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she could not cope with the pressure. Diana’s intelligence was perfectly adequate, and because of
that there was no logical reason for her to perform so badly: the failure could have been a wilful act,
a sign of acute but hidden anxiety, or a mere distraction due to trouble at home. In addition, the
problems Diana had with her schooling foreshadowed some of the problems she would have in
adulthood: poor concentration, lack of intellectual discipline, and the inability to focus on anything
for long (pp. 54-55).
In the summer of 1978, Diana moved to London, first to her mother’s Cadogan Square flat with two
other girls, Laura Greig and Sophie Kimball (Smith, 2007, p. 57) and then in July 1979 to Coleherne
Court flat, given to her by her mother as a coming-of-age present, with three other girls, Carolyn
Pride, Anne Bolton and Virginia Pitman (Bradford, 2007, p. 46). These three girls were to stay Diana’s
friends throughout her romance with Prince Charles (Morton, 2010, p. 102). Unlike her sisters, Diana
had no debutante party, and she did not have to navigate the social hurdles of the London season
like many a girl of aristocratic background had done before her (Smith, 2007, p. 27). According to
Morton (2010), with her school days behind her, Diana felt as if a great weight had been lifted from
her shoulders, because she had felt that school routine suppressed her spirit. After moving away
from the family home, Diana thrived, because she no longer felt that her character was being
confined as she had felt at home due to her perceived minor position in the family. After the move
to London she became happier, more energetic, and even prettier. She was also now more mature
and more relaxed than she had been before, and she was eager to start living her own life (p. 94).
However, life for Diana was much the same as it had been during her school days: she continued to
insist that she was intellectually inadequate and her social life was built on the premise of unbroken
familiarity (Brown, 2008, pp. 66-67). According to Smith (2007), Diana’s life was in many ways an
extension of her school days. Her friends, including her roommates, were either from the boarding
schools Diana had attended or she had known them since her childhood days in Norfolk, which
might have been because Diana is said to have felt unsettled when away from her comfortable
group of friends as anything unusual threatened her emotional balance. Diana and her friends spent
their time together as a group and shared the same tastes, for example, in books, movies and
clothes. They were a part of the so-called Sloane Rangers and Hooray Henrys, young women and
18
men whose lives revolved around the shops and restaurants that were located at Sloane Square and
whose socializing consisted of small, intimate dinner parties, evenings at the movies or at a favourite
restaurant, excursions to the ballet, and of house parties in the country (pp. 58-59). According to
Morton (2010), however, Diana’s London life was mostly very quiet: she did not smoke or drink, and
she preferred to spend her non-working hours reading, watching television, visiting friends, or going
out to eat in modest bistros. Weekends were spent in the country (Morton, 2010, pp. 98-99).
Diana had neither academic qualifications nor special skills and only a vague notion that she wanted
to work with children (Morton, 2010, p. 97). She also had difficulty with making long-term
commitments, which became even more apparent after her move to London (Smith, 2007, p. 58),
where she mostly worked menial jobs, as it was what the girls of her background did to show that
they did not depend on their employment for either money or status: the only requirement was
that the position must have flexible working hours (Brown, 2008, p. 65). The assumption at the time
was that after finishing their formal education with some sort of skills course, the daughters of
aristocrats would join others of their background on the marriage market and find a husband to
support them not long after (Morton, 2010, p. 97). In the fall of 1979, Diana secured her first
permanent employment as a part-time assistant at the Young England Kindergarten and also began
working as a baby-sitter for an American family, positions which offered Diana reassuring routines
that bolstered her confidence and made her feel needed (Smith, 2007, p. 58). These were her last
real positions before her marriage to Prince Charles (Brown, 2008, p. 69).
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3 Courtship with Prince Charles
The families of Diana and Prince Charles had known each other for many years and as a result Diana
and Prince Charles had known each other from a very early age because they had been neighbours
at Sandringham until 1975, when Diana’s family moved from Park House to the Spencer family
home, Althorp (The Royal Household, n.d.). Because of their proximity to the Royal Family from an
early age, the Spencer children took their royal neighbours for granted and thus were not in awe of
them (Bradford, 2007, p. 20). Their royal neighbours simply fitted into the social landscape of friends
and acquaintances, but social relations with the Royal Family were sporadic, especially as they only
spent a small part of the year at Sandringham (Morton, 2010, p. 75). The children were occasionally
invited to the royal residence to play with the royal children (Brown, 2008, p. 39), but mostly royal
invitations were rare and the two families did not often socialize (Bradford, 2007, pp. 19-20). A royal
visit to Park House was a rare event, although, occasionally Princess Margaret’s son, Viscount Linley,
and the Princes Andrew and Edward came to play for an afternoon (Morton, 2010, pp. 75-76).
However, because of the age difference between Diana and Prince Charles, Diana had spent more
time with Prince Charles’s brother, Prince Andrew, as a child than with him (Bradford, 2007, p. 20),
and public opinion was that Prince Andrew was the one Diana was to marry, not Prince Charles
(Brown, 2008, p. 39). At first it may have been that Diana herself entertained thoughts of marrying
Prince Andrew (Bradford, 2007, p. 20), but it was not long until her thoughts turned to Prince
Charles, who was, at the time, “the most eligible bachelor in the whole United Kingdom” (Brown,
2008, p. 58).
It was Diana’s sister Sarah who brought Prince Charles into Diana’s life again. In June 1977, the
Queen had invited Sarah to join her annual Royal Ascot house party at Windsor Castle (Smith, 2007,
p. 61), and it was there that Prince Charles and Sarah met for the first time since their childhood
(Brown, 2008, p. 59). By mid-July 1977, they were in a relationship (Bradford, 2007, p. 40). In
November 1977, Sarah invited Prince Charles to Althorp for a pheasant shoot (Smith, 2007, p. 62).
Diana was given the weekend off from West Heath to attend (Bradford, 2007, p. 40). Prince Charles
was older than Diana by thirteen years and because of that had rarely crossed paths during Diana’s
years at Sandringham, so that weekend was the first time they were properly introduced (Smith,
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