Andrew Morton Quote

As a close friend commented: She seems to dread Charles’s appearance. The days when she is happiest is when he is in Scotland. When he is at Kensington Palace she feels absolutely at a loss and like a child again. She loses all the ground she has built up when she is on her own.The changes in her are physical. Her speech, normally rapid, energetic, coloured and strong, degenerates instantly when he is with her. Diana’s voice becomes monosyllabic and flat, suffused with an ineffable weariness. It is the same tone that infects her speech when she talks about her parents’ divorce and what she calls the dark ages, the period in her royal life until the late 1980s when she was emotionally crushed by the royal system.In his presence she reverts to the girl she was a decade ago. She giggles over nothing, starts biting her nails--a habit she gave up some time ago--and takes on the hunted look of a nervous fawn. The strain in their home when they are together is palpable. As Oonagh Toffolo observes: It is a different atmosphere at Kensington Palace when he is there. It is tense and she is tense. She doesn’t have the freedom she would like when he’s around. It is quite sad to see the stagnation there. Another frequent guest simply calls it The Mad House.