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NEED TO KNOW
Princess Diana's former private secretary Patrick Jephson now knows the full truth about what led to her estrangement from him
Revelations in a new book about Diana's Panorama interview in 1995 reveals what led to her decision -- and the effect it had on her life and that of others like Jephson
The former royal aide tells PEOPLE it's "chilling" to learn the full background
The manipulation that pushedPrincess Dianatoward her 1995Panoramainterview also drove her to shut out the person best placed to protect her.
Her former private secretary,Patrick Jephson, had long been a stabilizing force — a source of calm, measured advice during some of the most turbulent periods of her life. But as detailed in investigative journalist Andy Webb's new book,Dianarama: Deception, Entrapment, Cover-Up—The Betrayal of Princess Diana, BBC journalist Martin Bashir convinced her that Jephson and other loyal aides were secretly spying on her.
Believing she had been betrayed from within, Diana withdrew from the very people who could have guided her. She made the momentous decision to proceed with the bombshell interview in absolute secrecy.
A 2021 independent inquiry led by U.K. senior judge Lord Dyson later confirmed what Diana never knew:journalist Martin Bashir had used forged documents to manipulate her— a scheme senior BBC executives then worked to conceal. In a settlement in 2022, the BBC paid damages to Patrick Jephson.
At the time, Jephson had no idea why Diana's attitude toward him shifted so sharply. By January 1996, the once-trusted aide felt he had no choice but to resign.
"It is chilling to re-run those events and feel that Diana was seeing me as the enemy within,"he tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story. "I had no understanding of what had changed."
Today, he finally knows why. In part due to Webb's findings, Jephson learned how Bashir "told her I was betraying her," he says.
"It was horrifying. I now understand the lengths he was prepared to go to," Jephson continues. "It was chilling, creepy and cruel. But at the same time, thanks to Andy, I now understand what went wrong and why. For 25 years, I never understood what went wrong, and whether it was my fault."
Diana was first drawn into Bashir's orbit through her brother, Charles Spencer — who had also been deceived. It happened at a moment when the princess was already living against a backdrop of suspicion and intrusion. One of her private phone calls had been secretly recorded and leaked to the press in the scandal known as "Squidgygate," and she feared her home might be bugged.
When Bashir — armed with the credibility of the BBC — began feeding her alarming stories, Jephson says it was "fertile ground" for manipulation. "That is what is unforgivable," he tells PEOPLE. "It's inhumane, cruel and calculated. It is chilling and cold-blooded."
Jephson says that by the summer of 1997 — the final months of the princess's life — Diana "was putting her trust in people who were not qualified to look after her. If I was still running her program then, and her administrative arrangements, there would have been appropriate oversight of her visit to Paris."
On Aug. 31, 1997, Diana died at age 36 from injuries sustained in a high-speed car crash in Paris, after the Mercedes carrying her and then-boyfriend Dodi Fayed crashed amid a pursuit by paparazzi. Investigators later determined the driver was intoxicated and speeding.
For Jephson, the connection is painfully clear. "By making Diana distrust every kind of official protection and benign, albeit sometimes irksome, oversight of her day-to-day organization, she put herself in a position where she had to accept the protection of people who were not competent to look after her," he says.
Indeed, close friendRosa Moncktontells PEOPLE that the truth now casts that period in a new light.
"It does explain so much about her strange behavior," Monckton says. "She was constantly changing her number."
"She was frail, and that made her susceptible to Bashir," she adds.
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Had Diana decided to sit for an interview with a different journalist — something that was a strong possibility — and had her trusted circle been involved in the planning, the result would have been markedly different, Jephson believes.
"It would have been a totally different kind of interview and one of which, I like to think, I would have been able to play a full part, with the advice and consultation that I could have brought to bear," Jephson says. "It was my job."
Just a month after thePanoramabroadcast aired in November 1995,Queen Elizabethwrote to Charles and Diana — who had been separated since 1992 — advising that they proceed with a divorce.
Read the original article onPeople