Sun Royal Photographer Arthur Edwards tells how newly engaged Prince Charles beamed at him in 1981 as Diana dazzled the world with her beauty
Sun Royal Photographer Arthur Edwards recalls first seeing Diana, her journey to becoming a Princess, and how her warm personality made her so welcoming
IT WAS a cold, wet night in March when the newly engaged Prince Charles climbed out of his limo.
Beaming from ear to ear, he told me: “Wait until you see what’s coming next!”
Moments later a young Lady Diana Spencer emerged from the royal Roller in a low-cut black dress.
She was shaking with nerves but the rest of us there in 1981 to cover her first royal engagement were knocked out by her beauty.
I knew then a new star was about to shine. Diana dazzled me and the rest of the world.
Four months earlier we had got the biggest hint yet a marriage was on the cards.
Prince Charles celebrated his 32nd birthday with a private dinner hosted by the Queen and Prince Philip at Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate.
Diana was the guest of honour but no one would confirm she was there. It was all hush-hush.
We got a tip that she would be leaving through a back track of the farm on to the main road.
She drove herself out of the entrance and I got a great picture of her driving her new Mini Metro at 80 miles an hour.
Reporter James Whitaker drove alongside her in his red Cortina while I hung out of the back window with my camera clicking away.
It was a silly thing to do but we got a great exclusive, considering there were about 50 journalists and TV crews camped out at the farm.
When we joked about it a few weeks later she told me: “I bet Sir Michael Edwardes doesn’t realise how fast these Minis go.”
Sir Michael was chairman of British Leyland who made Minis.
Diana had just replaced her blue Volkswagen Golf — because it was a German car — with a British Metro, which was another clue she was about to join the royal fold.
Royals normally drive cars produced in Britain.
That birthday dinner meant she was special and the prince didn’t want to be with anybody else.
Soon afterwards Charles had to fly to India on an official visit, with the question of marriage on his mind.
Prince Philip had been grumbling for some time that if his son didn’t hurry up and find a bride, there would be no nice girls left.
The Queen also wanted a resolution, saying privately: “The idea of this romance going on for another year is intolerable for everyone concerned.”
The prince was aware it was unfair to leave Diana waiting too long for his decision.
But indecisiveness was one of his character flaws.
Charles proposed to her on his return to London but told her to think about it before giving an answer, because she had to realise the huge responsibility she was taking on.
This was a wise decision by Charles. He knew it was a massive job to marry into the Royal Family, and that Diana would lose all her privacy, and face continuous public scrutiny.
So just after Christmas Diana went to Australia to think it over and discuss it with her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, and her then stepfather Peter, who owned a sheep ranch in Canberra.
The press pack descended but no one found her because she spent her ten days at a friend’s beach house on the coast.
When she flew back to England, Diana got very special treatment, being whisked off the plane first without going through passport control and driven away in a limo straight to her home.
That only happens to Prime Ministers, overseas heads of state and senior royals.
However Diana wasn’t even engaged to Charles at this point.
READ MORE PRINCESS DIANA
It was obvious strings had been pulled and I knew then this girl was destined for greater things.
Within a day of her return, Diana was with the prince at Highgrove to give him the answer he wanted to hear.
I’d been on holiday in Ireland with my family for just two days when the engagement was announced. I leapt on a plane and flew home.
The next day I took a cracking picture of Diana leaving her flat for the last time and moving into Clarence House.
She looked so happy flashing her engagement ring to the public.
It was one of the nicest pictures I had ever taken of her.
The following month she made her amazing debut public appearance at London’s Goldsmiths’ Hall, wearing that strapless dress designed by husband and wife team, David and Elizabeth Emanuel.
It was striking because it showed what a great figure Diana had.
She was there to hear poetry read by Princess Grace of Monaco, another beautiful royal who would die in a car crash just 18 months later, aged 52.
No one would remember the poetry — all that stayed in their minds was the fantastic dress and the beautiful woman wearing it.
When the royal couple got engaged myself and Sun royal reporter Harry Arnold sent a telegram to Prince Charles.
It read: “Congratulations, Prince Charles, on your engagement to Lady Diana Spencer, we hope you will both be very happy.”
Charles sent a message back: “Thank you gentlemen for your kind words.
“I hope you won’t be made redundant!”
Two days before the wedding I was driving up Fleet Street on my way to work, past St Paul’s Cathedral, when I spotted Prince Charles’s car.
I parked my car on double yellow lines, grabbed my camera and rushed across Paternoster Square.
Just as I did the couple were coming out of the cathedral after their engagement
As she saw me Diana reached out and held Charles’ hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
She looked painfully thin.
It was a Page One picture and four decades later I have not forgotten our headline: Please Don’t Lose Any More Weight Diana.
When Charles and Di’s wedding day arrived, I had a choice. I could have gone to Buckingham Palace but I chose St Paul’s Cathedral.
I wasn’t prepared for the gown. It took my breath away. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a beautiful sight.
I got a cracking picture from my position of Diana leaving the church with her 25ft train perfectly spilled out behind her.
The Editor wrote a brilliant headline: The Train Now Standing At St Paul’s.
With the royal wedding over, I figured my job of photographing Diana was finally done.
How wrong I was.
Photographing Princess Diana around the world
WHEN Diana smiled down my lens, it felt like a clap of thunder in the camera.
Your heart skipped a beat.
I always knew then that I had a great picture of the most famous woman in the world.
And the world couldn’t get enough of her.
The first tour Charles and Di did after they were married was to Wales, where the weather was awful.
It rained continually. It absolutely chucked it down for almost three days but she didn’t care.
She wore a hat with feathers on it and the water was dripping off it.
People had come out in their thousands to see her. They stood in the pouring rain just to catch a glimpse of the princess.
Diana really made a massive effort and the people wanted more, more, more of this gorgeous lady.
In Australia — their first overseas tour after William was born — the crowds were phenomenal.
The city of Brisbane could not get any more people in and later, at the Sydney Opera House, the crowds were 30 deep.
It was so obvious Charles and Diana were deeply in love.
It was all they could do to keep their hands off each other.
They looked like they wanted to rip the clothes off each other at any moment.
Incredibly, it rained when they were in Alice Springs, one of the world’s renowned hotspots.
There had even been thunderstorms and the house they were meant to stay in was cut off by the floods.
Instead the prince and princess were put up in a motel — I don’t think Charles had ever stayed in a motel before then.
They had a hot tub in the room and we were fascinated to know if they would be getting in it together.
No one is allowed on Uluru in Northern Territory — Ayers Rock, as it was known then — but at that time, you could buy a badge for a couple of dollars that said: “I have walked on Ayers Rock.”
So we bought one and presented it to Diana, because she did.
At the opening of the World Student Games in Edmonton, Alberta, on July 1, 1983, the whole stadium stood up and sang Happy Birthday to her.
She was just 22 but already she was doing it her way.
William was about eight months old and they delighted in showing him off.
Diana loved telling everybody which toys William enjoyed playing with and making other kids laugh by pulling scary faces at them.
In Auckland, New Zealand, they brought William out in front of the press at Government House — it was the first time we heard Charles call him Wills.
The proud parents sat with their young son and watched him crawl around at alarming speed.
Forty photographers blazed away at the baby prince’s antics. He was dressed in a romper suit and Diana had brought along his favourite toy, a clockwork bee.
It was just an ordinary family scene, the kind stuck in millions of photo albums around the world.
They were both so proud of him. In 2005 I was with a now grown-up William at Government House in Auckland again.
I pointed to the rug and said: “You see over there, William, that’s where I photographed you when you were a baby with a toy bee.”
William told me: “They put that toy bee up in my room while I’ve been staying here, but I couldn’t remember where it was from.”
On the last day of the five-week tour Down Under as the prince and princess were saying goodbye to Maori chiefs in New Zealand, one of the last pictures I sent back was a photo of the prince with his hand on Diana’s bottom.
The headline next day read: “Charles gives Di a pat down under.”
In 1991 the picture from the royal tour to Canada which flashed around the world was of the children greeting their mother on the deck of the Britannia after her arrival with Prince Charles in Toronto.
Me: If your hair gets any shorter Ma'am, you'll be like Sinead O'Connor
Diana: Well Arthur, at least I've got some hair!
After driving from the airport to the yacht, the princess brushed past the admiral and the crew waiting to welcome them, chucked her hat aside and dashed towards her boys with her arms outstretched.
She was a lovely mother, always full of love and fun.
One of her most endearing features was her love of jokes and banter.
When she had her hair cut very short, I said: “If your hair gets any shorter, you’ll look like Sinead O’Connor.”
She looked at my thinning scalp and said: “Well, at least I’ve got hair!”
Her chauffeur told me afterwards she sat in the back of the car giggling to herself and saying: “I told him, I told him.”
Years later in 2015 I found out Prince Harry was just like his mum — always up for a laugh and teasing me about my hair as well.
Got that hat on for a bet?
DIANA had a Mercedes sports car and was once stopped for speeding on the M4, which made all the papers.
A couple of weeks later, we were at a car factory in Tokyo where the Honda McLaren in which Ayrton Senna had just won the F1 Championship was on display.
I was photographing Diana looking at the car and said to her: “Well, they’d never catch you on the M4 in that, Ma’am!”
She replied: “I’ll tell the jokes, Arthur,” which firmly put me in my place.
Later that year, on a rainy day in Norwich, I was wearing a flat cloth hat and looked like the cartoon character Andy Capp.
She looked me up and down and with a grin, said: “Are you wearing that for a bet, Arthur?”
Diana laughed as I replied: “I’ll tell the jokes, Ma’am.”
While touring New Zealand I went on a morning TV show and joked that Harry appeared to be losing his hair.
Harry happened to be watching and decided to get his own back.
The prince was at a youth club putting his handprint on the wall when he spotted me taking pictures.
He came over to me with a hand covered in paint and planted a purple handprint on top of my head.
He laughed and said: “Now we’re even.” He has a great sense of humour, just like his mother.
Another time I was photographing Diana at the opening of Heathrow Terminal Four.
She was descending an escalator when we were ushered away. I asked why we were being moved and was told quietly they didn’t want us to take pictures up her dress.
Diana came to the bottom of the stairs and walked past us.
She turned to me, giggling, and said: “Hello Arthur, I’m sure you want to take a picture right up my legs.”
I reassured her that I would never do that.
She could be quite cheeky. I remember once I berated her for wearing an old dress to the opera — she was a fashion icon and people loved pictures of her new frocks.
She turned to me and said: “I expect you want me to come naked, Arthur.”
I told her that would definitely get in the paper.
Some people say that Charles and Diana were never really happy — I do not agree with that.
They were clearly loved-up in the early days of their marriage.
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