The Daily Beast Podcast - Will and Harry Could Take Feud to Diana’s Grave

Episode Date: August 31, 2025

Long-time British Royals Journalist and Author Tom Sykes, and Joanna Coles, revisit Princess Diana’s death and why he believes there was foul play. From her troubled marriage and rivalry with Camilla to the tainted blood samples, the missing Fiat Uno, and Diana’s own letter predicting an “accident,” they dig into the questions that still haunt the monarchy. They also explore Mohammed Al-Fayed’s lifelong suspicions, the British inquiry known as Operation Paget, and Prince Harry’s account in ‘Spare’. Diana’s global power, her challenge to the royal establishment, and her complicated relationship with the press all come under the spotlight. This is the story of how the world’s most famous woman became too threatening for the monarchy to ignore. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I think that when Diana did her absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented interview with the BBC, I think that there was one particular phrase that she said that, in my opinion, really effectively signed her death warrant. She said that she didn't think that Charles was suitable to be king. I'm Joanna Coles and this is the Daily Beast podcast and today we're going to be talking to the author of the Substack and Daily Beast newsletter, The Royalist, Tom Sykes, about his conviction 20 years after she died that in fact Princess Diana may have been murdered. Now, for the first 10 years after reporting this story, Diana's death, Tom assumed, like I think most of us did, that actually Diana had died a somewhat ordinary death for a

Princess. She was the victim of a very unfortunate, tragic drink driving accident. But the more he's thought about it, the more people he's talked to, the more he's looked into it, the more official investigations he's read, he's now convinced that actually she was murdered. I was not convinced of Tom's argument until I read his newsletter. And then I decided, we needed to talk to him 28 years after her death, this story will not go away. So let's get into it. Tom, welcome. I must admit, when I heard you were writing this piece, I slightly rolled my eyes because I just thought, you know, come on, this was a drunk driving accident, a car chase by paparazzi, three of them not wearing their seatbelts. And of course, the bodyguard who was wearing his seatbelt survived. But then I read your piece and I too now have doubts.

When did you first start having doubts that the official story, drunk driving paparazzi chase, was in fact full of holes? It was around about, hi Joanna, yeah. It was around about 10 years ago. I definitely, I started my very first summer in journalism. I was working at the Evening Standard on Kensington High Street when Diana died. So we were right in the centre of it. I can still recall the smell of rotting floral tributes hanging over

and the place being besieged by journalists. I just want to remind people, because of course it's seared in our memories, but for Americans less so, this was 28 years ago. It was August 1997. And she was at this point divorced from Prince Charles, but she was the mother of the heir to the throne, Prince William, and of course the spare to the throne. own Prince Harry. Yes, and she started a relationship with Dodi Fyed, the son of the

Harrod's owner, Mohammed Fayed. And they were on holiday in the south of France. They broke off the holiday early because they were being pursued by paparazzi. They went to the Ritz, which was owned by the Fiat family. In Paris, the Ritz in Paris. The Ritz in Paris that was owned by the Fyad family. The place was besieged by photographers. So they decided. to go to an apartment on the chancelises that the fired family also owned and the car crash happened on the way at 13 minutes past 12,

13 minutes past midnight on the morning basically of Sunday the 31st, which oddly enough this year is again a Sunday, the 31st will again be a Sunday, which I think will actually bring it back for people of perhaps VAR Vintage. Tom, I just want to remind people that Diana really emerged as one of the biggest global

celebrity. She was wildly loved. And yet she married Prince Charles in, I want to say, 1981, the British heir to the throne, when she was just 20. Yes, exactly, Joanna. So Diana had an extraordinary life. So she was born to this very, very grand family, dispensers that always regarded themselves as far grander than that, you know, common old Windsor's. Her sister actually dated Charles before she did. And then when she began dating as he was then, Prince Charles, it had to be vouched that she was a virgin. I mean, it seems unbelievable to imagine now. And of course, Charles, equally hard to imagine, was an international playboy, lusted after by women around the world. And I had plenty of sexual experience, not least

with his long-term girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles, who, of course, we now know as Queen Camilla. And this was really the thing that poisoned the marriage from the beginning was that Charles had an affair with Camilla from before the time they were married throughout the marriage and then subsequently, you know, married Camilla. And there's incredible details in Andrew Morton's book. He wrote this fantastic book with,

Diana's covert cooperation, saying that, you know, on the eve of the, on the eve of the wedding, Diana, Bert was in floods of tears because she found that Camilla and Charles had exchanged gift. Charles had been given some cufflinks with F and G written on them, which stood for Fred and Gladys, which were their nicknames. And so she realized the day before she was getting married that Charles was basically still in love with another woman. And she said, said to her sister, I don't know if I can go through with it. And her sister famously said, well, you have to, darling, because your face is already on the tea towels, you know, on the murk. Can we just remind people, too, why Charles wasn't allowed to marry Camilla?

Camilla, of course, was married to Andrew Parker Bowls throughout their affair. Why wasn't, why weren't they allowed to get together and just ride off into the future together? Essentially, Charles was prohibited and stopped from marrying Camilla because she wasn't a virgin. I mean, it seems incredible these days to imagine that that could be a criteria, such a sort of extraordinary medieval notion that the heir to the throne could only marry a virgin. But yeah, I mean, that fundamentally was the reason. It's also extraordinary to think it was only 40 years ago, 1981. I mean, it's extraordinary to think that that was the reason

and also because he would be marrying a divorcee, right? So I just want to understand Camilla and Charles's relationship, Tom. When did they actually meet and start dating? So they had been dating since their 20s. They'd met at a polo match. Apparently, Camilla came over to Charles and came up with the immortal chat up line. my grandmother and your grandfather had an affair, so how about it?

Because her grandmother was Alice Keppel, who had an affair with Edward the seventh, I think. And so there was always this attraction between Charles and Camilla. They dated. They had a great relationship. All of their friends knew about it. But the thing that's really interesting is that actually Camilla, Lots of people think that Camilla actually used Charles to get Andrew, who was this dashing guardsman, Andrew Parker Bowles,

who she's subsequently married. She was always much more in love with Andrew Parker Bowles. And he was the prize that she really wanted. So because Andrew was having lots of affairs and dalliances and wouldn't commit and all this kind of stuff, she started having an affair with Charles to make him jealous. So she went up the social hierarchy in Britain and said, Okay, here's what I can pull if you're not going to, if you're not going to step forward. Exactly, exactly.

But the relationship between Andrew and Camilla, Andrew Parker Bowls and Camilla Parker Bowls, didn't really work out. He was a well-known kind of man about town and a bit of a philanderer. And Camilla and Charles ended up rekindling their relationship about two or three years before he got engaged to Diana. So Diana was in this extraordinary situation where on the eve of her wedding, she realised that her husband

was involved in a long-term affair with an old girlfriend. And it's obviously just an absolutely hideous position to be in. And that in many ways shaped the whole of Diana's terrible dysfunctional relationship with Charles. And worth reminding people, I think that Charles was under enormous pressure from his parents to get married, correct? Yes, exactly.

So Charles was under great pressure, particularly from Prince Philip, who wrote him a letter telling him that he needed to, because by this stage the press were pursuing Diana, and Philip wrote him a letter but said, you know, you need to make your mind up and you need to, this girl is great, she's a Spencer, which is wonderful. You know, she's from a lovely aristocratic family. She's young, she's a virgin.

You need to marry her. You need to announce it and you need to get engaged because it's not fair on her and you should do it. And Charles took, in later years of his marriage, Charles took to producing this letter at dinner parties to show to people how he felt he was pressured by his parents. I think to be fair to Charles, I think he bitterly regretted yielding to that pressure. and I think that he, you know, he was very much caught in the system and in the power as well. I mean, no Charles nor Diana behaved perfectly in their marriage. And Diana, I think, was very candid about that in her famous panorama interview. This was her interview with the BBC.

Her interview with the BBC that she did in 1995 that very much pulled the pin and pulled the trigger and launched this enormous royal scandal where, She said that she was bulimic. She accused Charles. She said that Charles had been having affairs. She admitted that she'd had an affair with James Hewitt. Everything, everything, everything came out. And remember, Harry was only born in 1984.

You know, so Harry's only 11 when she gives this interview. And William was only born in 1982. So he's only 13. So it was just an unbelievable moment on the public. stage, but also an unbelievable moment on the private stage for the family to have your mum doing this kind of stuff. Harry's written about it.

William has, you know, about how they were at school, at Eton, and they were taken aside to watch it and all this kind of thing. But I actually think that when and then two years later they formally got divorced, they were only separated at that stage

at the time of the Panorama interview, but they got divorced in 1996. so the following year. So I think that when Diana did her absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented interview with the BBC, I think that there was one particular phrase that she said that, in my opinion, really effectively signed her death warrant. She said that she didn't think that Charles was suitable to be king.

And her exact words were, she said, being Prince of Wales produces more freedom now. and being king would be a little bit more suffocating. Because I know the character, I would think that the top job, as I would call it, would bring enormous limitations to him, and I don't know whether he could adapt to that. I think that the moment Diana said that, that she was actively pushing forward

for the monarchy to skip a generation to go straight to William, I think that represents a huge, huge threat to the establishment. and I think that in doing so, she really signed her death warrant because I just feel that if you think about this today, if you think about this in the terms of today, imagine if Princess Diana is the one in California, giving interviews to Oprah,

making shows on Netflix about how awful the royal family are, imagine that is the scenario, and it's very, very hard to imagine King Charles married to Queen Camilla. I would say it's almost impossible. So let's go to your theory that in fact Diana was murdered, that this was orchestrated by a group of insiders in Britain who represented the establishment. And of course she had always predicted that she would die in a car accident

and lo and behold, that's the fate that befell her. So talk about, you said 10 years ago you began to think there were more questions than answers. There have been three reports into her death, all of which, or three investigations, all of which said that this was a drunk driver, terribly unfortunate, but no more than that. What else makes you think that actually she may have been a target here? Well, I think that there's plenty of motivation for the establishment to do away with Diana, whether you want to blame it on weapons dealers or you want to blame it on the monarchy or Charles or Prince Philip or whatever it is. You can really pick your motive.

There's plenty of motive. Where did the weapons dealers come from? You've just, whoa. Well, that's a huge theory is that because she was engaged in this very vocal anti-landmines campaign. that provoked a sort of cabal of weapons dealers to offer. I don't particularly buy that. I don't think that there was ever any realistic chance that weapons were going to be banned because of Princess Diana.

There was a theory that the Oslo Conference, two weeks after her death, landmines were going to be banned and that Bill Clinton was going to sign and sign up to the ban on Amines. after Diana died, that didn't go ahead. But I think it's a bit of a distraction. The point here is that there's plenty of people with the motivation to do away with Diana. And I think really all stemming from her very vocal opposition to Charles is really the key thing that I focus on and that I think is the most important thing. And the one thing, right, that everybody knows about Princess Diana's death is that the

the driver was drunk, right? Isn't it? Right? That's the one thing that everybody knows. Henry Paul, the French driver, who was seen drinking

in the bar of the Ritz and wasn't expecting to drive that night, right? Was seen having a pastis in the bar of the Ritz and might have been expecting not to drive but was being kept

there in case they did want to go somewhere. So, as Harry said in his book, you know, anyway, we'll get on to what Harry said in his book. But the key point, right, is that everybody knows that Henry Paul was drunk. But here's the thing.

The blood tests that came back that were done by the French police in the first inquiry said that he had a carbon monoxide concentration in his blood of 20.7%. Okay. Now, if you had 20% carbon monoxide in your blood, you wouldn't quite be dead, but you'd find it pretty hard to sit up straight and hold a conversation. You'd certainly find it very hard do what Henry Paul is seeing doing as he leaves the Ritz Hotel, which is to stop, lift one foot up off the ground and tie your shoelace. Now, that is not the kind of thing you can do with 20% carbon monoxide in your blood,

and you also can't drive a car at 100 miles an hour through the streets of Paris, right? But now it's just not disputed that that's what, the blood test said. And when Operation Padgett reviewed, which the British police inquiry, basically into Mohammed Fayette's allegations of all these different things. So all of these details about Henry Paul having this very high carbon monoxide sample in his blood were studied by a British police operation called Operation Padgett. Very important to understand this story what Operation Pajit is. It was an inquiry into claims made by Mohammed al-Fayyed, the owner of Harrods, a buyword for the place at the British establishment shop for luxury and wealth, who was also the father

of Diana's boyfriend at the time, Dodey, who was also killed in the crash, and definitely not seen as ideal father-in-law material. I mean, to the extent that he for a long, many years, struggled to get a British passport, let alone be the father-in-lawful. in law of the future king. So the British police had this Operation Paget which an investigation into all the claims by Mohammed fired, who, by the way, strongly believed that Diana was murdered and insisted that to his dying day, insisted that Diana was pregnant, insisted that the reason she was murdered was because the British establishment couldn't bear the idea of a future a king having a Muslim half-brother or the king's mother being married to a Muslim and

insisted that Dodey and Diana were engaged or were planning to get engaged, that Dode had bought a ring at this jewelers in France. Where there is, I have to say, CCTV of Dode going in and buying a ring called the say yes ring or something like this. So he raised a lot of the Muhammad al-Fayevay. raised a lot of these things and complained about them to the police and the police investigated them in this very extensive investigation called Operation Padgett, which you might hear me referring to

and it comes up in the story that I wrote. Now, one of the things that Operation Padgett looked at was whether there was an argument to say that the blood samples taken from Henry Paul were accurate. And they concluded that they weren't. They concluded that there's no way, as I said, that a man with 20% carbon monoxide could walk along the corridor, bend over, tie his shoelaces, stand up, get into a car and drive it. And they just, it's extraordinary, Joanna, because they just say in it, they just say, well, the most likely explanation is that the blood samples were adulterated or mixed up or confused. Wow.

Yeah. Nobody contests the fact that the other. samples that we used to check for his alcohol level and it came back saying he was on alcohol, he was on drugs, he was all these things. No one ever says, well, hang on, these were done by the same labs that have, you know, mixed up the blood samples of the driver of what even then was the most high-profile road crash ever in the history of the world. I mean, I just don't find it conceivable. Well, then usually what you do in that situation is you do what's called DNA matching, right? So you take the DNA.

from the blood sample that you've tested, and you check it against a piece of hair from the corpse, basically. And you see if they match. Well, they couldn't do that because Henry Paul was buried. The French have consistently refused to exhum him. There's a myth that Henry Paul was cremated in like five hours afterwards. That's not true. He was buried in normal time frame, about a week or 10 days afterwards.

But they've never done the DNA matching. This is what you find over and over again in this story, is that it's all kind of hidden in plain sight. And I think what for me feels incredibly convenient if you believe like I do that Diana was murdered is that it happened overseas. It happened in France. So anything that happens where you say,

well, hang on, they mixed up the blood samples. The British police can go, well, that's just how they do it in France. You can't get the DNA sampling. No, sorry, he's been buried. You can't assume him and check it. No, sorry in France. I mean, they're too busy, I don't know, eating their breakfast.

or whatever or blah, blah, blah. So it all becomes very deniable. It's all quite easy to deny it because everything falls through the cracks of the translation of it being done in France or it being done here. And this is not the only case, right?

So I just highlight three really specific things in my story. There's plenty more if you want to look for them. The one is that blood test with Henry Paul. The second is the fact that Diana was embalmed, which I just find absolutely extraordinary.

You know, it's hard to imagine if, you know, King Charles was killed in a road traffic accident that within eight hours of his death, all of his blood would be drained out of his body, incinerated, disposed of, and replaced with formaldehyde, thereby prohibiting the chance of any further toxicology test. But that's what happened to Diana. And again, when they said to the French, when Padgett said to the French police, why did you do this? The French police said, that's just how we do things here. You know, we wanted the body to look presentable when Charles and Diana's sisters arrived to view it.

It was a very hot day. I mean, it was a very hot day. I mean, I'm sorry, Dode's body wasn't embalmed, right? So, do you know what I mean? Like none of it makes, none of it sort of adds up. and it all just seems incredibly, incredibly convenient. Tom, hold on one second. We're just going to take some messages from our sponsors.

And we're back with Tom Sykes talking about the death of Princess Diana. What about the theory that you refer to in your piece that this is a sort of conspiracy theory and actually nearly always it's the cock-up theory that, you know, made a bit... I mean, this happened at a weekend, that it could have been a junior person that said, for goodness sake, and balm the body, we must make it look presentable, she's a princess, that it happened in France, because that's where she was, that the driver, it was a Saturday night, he was drinking too much, that they were chased by paparazzi. I mean, there is a lot to argue that this was just a very unfortunate car crash. Yeah, but there's other weird thing. I mean, like, okay, so my simple answer to that is I,

I am honestly a person who would always much believe that it is a cock up, not a conspiracy. But there are so many cock-ups that it becomes the conspiracy, I'm afraid, using the principle of Occam's razor, becomes the more likely option. I mean, for example, you raised the point of the paparazzi, right? The paparazzi chasing down. This is the other thing that we all know about this, right? Is that there's this huge swarm of paparazzi chasing the car. And when the car crashes, what do these disgusting people do?

They get off their motorbikes and they stay. start taking photos of the crash site. You know, that's what happens, right? That's the story that we all know. Where are all these paparazzi? Who were they? What were their names? We know the name of one of them.

Romo Gha, you know, who you may remember from the news reports at the time. Where are all these people? Look, you and I have both been journalists. You got a job. You know everybody there. You know all the photographers because you're all, that's what you do. You know all the people. So who are these people?

It's inconceivable to imagine that, you know, if Charles had been killed in that, they wouldn't have just found out who everybody was, who was supposedly there, supposedly chasing her. Although I can believe that anybody who was in a car or on a motorbike would have sped away as fast as they possibly could because they wouldn't want to be blamed for it. You totally can. You totally can say that. But at the same time, all of them stopped to take photocopause. is what we were told.

Do you know what I mean? They were all taking these photographs of the car. And what's the CCTV of them so that you had the number plates of the bikes and the cars? So there's no CCTV on the route, on the entire route, which, you know, I'm more inclined, to be honest, of all the bits of evidence, that's the one I may be, I don't put that much store in.

There were 10 cameras that could have recorded them on that route, and none of them seemed to catch it. Some of them, I think, were just stationary cameras that just would have gone if the speed was too fast. Others of them were privately owned that maybe weren't very much. It was a long time ago. CCTV technology wasn't what it was. I don't set a huge amount of store by the CCTV thing,

but I do think it's odd that there is no footage at all of that car. There's none. Done, Joanna. And surely the police would have been able to follow up the photographers because their work was appearing, right? Appeared in tarry match. It appeared in the British tabloids. I'm sure there are hundreds of photos online of it, of the accident.

That's what you would have thought. That's what I would have thought. That's what I would have thought. And I find that really weird. But, you know, it's still all these people unknown. I mean, that's the full narrative verdict in Diana's death is the accident was caused by the irresponsible driving of the driver and the irresponsible driving of persons unknown

who were pursuing it, either the paparazzi. And that's before you get to the white fiat uno, which is the most incredible, I think, piece of evidence at all, of all, which is that I remember at the time, because I remember I was working on the story. You know, everybody,

the whole newsroom was working on it for months on end. And this story card just started to come through that the Mercedes carrying Diana had hit a white fiatou Uno seconds before the crash took place. And the French police completely denied it for two years. And then they finally had to admit it when they found paint samples on the Mercedes that matched Fiatuna. I suppose Fiat were able to say this is what the paint sample is.

And lo and behold, the car that they were driving clipped a Fiat Uno that was in front of them. As far as I can tell, it happened just as the Mercedes went into the tunnel. the car was, I believe, being driven by a freelance photographer called James Andanson. James And Danson, the French police said that it wasn't his car. So Padgett just accepted, well, the French police said it wasn't his car. They did their inquiries and they couldn't. And then it's like, yeah.

And so we checked with the French police why they definitely thought it wasn't his car. and his wife said that he was in Corsica doing a story, and his son said that he was covering the grape harvest in Bouglauil. So, you know, first of all, like two completely different alibis for the guy, never resolved, you know. And again, this thing, well, that's just what the French police said. You know, they're a bit inefficient. They're a bit rubbish, you know, blah, blah, blah. But so it was never proved that it was And Anson's car.

But we do know that the car was re-sprayed a week later. and Anson certainly owned a car like this. So Paget said, I've got a good idea. Let's go and talk to Mr. Anderson and see what he says. He's sorry you can't. He committed suicide in the year 2000 and was found dead in a burnt-out car. I mean, it's just, do you know what I mean? It's just, it's absolutely crazy.

So the driver of the Fiat, you know, who was in theory clipped by the Mercedes, which had Dodey and Diana in it, driven by the drunk French driver Henri Poole, he committed suicide. Yeah. That's an extraordinary detail too. The other thing I do find interesting, and again, you have a clip of it in your column, is this idea that Diana actually foresaw her own death and thought it would be in a car crash because someone would have tampered with the brakes.

Yeah. So Diana wrote a letter to Paul Burrell, who was her butler, who kept a lot of documentary evidence. And in it, she says, my husband is planning an extra accident in my car. My brakes, the brakes will fail. It's often disregarded because in that note,

Diana went on to say that Charles was planning to marry the boy's nanny, and that he was going to dispose of both her and Camilla. So it could be, you know, look, I totally accept that Diana was completely paranoid. Her own kids have said that she was paranoid and it could have just been an incredibly unfortunate coincidence but it does seem like a huge coincidence

when someone says, I'm going to die on a staged car crash and they die in a car crash you know, stay to throw my husband I think in normal circumstances you know, you'd expect to spend a night at a police station answering a few questions from the police

and you know, it's just the whole thing is just absolutely, it stinks to high heaven really and look I'm not alone in thinking this Prince Harry thinks this. I mean, I'm not some friend. Well, I was just going to ask you, what do her sons think of this? And obviously, Prince William getting ready to ascend the throne at some point. And Prince Harry, you know, riding the polo fields in Montecito.

What do they think about this? So the most that we know about it is what Harry wrote in his book. And he said that he talked to his brother about. out of after the inquest and that they agreed that the verdict was simplistic and absurd. And he makes this incredibly interesting comment. He says the idea this was just called by a drunk driver, you know, and he says, you know, and I hope you'll excuse the Anglo-Saxon, he says in his book, even if the man was shit-faced, he'd have been able to drive through that tunnel.

So he's writing this in his book, Spare. He needs no more spare. Right. which came out when he moved with Megan Markle to America and went on to be, I think, the second biggest non-fiction bestseller after the Bible. Yeah. It's been an absolutely huge, huge, you know, huge commercial hit for Harry, probably one of the few commercial hits he could have lifted the lid

on all the secrets that are our family, the feud with his brother and all of that. But for me, this was an incredibly, incredibly telling passage that that happens. that Princess Diana's son and he also says, by the way, in the book that he's seen all the files that MI6 hold on the accident. So I thought that was an incredibly telling detail. And William agreed with him at the time.

Now, William, look, Williams made, I think, has kind of moved on and made peace with it or whatever and accepted what it is. And William, I think, understands that his job now is to, you know, keep the monarchy together for the next generation. but I really wonder whether that's what the big Netflix film is going to be in two years' time. Like, we've been told, I'd been told that Harry is planning to make a film about his mother for Netflix. And I think if there's anyone, I think it's very, very hard for anyone to get answers this, this 28 years later, 30 years later.

Is this anyone who can get the answers, it's Harry. And I really hope that he does it. Because I have to say, I don't know if you read Spare, but the first third of that book, where Harry's talking about being about moral and the relationship with his mother and it's crazy. It's almost like a Wes Anderson film. Every door you open, Prince Charles is behind it doing a heading. Yeah. Exactly. And the fish fingers arrive with a big silver closh on them and are pulled off, you know, for him.

And William, he has to climb a ladder to get into bed because the bed's so huge. And then, of course, this devastating, phenomenal. to this kind of wonderful childhood dream where, you know, his father comes in and says, I'm terribly sorry, oh, boy, but mummies had a car crash and she didn't make it. And doesn't even give Harry a hug, you know, and leaves the room and then Harry's left there on his own in this giant bed for three hours until the piper start playing. I mean, it's just the most brilliant, brilliant piece of fright. I know you had a fantastic ghost writer, but it's clearly from Harry's heart as well.

and I really hope I just feel that's the book that Harry should have done in the first space was about his mother and I feel it's the film that he should make I think all this stuff bitching about the royal family and may I borrow a lip gloss and all that I mean it's just you know at the end of the day who cares

because this is actually the stuff that really matters you know is his mother's memory and I just you know I've been told that he thinks there is more to it than the official explanation and I think there's a lot more to it too All right. Well, Tom, your article is very persuasive. I went from thinking it was a drunk driving accident to thinking maybe there is more than meets the eye here. And of course, I mean, it may be true also that Prince Harry is paranoid. And since Mohammed Al-Faed alleged that Prince Philip wanted the death of Princess Diana, he's been. uncovered as a serial, frankly, rapist with a terrible history of sex abuse of his employees at Harrods.

So this story just keeps going, just keeps going. Yeah, I mean, look, it's a bit of a Jay. It's a bit of a Kennedy. You know, it's a bit of a, it's one of those things that I think it is so fascinating. And I would always, I do always say to people, look, I could be wrong. and one of Diana's best friends was a woman called Rosanna Moncton, and she said after the end of the inquest, or during the inquest, she said it was actually after the inquest when they said it was an accident.

She said Diana was such an extraordinary person that people cannot accept that she died in an ordinary way, but she did. And for many, many years, I really bought that line, and I, Rosa Moncton, sorry, not Rosanna Moncton. And I really bought that line for many years. But I just feel like the more you look at it, and we're all a bit more skeptical, I think, these days of what our governments might be up to

and those kinds of things. So much stuff has come to light of the kind of covert actions and that kind of stuff. Well, I think more has come to light about how certain members of the royal family treat each other, like one of the most shocking revelations. in Harry's book was just this idea that members of the family leak information about each other to the press. Yeah, and there's a huge narrative going on with that at the moment in the UK. The British press seems to have sort of massively turned against William and Kate.

You know, they're giving all this stuff about, oh, they're on holiday and their yacht and they're not doing enough public duty. And they didn't go to VJ Day, which, by the way, I think it was incredibly stupid of them not to go to VJ Day. but a lot of people are saying that's being briefed by the palace. So, you know, these things go on and on and they come round and round. Yeah, but I look, it was 28 years ago. I remember where I was. Lots of people in the UK certainly will remember that where they were. And I just think that I'm not calling for the inquest to be reopened or anything like that.

I don't know anything to be gained. But I think it's a really, really, really interesting. story and I think the holes in the story are just so fascinating because it's all just hidden in plain sight. I spoke to this one guy, John Conway, who wrote this great play called Truth Lies Diana, all about Diana's death. And he was safe, I spoke to him about it over the years. I've spoken to him about it the other day and he said, do you know what? He said, look, I'm a TV writer. I've spent my life writing gags about Battlebrush, you know, for the BBC who's a kind of kid. That's a puppet. Yeah, he's a puppet for Americans who are not aware of Basil Brush.

He said, yeah, I write about a kid's puppet. And I was able to find this stuff out because it's all just hidden in plain sight. You know, they just say, yeah, well, you know, maybe the bloods were mixed up. I'm sure it was just an innocent mistake. Maybe they didn't find the guy who drove the Fiat Uno for two years. They said he died and, you know, it's just, it's all so sort of, There's not even any attempt to cover it up, really, as far as I can see. And we're just going to take a quick break for some messages.

And we're back talking to the Royalist author, Tom Sykes. Tom Sykes, thank you very much. Anybody wanting to find out more about this, I urge you to read Tom's piece in the Royalist newsletter, which can be found at the Daily Beast or on Substack. And Tom, we look forward to having you back. And I'm very intrigued about Harry's full. about his mother, which I didn't know about.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's really the explanation of why Netflix are keeping him on. I mean, he's not being confirmed, but I've got it on pretty good authority that he is going to make a 30th anniversary thing. I also have it on pretty good authority that William is not remotely amused and is probably going to do his own thing, probably with ITV. Wow. But we could have dueling Diana documentaries from the two boys.

Dueling Diana documentaries, good Lord. Well, thank you very much, Tom. Fascinating story. We will stay on it. Thanks, Traynor. Well, I for one, can't wait to watch Harry's documentary, if he is making one, about his mother. I still find them all fascinating, even though I live in America. And I absolutely remember where I was on the Chesapeake Bay when Diana died. I still tend to think that it was just as Rosemary. and Muncheon said a very ordinary death for a very extraordinary person.

But having read and talked to Tom, I now see that there are many questions that have yet to be answered. And who knows if we'll ever get the answers. But we'll be staying tuned to Tom Sykes's newsletter. You can find it on Sub-Sack and at the Daily Beast, the Royalist, for all continuing updates. Have a great holiday weekend. And we'll be back with Insubstack. Trump's head with Michael Wolfe. If you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to share this podcast with your friends, with your enemies, with people you went to school with that you haven't been in touch with for 15 years.

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