Journalist Andy Webb in the investigation volume Dianarama reconstructs Martin Bashir’s manipulations to obtain the historic interview with Lady D. False documents, slander and psychological pressure left an indelible mark on the princess.
Thirty years later, the scoop interview with Lady D it remains the symbol of the internal fracture of the British monarchy, which however seems to hide media strategies and deceptions. In the book Dianarama: The Betrayal of Princess Dianapublished in November 2025 and still unpublished in Italy, the journalist Andy Webbformer employee of BBCaccuses the British broadcaster and the reporter Martin Bashir of having manipulated the Princess of Wales to obtain that famous interview broadcast in 1995. According to the author, Bashir he would have used falsified documents and slander to convince the princess to speak, contributing to her progressive isolation in previous years the tragic accident of 1997.
In the volume, Webb describes the way Bashir “he built a castle of lies” to gain the trust of Diana“intimidating her”. Among the main accusations emerge account statements falsified that the reporter would have shown to the princess to make her believe that people close to her were receiving payments from the British secret services, fueling her paranoia of being spied on. Or convincing her about the presence of a bug in her son’s watch William.
Not only that, Bashir allegedly spread false rumors about an alleged affair between the then prince Carlo and the babysitter Tiggy Legge-Bourke. Diana believed it, and the famous «There were three of us in this wedding» he therefore referred not to Camillathe current queen consortbut to the babysitter. It was a series of obsessive fears that led her, during the interview, to publicly question the suitability of Carlo to become king. Those statements, broadcast in prime time in front of millions of viewers, had immediate repercussions with the Queen Elizabeth II who decided to speed up the divorce process between the two spouses.
There BBCsecond Webbwas aware of the falsifications and slanders. And he decided to air the interview anyway for audience reasons, making himself “accomplice” to “deception, manipulation, betrayal and abuse of media power”.
The isolation of the princess
In the book we read that this psychological manipulation further isolated her Princess of Walesaccentuating his distrust of the royal entourage and accelerating the deterioration of his emotional condition in the months preceding his death in August 1997. The same principles William And Harry on several occasions they defined that interview as “deceptive and harmful to the mental health” of the mother, with repercussions on the entire family.
The revelations contained in Dianarama are reflected in Dyson report of 2021, an official investigation confirmed the use of false documents by Bashir. He also judged the company’s internal procedure to be “seriously inadequate”. BBC in 1996, when the first doubts about the journalist’s conduct emerged. In 2022, the British broadcaster formally apologized to the royal family, pledging to never repeat the interview again. Those questions and those answers, however, remain imprinted in the British monarchy and in a family that has lost one princess much loved by the English people.
