Andrew Morton Says the Story Behind His Biography of Princess Diana "Has Been a TV Drama Waiting to Happen"
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below."
Andrew Morton already knows the first line of his obituary. “It’ll be: ‘Princess Diana's biographer, Andrew Morton, passed away,’” he tells me rather confidently over Zoom.
He’s probably right.
Morton is the author of Diana, Her True Story, a 1992 tell-all about the Princess of Wales, which laid bare the truth about Diana’s deeply unhappy marriage to Prince Charles and her struggles as a member of the royal family. When the explosive biography was published, Diana denied working with Morton, but after her death, he revealed just how essential the royal was in crafting the story. (The book was later reissued as Diana: Her True Story—in Her Own Words.)
When writing Her True Story, Morton sent Diana questions and the Princess secretly recorded her answers, messengering the cassette tapes back to Morton via her friend Dr. James Colthurst. Their covert collaboration recently became fodder for an episode of The Crown, with Elizabeth Debicki playing Diana, and Andrew Steele portraying the bespectacled author.
“To be honest with you, the story of how we made Diana: Her True Story has been a TV drama waiting to happen,” Morton says, noting that he served as a consultant on the episode, titled “The System.”
“I had eight script writers on a conference call discussing the absolute minutiae of that period of time. And thankfully, I've kept notes on all of it.” Detailing the plot of the episode, he shares that yes, he was nicknamed “Clark Kent,” years ago on the royal beat, and yes, just like in The Crown, his office was broken into while he was working on the book.
“I was warned by two people, [royal reporter] Richard Kay and [royal photographer] Arthur Edwards, that the Royal Protection Squad were looking for my contact in a very quiet way, and they were going over everything,” he recalls. “And then within a matter of a couple of weeks of that warning, I arrived at my office one day and it was broken into. Camera was stolen, some files were gone through. But the tapes were never kept there anyway. James always kept the tapes.”
Debicki is uncanny as the late royal, he says. “When I saw her in The Night Manager, I remember saying to my wife, ‘She's the next Diana.’ There was just no question. That's before she was cast. She just looked like Diana. It’s eerie.”
More than 30 years after the book came out and 25 after Diana’s tragic death, Morton is still “proud” that his legacy is linked to the Princess’s. “I'm very proud of being asked by Diana to write her story, and I think I did her justice. It helped her make sense of her life, and it helped her move forwards. And—in a way, Camilla’s got lots to thank me for,” he suggests with a grin before offering his perspective on why Diana and specifically Her True Story continues to capture the public’s attention.
“It's still a book that sells because the story is a fascinating one. It's the trajectory of a naive young woman. It's almost a fairy story in a way. The naive young woman who enters this rather cold, cruel, distant world. And it's her struggle to find herself and to be herself. That's what makes the story more than just, she did this, that, and the other, it transcends the story. The story of her life transcends the individual,” he tells me.
“Who would think that a princess would say to somebody she barely knows, ‘I'll tell you everything about my life?’ It's astonishing.”
Morton could have easily rested on his laurels following the publication of Diana: Her True Story, but he’s still busy writing. His latest book, The Queen: Her Life, out today, is an exhaustive look at the late monarch and her reign—the first to debut since the Queen died in September at the age of 96. “It's the first end-to-end biography. It's the first book to encapsulate all of her life,” he explains.
“She was much appreciated and much missed by not just the British people, but by people around the world. And you saw that in the outpourings of grief or respect, I think, for her on that long journey from Balmoral. It made me smile because when I first started work on this, I went to Edinburgh, and people in Edinburgh who were part of Operation Unicorn were convinced without any argument at all that she would decide to spend her last days there—and I don't blame her because it's a beautiful part of the world.”
In addition to Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana, Morton has written biographies about royals (Meghan Markle, Kate Middleton, Wallis Simpson) and notable non-royals (Monica Lewinsky, Tom Cruise, Victoria Beckham) alike. He’s already working on his next project, but keeping mum about the topic: “If I tell you what it is, somebody else will do it.”
But there are at least two subjects it’s safe to rule out. “Going forwards, obviously people will be writing about King Charles and Queen Camilla, but I think that my relationship with the late Princess of Wales precludes me from adding to that body of work. It's time to look at different kinds of pastures.”
You Might Also Like
