Prince Philip may have been one of the few people inside Buckingham Palace who saw through Princess Diana‘s denials about Andrew Morton‘s bombshell royal biography from the very beginning, according to accounts from two authors — former royal butler Paul Burrell and historian Hugo Vickers.
Long before Diana’s secret cooperation with Morton became public knowledge, the late Duke of Edinburgh suspected she had played a role in the explosive 1992 bestseller Diana: Her True Story — a book that exposed intimate details about her troubled marriage to King Charles III and her struggles within the royal family.
Palace fallout
In a 2026 royal biography, historian Hugo Vickers wrote that in cooperating with author Andrew Morton, Princess Diana “laid every grievance she could muster against her hapless husband,” King Charles III, and confirmed that the former Camilla Parker Bowles was “the other woman in his life.” By: Phil Loftus/Capital Pictures / MEGA
The publication of Morton’s bestseller sent shockwaves through royal circles when it hit bookshelves in 1992.
At the time, both Diana and Morton denied that the Princess of Wales had directly assisted with the project. It wasn’t until after Diana’s tragic 1997 death that Morton revealed she had secretly been the book’s primary source.
Diana recorded about five hours of material in 1991 that was passed to Morton through a trusted friend and used as the foundation of the biography.
The tapes detailed Diana’s deeply personal struggles, including the collapse of her marriage to then-Prince Charles and his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, his longtime mistress and now-wife, Queen Camilla.
‘Everyone was suspicious’
Author Andrew Morton’s 1992 international bestseller, “Diana: Her True Story: In Her Own Words” — which exposed Princess Diana’s isolation, bulimia and the collapse of her marriage — forever changed public perception of the British monarchy. By: JM/Capital Pictures / MEGA
According to Burrell, Diana’s longtime butler and close confidant, Philip voiced his concerns directly to the Princess of Wales.
In his 2003 memoir, A Royal Duty, Burrell described the royal family’s reaction to the book’s publication and recalled conversations between Diana and the Duke of Edinburgh.
“At Windsor, Prince Philip made it clear that everyone was upset by the biased account in the Morton book,” Burrell wrote, as reported by Britain’s Daily Express.
Burrell wrote that Philip left little doubt about where he believed the information had come from. “He told [Diana] that everyone was suspicious of her involvement,” Burrell claimed.
Yet Diana continued to deny helping Morton. “The princess, by then in denial, insisted that she had not assisted the author,” Burrell wrote. “I honestly believe that she was taken aback by the scale of what she had unleashed.”
The controversy placed enormous strain on an already fragile situation inside the House of Windsor and delivered another blow to Charles and Diana’s marriage, which officially unraveled later that year when the palace announced their formal separation. Their divorce was finalized in 1996 — just one year before Diana’s death.
A family under pressure
The book exposed deeply personal details about Diana’s life and intensified scrutiny of the royal family at a particularly turbulent moment.
According to Vickers’ account in his new 2026 biography, Queen Elizabeth II: A Personal History, Philip was among the few royals who believed Diana’s fingerprints were all over the project.
As Vickers wrote in his book, which was serialized in Daily Mail, “It seems almost incredible that so many people accepted Diana’s denial of any involvement in the book.”
According to the historian, “One person who wasn’t fooled, though, was Prince Philip, who read the book on flights to and from Canada in July [1992] and clearly detected her hand in it. Feeling that too much had been revealed, he was not impressed.”
The fallout led to tense discussions within the family as senior royals attempted to address the growing crisis surrounding the then-Prince and Princess of Wales and the increasing scrutiny of their increasingly strained marriage.
The truth emerges
After Diana’s death in August 1997, the secret behind one of the most explosive royal books ever published finally came to light.
Weeks after her fatal car crash in Paris at 36, Morton revealed that Diana had, in fact, been the biography’s primary source. Working through her friend Dr. James Colthurst, who acted as an intermediary, she secretly supplied details about her marriage, her problems within the royal family and other deeply personal experiences.
Morton republished the bestseller with a new title — Diana: Her True Story: In Her Own Words — in October 1997, incorporating transcripts from recordings Diana had made in response to his questions.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
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