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#Fred and gladys bracelet series#

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Want to know even more about the real events from history that inspired the drama? Read more from the experts…

I think if she had been put through a ‘crash course’ as is shown in The Crown she would have mentioned it in Diana: Her True Story ”. “Michael Colborne, Charles’s right-hand-man, certainly drilled Diana and talked her through everything that would be expected of her, but I don’t think Diana ever spoke of having proper tutorials as such.

But Penny Junor doubts whether Diana had any formal tutorials. After a brief discussion it is decided that Diana’s grandmother, Lady Fermoy, should be her teacher. “Oh dear,” says the Queen Mother, “thank goodness we’ve got your grandmother to sort all this out.”įollowing Diana’s faux pas, the Queen Mother recommends that she undergo some tutorials, Martin Charteris tells the Queen, “for what will be a very drastic transition from teenager to royal princess”. Diana actually went to Australia for two-and-a-half weeks with her mother and stepfather after Charles proposed and their engagement was kept secret, probably to allow time to prepare for the official announcement, which was made on 24 February 1981, says Tracy Borman.īidding her farewell, Diana’s flatmates toast to “no more worries, no more flatmates, no more rent collection… and to one day, not too far away, being the f***ing Queen!”īut while the opening scenes of episode 3 are jubilant and celebratory, the mood very quickly changes: arriving for a family dinner at Clarence House, in one fell swoop the newly engaged Diana manages to offend Princess Margaret, whose storytelling is interrupted by Diana’s entrance, and blunder her way through greeting the rest of the family, mixing up titles and not knowing who to curtsy to first – to audible tuts and sighs. The episode also accurately shows Diana being moved into a suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace, but in reality this didn’t happen until after the couple’s engagement was announced. (Photo by © Pool Photograph/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images) Indeed, in The Crown Charles quips that Diana has chosen it because “it’s the most expensive”.Ī close-up of Diana's engagement ring, later worn by Kate Middleton, who in 2010 became engaged to Diana's eldest son, Prince William. Diana is seen in the episode telling Charles and the Queen she’s chosen it because it reminds her of her mother’s engagement ring – this is, in reality, what she said – but “another theory is that she was drawn to its large size,” writes Tracy Borman. “I can’t see him saying something like that.”ĭiana did, as the episode suggests, choose her own engagement ring – a 12-carat Ceylon sapphire stone set with 14 solitaire diamonds and a white gold band – from a selection of rings brought to Buckingham Palace by the House of Garrard, the then-crown jeweller in Regent Street. “‘I thought in terms of rank the Prince of Wales only ever knelt before the Sovereign’ is such a pompous thing to say,” says Junor. It’s not known whether Charles got down on one knee, but royal biographer Penny Junor doubts the way he is seen to explain his decision not to in The Crown. Diana “thought at first that Charles was joking but nevertheless accepted, and was shocked when she later realised he meant it,” writes Tracy Borman in this article for HistoryExtra. Is this really how Charles and Diana came to be engaged? The Prince of Wales did indeed propose at Windsor Castle, on 6 February 1981.