.

Morton had questioned Diana, and Colthurst took them to her. He recorded her answers and then passed the tapes to Morton. Those recordings became a big part of Morton’s 1992 book, Diana: Her True Story. The book caused quite a stir because it opened up about Diana’s unhappy marriage to then-Prince Charles. 

However, Diana’s involvement in the book was kept under wraps at the time. Diana and Morton denied that she had directly helped with the book. That story changed after she died in 1997.

Morton later revealed that Diana had actually been his main source. Some of the tapes have already been heard publicly. Excerpts have appeared in documentaries and TV reports over the years. But there’s still plenty that people haven’t heard.

The archive reportedly contains around five hours of recordings. Less than an hour had previously been made public. That’s where Diana Unheard comes in. The three-part documentary will feature more of that previously unheard audio.

The producers told Deadline they wanted to reframe the story around Diana and let her speak for herself. The documentary comes nearly 30 years after she died in a Paris car crash in 1997. Barefield also asked Morton about the tapes while working on the documentary. She wanted to know where they had gone.

Barefield recalled his response, “I think for a long period of time, he just wanted to close them away.” The project also arrives as her brother, Earl Spencer, draws attention with his new book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister. The book explores Spencer’s memories of Diana and her life within the royal family. 

Best in Royal family