Lady Diana

LIFE:

Diana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances; née Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997), was a member of the British royal family as the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, who is the eldest child and heir apparent of Queen Elizabeth II. Diana was born into the Spencer family, a family of British nobility with royal ancestry and was the youngest daughter of John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, and Frances Roche. She grew up in Park House, situated on the Sandringham estate, and was educated in England and Switzerland. In 1975 after her father inherited the title of Earl Spencer she became known as Lady Diana Spencer. She came to prominence in February 1981 when her engagement to Prince Charles was announced to the world. Diana's wedding to the Prince of Wales took place at St Paul's Cathedral on 29 July 1981 and reached a global television audience of over 750 million people. During her marriage, Diana was Princess of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, Duchess of Rothesay, and Countess of Chester. The marriage produced two sons, the princes William and Harry, who were then respectively second and third in the line of succession to the British throne. As Princess of Wales, Diana undertook royal duties on behalf of the Queen and represented her at functions overseas. She was celebrated for her charity work and for her support of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She was involved with dozens of charities including London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for children, of which she was president from 1989. Diana remained the object of worldwide media scrutiny during and after her marriage, which ended in divorce on 28 August 1996. Media attention and public mourning were extensive after her death in a car crash in a Paris tunnel on 31 August 1997 and subsequent televised funeral.

Diana first met Charles, Prince of Wales, when she was 16 in November 1977 he was dating her older sister, Lady Sarah. They were guests at a country weekend during the summer of 1980 when she watched him play polo and he took a serious interest in Diana as a potential bride. The relationship progressed when he invited her for a sailing weekend to Cowes aboard the royal yacht Britannia. This was followed by an invitation to Balmoral (the Royal Family's Scottish residence) to meet his family a weekend in November 1980. Lady Diana was well received by the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Prince Charles subsequently courted Diana in London. The Prince proposed on 6 February 1981, and Lady Diana accepted, but their engagement was kept secret for the next few weeks.

Their engagement became official on 24 February 1981. Diana selected a large engagement ring that consisted of 14 solitaire diamonds surrounding a 12 carat oval blue Ceylon sapphire set in 18-carat white gold,which was similar to her mother's engagement ring. The ring was made by the Crown jewellers Garrard, but it was not unique, which was unusual for a ring for a member of the Royal Family. The ring was featured in Garrard's jewellery collection. In 2010 the ring became the engagement ring of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. The Queen Mother gave Diana a sapphire and diamond brooch as an engagement present. Following the engagement, Diana left her occupation as a kindergarten teacher and lived for a short period at Clarence House, which was the home of the Queen Mother. She then lived at Buckingham Palace until the wedding. Diana was the first Englishwoman to become the spouse of an heir apparent in 300 years, and she was also the first royal bride to have a paying job before her engagement. She made her first public appearance with Prince Charles in a charity ball in March 1981 at Goldsmiths' Hall, where she met the Princess of Monaco. Twenty-year-old Diana became Princess of Wales when she married the Prince of Wales on 29 July 1981 at St Paul's Cathedral, which offered more seating than Westminster Abbey, which was generally used for royal nuptials. The service was widely described as a "fairytale wedding" and was watched by a global television audience of 750 million people while 600,000 spectators lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the couple en route to the ceremony. At the altar, Diana accidentally reversed the order of Charles's first two names, saying "Philip Charles" Arthur George instead. She did not say that she would "obey" him that traditional vow was left out at the couple's request, which caused some comment at the time. Diana wore a dress valued at £9,000 with a 25-foot (7.62-metre) train. Music and songs used during the wedding included the "Prince of Denmark's March", "I Vow to Thee, My Country", "Pomp and Circumstance No.4", and "God Save the Queen". After she became Princess of Wales, Diana automatically acquired rank as the third-highest female in the United Kingdom Order of Precedence (after the Queen and the Queen Mother), and was fifth or sixth in the orders of precedence of her other realms, following the Queen, the relevant viceroy, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen Mother, and the Prince of Wales. Within a few years of the wedding, the Queen extended Diana visible tokens of membership in the Royal Family she lent the Princess the Cambridge Lover's Knot Tiara,and granted her the badge of the Royal Family Order of Queen Elizabeth II.The couple made their homes at Kensington Palace and at Highgrove House, near Tetbury. On 5 November 1981, the Princess's pregnancy was officially announced. In January 1982 twelve weeks into the pregnancy Diana fell down a staircase at Sandringham, and the royal gynaecologist Sir George Pinker was summoned from London. He found that although she had suffered severe bruising, the foetus was uninjured. In the private Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London, on 21 June 1982, under the care of Pinker,the Princess gave birth to the couple's first son and heir, William Arthur Philip Louis. Amidst some media criticism, she decided to take William, still a baby, on her first major tours of Australia and New Zealand, but the decision was popularly applauded. By her own admission, the Princess of Wales had not initially intended to take William until it was suggested by Malcolm Fraser, the Australian prime minister. A second son, Henry Charles Albert David, was born on 15 September 1984. The Princess asserted she and the Prince were closest during her pregnancy with Harry (as the younger prince has always been known). She was aware their second child was a boy, but did not share the knowledge with anyone else, including the Prince of Wales. Suggestions that Harry's father is not Charles but James Hewitt, with whom Diana had an affair, are based on alleged physical similarity between Hewitt and Harry; however, Harry was born before the affair began. Diana gave her sons wider experiences than was usual for royal children. She rarely deferred to the Prince or to the Royal Family, and was often intransigent when it came to the children. She chose their first given names, dismissed a royal family nanny and engaged one of her own choosing, selected their schools and clothing, planned their outings, and took them to school herself as often as her schedule permitted. She also organised her public duties around their timetables.

Five years into the marriage, the couple's incompatibility and age difference of almost 13 years became visible and damaging. Diana's concern about Charles's relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles also had a negative impact on the marriage. During the early 1990s, the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales fell apart; the event was at first suppressed, then sensationalised by the world media. The Princess and Prince both spoke to the press through friends each blamed the other for the marriage's demise.The couple's marital difficulties were publicly reported as early as 1985. Prince Charles resumed his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana later began an extra-marital relationship with Major James Hewitt. These affairs were exposed in May 1992 with the publication of Andrew Morton's book, Diana: Her True Story. The book was serialised before publication in The Sunday Times. The book, which also revealed the Princess's allegedly suicidal unhappiness, caused a media storm. During 1992 and 1993, leaked tapes of telephone conversations negatively reflected on both the royal antagonists. Tape recordings of the Princess and James Gilbey were made available by The Sun newspaper's hotline in August 1992 and transcripts of the intimate conversations were published by the newspaper the same month. The article's title, "Squidgygate", referenced Gilbey's affectionate nickname for Diana. The next to surface, in November 1992, were the leaked "Camillagate" tapes, intimate exchanges between the Prince of Wales and Camilla, published in the tabloids. In December 1992, Prime Minister John Major announced the couple's "amicable separation" to the House of Commons,and the full Camillagate transcript was published a month later in the newspapers, in January 1993. In 1993, the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) published photographs of the Princess that were taken by gym owner Bryce Taylor. The photos showed her exercising in the gym LA Fitness wearing "a leotard and cycling shorts". The Princess's lawyers immediately filed a criminal complaint that sought "a permanent ban on the sale and publication of the photographs" around the world. However, some newspapers outside the UK published the pictures. The courts granted an injunction against Taylor and MGN that prohibited "further publication of the pictures". MGN later issued an apology after facing much criticism from the public. It is said that MGN gave the Princess £1 million as a payment for her legal costs and donated £200,000 to her charities. Taylor apologised as well and paid Diana £300,000, although it was alleged that a member of the Royal Family had helped him financially. Diana's aunt-in-law, Princess Margaret, burned "highly personal" letters that Diana wrote to the Queen Mother in 1993 because she considered them "so private". Biographer William Shawcross wrote: "No doubt Princess Margaret felt that she was protecting her mother and other members of the family." He considered Princess Margaret's action to be "understandable, although regrettable from a historical viewpoint". Diana blamed Camilla Parker Bowles for her marital troubles because of Camilla's previous relationship with the Prince, and at some point she began to believe that he had other affairs. In October 1993, the Princess wrote to a friend that she believed her husband was now in love with his personal assistant (and his sons' former nanny) Tiggy Legge-Bourke and wanted to marry her. Legge-Bourke had been hired by the Prince as a young companion for his sons while they were in his care, and the Princess was resentful of Legge-Bourke and her relationship with the young princes. On 3 December 1993, the Princess of Wales announced her withdrawal from public life. In the meantime, rumours had begun to surface about the Princess of Wales's relationship with Hewitt, who was the family's former riding instructor. These rumours would be brought into the open by the publication in 1994 of a book by Anna Pasternak titled Princess in Love, which was filmed under the same title in a movie directed by David Greene in 1996. The Princess of Wales was portrayed by Julie Cox and James Hewitt was portrayed by Christopher Villiers. Prince Charles sought public understanding via a televised interview with Jonathan Dimbleby on 29 June 1994. In the interview, he confirmed his own extramarital affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, saying that he had rekindled their association in 1986 only after his marriage to the Princess had "irretrievably broken down". Authors Tina Brown, Sally Bedell Smith and Sarah Bradford are some of the many writers who fully supported Diana's own admission in her 1995 BBC Panorama interview that she had suffered from depression, "rampant bulimia" and had engaged numerous times in the act of self mutilation; the show's transcript records Diana confirming many of her problems to interviewer Martin Bashir, including that she had "hurt (her) arms and legs". The combination of illnesses from which Diana herself said that she suffered resulted in some of her biographers opining that she had borderline personality disorder.

Journalist Martin Bashir interviewed Diana for the BBC current affairs show Panorama. The interview was broadcast on 20 November 1995. In reference to her relationship with Hewitt, the Princess said to Bashir, "Yes, I adored him. Yes, I was in love with him. But I was very let down [by him]." Referring to her husband's affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, she said, "Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded." Of herself, she said, "I'd like to be a queen of people's hearts." On the Prince's suitability for kingship, she stated, "Because I know the character I would think that the top job, as I call it, would bring enormous limitations to him, and I don't know whether he could adapt to that." On 20 December 1995, Buckingham Palace publicly announced that the Queen had sent letters to the Prince and Princess of Wales, advising them to divorce. The Queen's move was backed by the Prime Minister and by senior Privy Counsellors, and, according to the BBC, was decided after two weeks of talks. Prince Charles formally agreed to the divorce in a written statement soon after. In February 1996, the Princess announced her agreement after negotiations with the Prince and representatives of the Queen,irritating Buckingham Palace by issuing her own announcement of the divorce agreement and its terms. In July 1996, the couple agreed on the terms of their divorce. This followed shortly after the Princess's accusation that the Prince's personal assistant Tiggy Legge-Bourke had aborted the Prince's child, after which Legge-Bourke instructed her attorney Peter Carter-Ruck to demand an apology. Diana's secretary Patrick Jephson resigned shortly before the story broke, later writing that the Princess had "exulted in accusing Legge-Bourke of having had an abortion".The divorce was finalised on 28 August 1996. Diana received a lump sum settlement of £17 million as well as £400,000 per year. The couple signed a confidentiality agreement that prohibited them from discussing the details of the divorce or of their married life. Days before the decree absolute of divorce, letters patent were issued with general rules to regulate royal titles after divorce. Diana lost the style Her Royal Highness because she was no longer married to the Prince of Wales and instead was styled Diana, Princess of Wales. The Queen reportedly wanted to let Diana continue to use the style after her divorce, but Charles had insisted on removing it. As the mother of the prince expected to one day ascend to the throne, she was accorded the same precedence she enjoyed during her marriage. Prince William was reported to have reassured his mother: "Don't worry, Mummy, I will give it back to you one day when I am King." Almost a year before, according to Tina Brown, the Duke of Edinburgh had warned the Princess of Wales: "If you don't behave, my girl, we'll take your title away." She is said to have replied: "My title is a lot older than yours, Philip." Diana and her mother quarrelled in May 1997 after she told Hello! magazine that Diana was happy to lose her title of Her Royal Highness following her controversial divorce from Prince Charles. They were reportedly not on speaking terms with each other by the time of Diana's death. Buckingham Palace stated that the Princess of Wales was still a member of the Royal Family, because she was the mother of the second and third in line to the throne. This was confirmed by the Deputy Coroner of the Queen's Household, Baroness Butler-Sloss, after a pre-hearing on 8 January 2007: "I am satisfied that at her death, Diana, Princess of Wales continued to be considered as a member of the Royal Household." This appears to have been confirmed in the High Court judicial review matter of Al Fayed & Ors v Butler-Sloss. In that case, three High Court judges accepted submissions that "the very name 'Coroner to the Queen's Household' gave the appearance of partiality in the context of inquests into the deaths of two people, one of whom was a member of the Royal Family and the other was not."

After her 1996 divorce, Diana retained the double apartment on the north side of Kensington Palace that she had shared with the Prince of Wales since the first year of their marriage, and the apartment remained her home until her death the following year. She also moved her offices to Kensington Palace but was permitted "to use the state apartments at St James's Palace". Furthermore, she continued to have access to the jewellery that she had received during her marriage, and Diana was allowed to use the air transport of the British royal family and government. In a book published in 2003, Paul Burrell claimed that the Princess's private letters revealed that her brother, Charles Spencer, had refused to allow her to live at Althorp, despite her request. Diana dated the British-Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, who was called "the love of her life" by many of her closest friends after her death,and she is said to have described him as "Mr Wonderful". In May 1996, Diana visited Lahore upon invitation of Imran Khan, a relative of Hasnat Khan, and visited the latter's family in secret. Khan was intensely private and the relationship was conducted in secrecy, with Diana lying to members of the press who questioned her about it. Their relationship lasted almost two years with differing accounts of who ended it. She is said to have spoken of her distress when "he" ended their relationship. However, according to Khan's testimonial at the inquest for her death, it was Diana who ended their relationship in the summer of 1997. Diana's butler, Paul Burrell, also said that the relationship was ended by the Princess in July 1997. Within a month, Diana began seeing Dodi Fayed, the son of her summer host, Mohamed Al-Fayed. Diana had considered taking her sons that summer on a holiday to the Hamptons on Long Island, New York, but security officials had prevented it. After deciding against a trip to Thailand, she accepted Fayed's invitation to join his family in the south of France, where his compound and large security detail would not cause concern to the Royal Protection squad. Mohamed Al-Fayed bought the Jonikal, a 60-metre multimillion-pound yacht on which to entertain Diana and her sons.

CHARITY WORK and PATRONAGE:

In 1983, she confided in the then-Premier of Newfoundland, Brian Peckford, "I am finding it very difficult to cope with the pressures of being Princess of Wales, but I am learning to cope with it." As Princess of Wales, she was expected to make regular public appearances at hospitals, schools, and other facilities, in the 20th century model of royal patronage. From the mid 1980s, she became increasingly associated with numerous charities. She carried out 191 official engagements in 1988 and 397 in 1991. The Princess developed an intense interest in serious illnesses and health-related matters outside the purview of traditional royal involvement, including AIDS and leprosy. In recognition of her effect as a philanthropist, Stephen Lee, director of the UK Institute of Charity Fundraising Managers, said "Her overall effect on charity is probably more significant than any other person's in the 20th century."

In addition to health related matters, Diana's extensive charity work included campaigning for animal protection and her fight against the use of landmines. She was the patroness of charities and organisations working with the homeless, youth, drug addicts, and the elderly. From 1989, she was president of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. From 1991 to 1996, she was a patron of Headway, a brain injury association. She was patron of Natural History Museum and president of Royal Academy of Music. From 1984 to 1996, she was president of Barnardo's, a charity founded by Dr. Thomas John Barnardo in 1866 to care for vulnerable children and young people. In 1988, she became patron of the British Red Cross and supported its organisations in other countries such as Australia and Canada. She made several lengthy visits each week to Royal Brompton Hospital, where she worked to comfort seriously ill or dying patients. In 1992, she became the first patron of Chester Childbirth Appeal, a charity that she had supported since 1984. The charity, which is named after one of Diana's royal titles, could raise over £1 million with her help.

Her patronages also included Landmine Survivors Network, Help the Aged, the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, the British Lung Foundation, Eureka! (joint patron with Prince Charles), the National Children's Orchestra, British Red Cross Youth, the Guinness Trust, Meningitis Trust, Dove House, the Malcolm Sargent Cancer Fund for Children, the Royal School for the Blind, Welsh National Opera, the Variety Club of New Zealand, Birthright, the British Deaf Association, All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Anglo-European College of Chiropractic, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, British Sports Association for the Disabled, British Youth Opera, Chickenshed, Commonwealth Society for the Deaf, Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Garden Festival of Wales, Gloucestershire County Cricket Club, Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, London City Ballet, London Symphony Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra, Parkinson's Disease Society, Pre-School Playgroups Association, Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts, Welsh Bowling Association, Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, as well as president or patron of other charities.

In June 1995, the Princess travelled to Moscow. She paid a visit to a children's hospital that she had previously supported by providing them with medical equipment. In Moscow, she received the International Leonardo Prize, which is given to "the most distinguished patrons and people in the arts, medicine, and sports". In December 1995, Diana received the United Cerebral Palsy Humanitarian of the Year Award in New York City for her philanthropic efforts. In October 1996, for her works on the elderly, the Princess was awarded a gold medal at a health care conference organised by the Pio Manzù Centre in Rimini, Italy. The day after her divorce, she announced her resignation from over 100 charities to spend more time with only six: Centrepoint, English National Ballet, Great Ormond Street Hospital, The Leprosy Mission, National AIDS Trust, and the Royal Marsden Hospital. She continued her work with the British Red Cross Anti-Personnel Land Mines Campaign, but was no longer listed as patron. In May 1997, the Princess opened the Richard Attenborough Centre for Disability and the Arts in Leicester, after being asked by her friend Richard Attenborough. In June 1997, her dresses and suits were sold at Christie's auction houses in London and New York, and the proceeds that were earned from these events were donated to charities. Her final official engagement was a visit to Northwick Park Hospital, London, on 21 July 1997.

AREAS OF WORK:

The Princess began her work with AIDS victims in the 1980s. In 1989, she opened Landmark Aids Centre in South London. She was not averse to making physical contact with AIDS patients, though it was still unknown whether the disease could be spread that way. Diana was the first British royal figure to contact AIDS patients. In 1987, she held hands with an AIDS patient in one of her early efforts to de-stigmatise the condition. Diana noted: "HIV does not make people dangerous to know. You can shake their hands and give them a hug. Heaven knows they need it. What's more, you can share their homes, their workplaces, and their playgrounds and toys." To Diana's disappointment, the Queen did not support this type of charity work, suggesting she get involved in "something more pleasant". In October 1990, Diana opened Grandma's House, a home for young AIDS victims in Washington, D.C. She was also a patron of the National AIDS Trust. In 1991, she famously hugged one victim during a visit to the AIDS ward of the Middlesex Hospital, which she had opened in 1987. As the patron of Turning Point, a health and social care organisation, Diana visited its project in London for people with HIV/AIDS in 1992. She later established and led fundraising campaigns for AIDS research. In March 1997, Diana visited South Africa, where she met with President Nelson Mandela. On 2 November 2002, Mandela announced that the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund would be teaming up with the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund to help victims of AIDS. They had planned the combination of the two charities a few months before her death. "When she stroked the limbs of someone with leprosy or sat on the bed of a man with HIV/AIDS and held his hand, she transformed public attitudes and improved the life chances of such people," Mandela said about the late Princess. Diana had used her celebrity status to "fight stigma attached to people living with HIV/AIDS", Mandela said.

Diana was the patron of HALO Trust, an organisation that removes debris left behind by war, in particular landmines. In January 1997, pictures of Diana touring an Angolan minefield in a ballistic helmet and flak jacket were seen worldwide. During her campaign, she was accused of meddling in politics and called a 'loose cannon'. Despite the criticism, HALO states that Diana's efforts resulted in raising international awareness about landmines and the subsequent sufferings caused by them. In June 1997, she gave a speech at a landmines conference held at the Royal Geographical Society, and travelled to Washington, D.C. to help promote the American Red Cross landmines campaign. From 7 to 10 August 1997, just days before her death, she visited Bosnia and Herzegovina with Jerry White and Ken Rutherford of the Landmine Survivors Network. Her work on the landmines issue has been described as influential in the signing of the Ottawa Treaty, which created an international ban on the use of anti-personnel landmines. Introducing the Second Reading of the Landmines Bill 1998 to the British House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, paid tribute to Diana's work on landmines: All Honourable Members will be aware from their postbags of the immense contribution made by Diana, Princess of Wales to bringing home to many of our constituents the human costs of landmines. The best way in which to record our appreciation of her work, and the work of NGOs that have campaigned against landmines, is to pass the Bill, and to pave the way towards a global ban on landmines. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said that landmines remained "a deadly attraction for children, whose innate curiosity and need for play often lure them directly into harm's way". She urged countries which produce and stockpile the largest numbers of landmines (United States, China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia) to sign the treaty. A few months after Diana's death in 1997, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines won the Nobel Peace Prize.

For her first solo official trip, Diana visited The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, a cancer treatment hospital in London. She later chose this charity to be among the organisations that benefited from the auction of her clothes in New York. The trust's communications manager said, "The Princess had done much to remove the stigma and taboo associated with diseases such as cancer, AIDS, HIV and leprosy." Diana became president of the hospital on 27 June 1989. The Wolfson Children's Cancer Unit was opened by Diana on 25 February 1993. In June 1996, she travelled to Chicago in her capacity as president of the Royal Marsden Hospital in order to attend a fundraising event and raised more than £1 million for cancer research. In September 1996, after being asked by Katharine Graham, the Princess went to Washington and appeared at a White House breakfast in respect of the Nina Hyde Center for Breast Cancer Research. She also attended an annual fund-raiser for breast cancer research organised by The Washington Post at the same center. Children with Leukaemia (currently Children with Cancer UK) was opened by the Princess of Wales in memory of two young cancer victims in 1988. In November 1987, a few days after the death of Jean O'Gorman from cancer, Diana met her family. The deaths of Jean and her brother had an impact on the Princess, and she assisted their family to establish the charity. It was opened by her on 12 January 1988 at Mill Hill Secondary School, and she supported it until her death in 1997.

In November 1989, the Princess visited a leprosy hospital in Indonesia. Following her visit, she became patron of the Leprosy Mission, an organisation dedicated to providing medicine, treatment, and other support services to those who are afflicted with the disease. She remained the patron of this charity until her death in 1997,and visited several of its hospitals around the world, especially in India, Nepal, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. She famously touched those affected by the disease when many people believed it could be contracted through casual contact. "It has always been my concern to touch people with leprosy, trying to show in a simple action that they are not reviled, nor are we repulsed," she commented. The Diana Princess of Wales Health Education and Media Centre in Noida, India, was opened in her honour in November 1999, funded by the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund to give social support to the people affected by leprosy and disability. Diana was a long-standing and active supporter of Centrepoint, a charity which provides accommodation and support to homeless people, and became patron in 1992. She supported organisations that battle poverty and homelessness. The Princess was a supporter of young homeless people and spoke out on behalf of them by saying that "they deserve a decent start in life". "We, as a part of society, must ensure that young people who are our future are given the chance they deserve," she said. Diana used to take young William and Harry for private visits to Centrepoint services. "The young people at Centrepoint were always really touched by her visits and by her genuine feelings for them," said one of the charity's staff members. Prince William is currently the patron of this charity. Diana was a staunch and longtime supporter of charities and organisations that focused on social and mental issues, including Relate and Turning Point. Relate was relaunched in 1987 as a renewed version to its predecessor, the National Marriage Guidance Council. Diana became its patron in 1989. Turning Point, a health and social care organisation, was founded in 1964 to help and support those affected by drug and alcohol misuse and mental health problems. She became the charity's patron in 1987 and visited the charity on a regular basis, meeting the sufferers at its centres or institutions including Rampton and Broadmoor. In 1990 during a speech for Turning Point she said, "It takes professionalism to convince a doubting public that it should accept back into its midst many of those diagnosed as psychotics, neurotics and other sufferers who Victorian communities decided should be kept out of sight in the safety of mental institutions."Despite the protocol problems of travelling to a Muslim country, she made a trip to Pakistan later that year in order to visit a rehabilitation centre in Lahore as a sign of "her commitment to working against drug abuse".