Andrew Morton planned to take secret about Princess Diana to his grave

Famed biographer Andrew Morton is used to scrutiny -- in fact, at this point, "Morton" and "controversy" pretty much go hand in hand.

When Morton's book "Diana: Her True Story" came out in 1992, Morton's life was a "cataclysm," he told HuffPost Live host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. "The British establishment ... [tried] to deny the message and denigrate the messenger. I've always said that if you're a sociologist, you want to look at the way I was treated."

When Morton initially published his biography of Princess Diana, the British journalist planned to protect his most coveted source. Though Morton had talked extensively with the princess, he wanted to keep her as a source used only for background, he told Modarressy-Tehran.

"She was a classic 'Deep Throat,'" he explained, "in the sense that she had total deniability. So I was prepared to go on record and say that she had nothing to do with the book, because she spoke on background ... If she was alive today and she was sitting here ... I would be saying, 'well of course Diana had nothing to do with the book.'"

But despite speaking to Diana extensively for his biography, Morton's work came under attack from critics, especially following Diana's death in 1997. After her tragic loss, Morton re-released his book, this time including notes and transcripts from taped interviews with the princess. Morton had originally planned to reveal that Diana was his source only after his passing, but her tragic loss changed the plan.

"I'd left instructions in my will, because I expected to pre-decease Diana, that it would only be unveiled after we'd both passed on."


The Daily Mail explains: "Those recordings, about seven hours of taped responses, were secretly made in Kensington Palace in 1991 during a series of interviews conducted through an intermediary. In the tapes, the princess talks openly about her life before marrying Prince Charles, her long battle with bulimia, her suicide attempts, the heartache over her husband's long affair with Camilla Parker Bowles and her strained relationships with other members of the Royal family."

Morton told HuffPost Live that people snubbed their noses at where he grew up in Leeds, and that his hometown counted against him. "If I had been some chap from Oxford or Cambridge, I might have got away with it, you know? I didn't. So people found it horrifying that the Princess of Wales had spoken to someone like me."

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