How Diana Was Betrayed

THIRTY YEARS LATER, NEW REVELATIONS EXPOSE HOW A JOURNALIST’S LIES—AND A BBC COVER-UP—DREW PRINCESS DIANA INTO HER MOST FAMOUS INTERVIEW AND ALTERED ROYAL HISTORY

- SIMON PERRY, ERIN HILL

Before the cameras captured the line that would echo through history, “There were three of us in this marriage,” Princess Diana stood in her private sitting room at Kensington Palace on Nov. 5, 1995, watching three men she had quietly ushered inside unpack camera equipment smuggled in cardboard boxes. She had sent her staff home. No makeup artist, no stylist, no standard TV crew. This interview, for the BBC investigative program Panorama, had to be in secret. The stakes, she believed, were that high. Decades later it became clear that the interview was the product of an extraordinary deception. A 2021 independent inquiry led by then U.K. senior judge Lord Dyson found that journalist Martin Bashir had used forged documents to manipulate Diana—a scheme BBC executives later tried to conceal. Prince William would go on to blame the interview for fueling his mother’s “fear, paranoia and isolation” and worsening her strained relationship with Prince Charles.

Investigative journalist Andy Webb has spent nearly 20 years unearthing the full truth—first sparking media coverage and ultimately prompting the Dyson inquiry, which he says overlooked the BBC’s 25-year cover-up. As recently as 2024, his Freedom of Information battle forced the release of thousands of additional BBC emails, though many remain heavily redacted. Webb’s new book Dianarama: Deception, Entrapment, Cover-Up—The Betrayal of Princess Diana lays bare for the first time the full scope of Bashir’s manipulation: luring Diana’s brother Charles Spencer—himself a victim of Bashir’s tactics—to gain access to the princess, presenting forged bank statements suggesting palace staff were spying on her and spreading false claims that Prince Charles wanted to have her killed and that William’s watch was a spying device. “Her life became untethered,” Webb tells