Posted on 09/01/2010 5:20:55 PM PDT by iowamark
When Diana, the 'People's Princess' died, Tony Blair felt a duty to 'protect the monarchy from itself'.
Diana, Princess of Wales was down to earth, charming and intelligent, but also stubborn and prone to be over-emotional, says Mr Blair.
He recalls meeting the Princess at Chequers in July 1997, the month before she died, saying he felt an uneasiness about her relationship with Dodi Fayed but could not put his finger on why. He says she did not appreciate him broaching the subject with her. “We were both, in our own way, manipulators” — good at grasping the feelings of others and instinctively playing on them.
Giving his first account of what happened on the night she died, Mr Blair says he was woken at 2am on Aug 31, 1997 by a police officer at the end of his bed, who told him that Diana had been badly injured.
He knew from the beginning that her chances of survival were poor, and was told of her death at 4am. Mr Blair says that, without wishing to sound callous, he wanted to “manage” the situation and shape the public grief that would follow...
He felt that the royal family’s lack of response to the Princess’s death was dangerous for them in the face of a massive outpouring of public grief and felt a duty to protect the monarchy from itself...
After the funeral, Mr Blair spent the weekend at Balmoral, where he felt a little uncomfortable, and could not have got through it with out the stiff drink that was served up before dinner....
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
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LLS
What’s Tony’s opinion about the movie “The Queen”?
That had to be a great little chat....
Now yer highness.....about this camel jocky yer bumpin uglies with......
there’s an idiot in this pic
The pedigree crowd in England is steeped in tradition and is difficult to understand. There are a lot of unwritten rules and expectations that I don't think any of us can understand and find very strange.....
Diana died the same week as Mother Teresa.
An Indian ministry official noted, “Mother Teresa was a saint, Princess Diana a concerned tourist”.
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