Princess Diana arriving at a gala charity dinner in London in 1995. Her private secretary, Patrick Jephson, holds the car door.

The Princess Deception Program

Thirty years on, the journalist who first broke the story of Diana’s betrayal by the BBC’s Martin Bashir reveals the true extent of the cover-up—and why her brother believes its consequences were lethal

By Andy Webb

Although they are 6,000 miles apart, 12 hours by plane, there is no time difference at all between France and South Africa. Because it is due directly south, Cape Town is in lockstep with Paris. And so when Charles Spencer, the younger brother of Princess Diana, then based at Tarrystone, his estate in the Cape Town suburb of Constantia, received the first phone call on Sunday, August 31, 1997, it was also the small hours of the morning in the French capital.

In one of our several conversations over the past year, Spencer recalled: “I was alone in my house with my four children and I had a call in the middle of the night. First it was: ‘She’s had an accident and might have broken her leg or something.’ Then I got more calls. And it escalated, and escalated.”