As Princess Diana herself said, the royal family’s traditional Christmas celebration at Sandringham was “very tense”, once calling the experience “terrifying and so disappointing”.
The late Princess of Wales conveyed these feelings to biographer Andrew Morton, and Diana hated Christmas at Sandringham so much that she sometimes even ran away early.
Princess Diana ‘hated’ Christmas at Sandringham with royals, calling it ‘terrifying and so disappointing’
Princess Diana and the rest of the royal family at Sandringham. Photo Library by Tim Graham/Getty Images
In the latest episode The Sun’s Royal Exclusive show, royal biographer and editor-in-chief Majesty magazine Ingrid Seward said that “Diana always left after lunch. When things weren’t going well, she dreaded these royal Christmases.”
“And she would always — and sometimes she’d even run off before lunch and just go to church,” Seward added of the royal, who died aged 36 in 1997, 16 years after marrying Prince Charles in 1981.
Renowned royal photographer Arthur Edwards agreed, saying on the programme: “Not always, but a couple of times I remember that – I remember her passing me on the motorway and turning back once.”
Queen Camilla, King Charles’ second wife, also used to go away, Edwards added: “For many years, our Queen Camilla – she would leave after lunch and go spend time with her family down in Wiltshire,” he said of Camilla after she married for the royal family in 2005.
Christmas at Sandringham — where the royal family has long spent the holidays — includes a morning walk to St. Mary Magdalene Church on the estate; followed by lunch before the monarch’s annual speech at 3pm UK time.
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Sandringham House. Indigo/Getty Images Princess Diana’s fateful Christmas at Sandringham: Inside 3 real-life days at ‘Spencer’
Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell told Marie Claire that Christmas at Sandringham was “like a pressure cooker” for the former Princess of Wales, but that she “had to grin and bear it” because she “knew it was her duty”.
But as soon as possible, Burrell added, she got out of there: “She would have gotten away as soon as she could, but there were huge personalities there that she couldn’t handle,” he told the news outlet.
Christmas at Sandringham provided a venue for Spencera 2021 film starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana. Although the film is a dramatization, Diana’s former bodyguard Ken Wharfe told PEOPLE of Sandringham that “it was purgatory for her.”
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Princess Diana.
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Wharfe added that she “restricted herself to spending time in the kitchen with the chef or with people like me in the hope that the time would pass and she could go back to London.”
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Source: HIS Education