Princess Diana Leaked Royal Family's Phone Numbers, an Ex-Reporter Claimed: "She Was Going..."
In the complicated world of royal drama and media manipulation, one of the improbable allegations unraveled during the trial in London on phone hacking showed very dark sides of Princess Diana's tumultuous relationship both with the press and her estranged husband, King Charles. According to testimony by Clive Goodman, a former royal reporter from the now-defunct tabloid newspaper, it was all about painting a complex portrayal of Diana's desperate attempt to gain public sympathy amid the bitter marital breakdown.
The breaking point finally occurred in 1992 over what seemed an uneven marital balance of power. Desperate for attention and being pushed further away, Diana took drastic measures to right the wrongs of her perceived out-of-balance life within the Royal Household. Diana, through a strategic leak, published a Green Book, listing the personal contact information of all members of the royal family and the employees. Goodman's testimony indicated how clearly Diana explained her actions. "She was going through a very, very difficult time," he told the court, as per Vanity Fair.
What the princess wanted to convey was the enormous machinery operating for King Charles and how the people around her husband were suffocating her. Her aim was modest yet smart: to find friends in the press who might help her tell her story. Equally intriguing was the method of delivery. Diana had sent Goodman the telephone directory "under plain cover" in an envelope and was following up the dispatch personally with a call to confirm his receipt of the item. Here was a strategic move by a woman who knew that times were desperately out of joint in her private life but was intent on controlling her public image as far as she could.
Surprisingly, Diana did not discriminate in her use of the media. Goodman testified that she built relationships with numerous journalists, including the Daily Mail's Richard Kay, Andrew Morton, the eventual biographer, and Martin Bashir of the BBC's Panorama. Perhaps the most dramatic result of these calculated media contacts was her 1995 Panorama interview, in which she famously spoke about the "three people" in her marriage.
Eventually, the royal phone book was used as a symbolic weapon in Diana's communicative arsenal. It wasn't a directory as such, more an in-depth insight into the inner workings of the royal household. Goodman would use these directories as what he described as a "glorified phone book" to contact press officers and members of the household outside regular office hours. While the trial focused on possible illegal activity, Diana's actions entailed an intriguingly extra layer of complication to the media royal's narrative. The wider context of this revelation came in a complex phone-hacking trial involving several prominent media figures, including Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, as per the Daily Mail.
