Princess Diana turned 'boredom' and loneliness into charity in the most unconventional way
A mix of desperation for something to do and a moral obligation led Diana to hand out money on the streets
From walking fields filled with active landmines to helping challenge prejudices against those living with HIV/AIDS, Princess Diana’s legacy is one of charity and shining a light on important causes.
And while many of these causes were widely discussed at the time, it turns out that the late Princess of Wales would find even more ways of helping those in need - and they weren’t always conventional, or something you’d expect to see in the papers.
Dickie Arbiter, a former press secretary for Diana and King Charles, has revealed that she would leave Kensington Palace unannounced and drive around the streets of London, handing out money to sex workers and the homeless - partly because she was lonely each night and partly because she felt it was "something she had to do".
Speaking to the Daily Mail's Palace Confidential, Dickie - who worked with the late Princess from 1988 up until her death in 1997 - claimed, "She would try to escape, telling her protection officer: 'I'm not going anywhere tonight. You can have the night off.'
"Lo and behold, the car would come anyway and she'd drive around Paddington. Not just to hand money to sex workers, but to drive past and see how the homeless were coping.
"It was something she felt she had to do, but it was also something that she was doing out of boredom."
He added that, while Diana would have things to do during the day, she’d find herself "desperate" for something to do at night, especially as any friends would face a "rigmarole" trying to visit her at the palace.
"All she had was a telephone to phone friends," he said. "Her friends were reluctant to go through the security hoops. She had to give security her friends’ names, addresses, car numbers, what time they were coming, and when they were leaving. It was a bit of a rigmarole."
It wasn’t just this new insight into Diana’s less-publicised movements that Dickie revealed to the outlet - he took aim at several allegations made in Earl Spencer’s book, Swan Song.
Written by Diana’s brother, the book includes several accusations that have since been contested by supporters of King Charles, and His Majesty released a rare statement questioning the accuracy of some of the more damning suggestions, including him supposedly telling Earl Spencer that Diana would soon be forgotten after her death.
Dickie, who worked with the late Princess and the now King, refutes a lot of the book’s claims.
"It’s just not in Charles’s DNA to be the sort of person Spencer is portraying. I saw him the day Diana returned, which was hours after she had died," he recalled
"He got off that plane, and I don’t think I’d ever seen him that distraught since the death of his great uncle, Lord Mountbatten. The man was a wreck. So for Spencer to suggest that he was like somebody who had won the lottery is just make believe. It’s la la land."
