The Princess of Wales thought motherhood was her greatest joy but suggested she was too old to have more children, according to an interview published yesterday almost four months after her death. Paris Match magazine said its interview with Princess Diana and her millionaire companion Dodi Fayed was conducted in the south of France shortly before they died in a Paris car crash on August 30th.
The interview was published one day before Dodi's bodyguard, Mr Trevor Rees-Jones, the only survivor of the crash, was due to be questioned by a French magistrate investigating the case.
"My only moments of real happiness were the births of William and Harry," Diana said of her two sons, according to the French text. "Being a mother in a warm and generous atmosphere is something I did not experience."
A spokeswoman for the magazine said publication of the interview had been delayed out of respect for the late princess.
When the unnamed interviewer asked whether William and Harry could expect to have a little brother or sister one day, Diana, who was 36 at the time of her death, responded: "Don't you think I'm too old?"
In the interview, the princess denied suggestions she planned to move abroad, saying her boys needed her nearby. "I said I would move abroad if the pressure from the media did not stop. I need people to respect my private life, otherwise I feel I will soon not be myself any more. I wanted to do it and I said it . . . but I won't do it," she added. "William and Harry are in school in England and they need me as much as I need them . . . so I won't move abroad.
"Maybe I'll travel more so that people forget me a bit."
Diana said she and Dodi were planning some humanitarian projects together. The interviewer did not directly ask her if she planned to marry her Egyptianborn friend, but he brought up the subject himself.
"I've never experienced such harmony," he said of his romance with Diana. "My dream . . . why not finally make a love marriage out of this?" The interviewer ad ded in brackets: "Diana lowers her eyes and smiles." At another point in the interview, she said: "My feelings for Dodi are profound and I believe his are sincere."
The princess complained bitterly about being under the spotlight of the sensationalist press. "Whatever I do, whatever I say is twisted," she said. "For 16 years, they've been analysing my life in order to criticise it better. I can stand it but I regret it. I didn't know when I entered this family that what was natural would seem so suspicious to these permanent observers of your acts and gestures. "It's clear I feel closer to simple people than to high society. One learns a lot more about oneself and about life by visiting a slum than by feeling useless in an icy palace."
Asked why she felt this way, the princess responded: "Must one really ask why someone prefers to dedicate her time to humanitarian causes than wasting it on the sidelines of a polo field?"