The Crown: The Terrifying Manipulation of Princess Diana by Martin Bashir

The crownThe fifth season of Wales’ War is being fought on a new battlefield: the press. The latest season chronicles the growing media battle between Princess Diana and Prince Charles which preceded their divorce in 1996. First, Diana secretly collaborated with Andrew Morton of explosive storytelling, Her true story— detailing her family unhappiness, struggles with bulimia, and suicide attempts. In response, Charles returned public fire by giving an interview to the BBC Jonathan Dimbleby, confirming his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles and explains his side of the marriage story. And in the sixth episode, “No Man’s Land”—which finds Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) more paranoid, vulnerable, and vengeful than ever since Charles’ on-camera confessional—a sinister real-life figure makes a grand entrance: Martin Bashir, as played by Prasana Puvanaraja.

Series creator Peter Morgan had plenty of fascinating historical material to draw on for the new season of the period drama, which covers the scandal-ridden royal period from 1991 to 1997. But Bashir’s storyline – which extends into the next episode, Gunpowder – feasted on the journalist real manipulation of Diana, some details of which were revealed only last year when Lord John Dyson, a former UK High Court judge, published a damning 127-page report on the fraudulent tactics used to assess the 1995 Panorama interview, during which Diana famously commented, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” alluding to Camilla and Charles’ long-running affair. Diana also confirmed her own infidelity in the interview.

To provide the sensational seating as shown on the crown, Bashir first courted Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer. As Dyson’s report notes, during an initial meeting, the then largely unknown journalist presented Spencer with false bank statements purporting to show that several of his employees and Diana’s employees had accepted payments from a newspaper publisher, presumably to spying and reporting on their royal bosses. Spencer, as Dyson’s report explained, said he trusted Bashir because of his connection to the BBC and what appeared to be authentic bank statements, which he called an “absolute key”. The documents had a dual effect according to Tina Brown in Diana’s Chronicles: “Bashir simultaneously established his trustworthiness and credibility with Spencer and [later] strengthened Diana’s determination to keep everything she was doing a secret from people who would try to dissuade her.

It was later revealed that the statements were actually mocked up by a freelance graphic designer at Bashir’s request. “I mean, I was duped,” Spencer was quoted as saying in Dyson’s report.

According to Dyson’s report, it was because of Bashir’s successful scam that Spencer met his sister Diana. Once in contact with Diana, Bashir reportedly redoubled his manipulation efforts – fueling Diana’s paranoia with new false reports of insider betrayals. As reported by Telegraph, Bashir even claims this Prince William and Harryis a nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke had a relationship with Prince Charles by showing Diana a fake receipt for the abortion, which he claims was performed by the nanny. (Earlier this year, the BBC publicly apologized to Legge-Bourke for the “serious and lasting harm” caused by the false claims and agreed to pay her an undisclosed settlement.) “Bashir also told Diana that she should not is trusted [her friends] Catherine Soames, Kate Menzies, and Julia Samuel,,” wrote the royal biographer and ex Vanity Fair associate Sally Bedell Smith in the biography Diana in search of herself. “He probably thought all three women were independent as well as discreet and would have warned Diana not to cooperate with him.”

As depicted on The crown and included in Dyson’s report, Spencer began to doubt Bashir’s credibility after comparing contemporaneous notes from his first and second meetings with the journalist and finding small discrepancies. “I then immediately apologized to Diana for wasting her time,” Spencer said in the report, “and explained that I believed Bashir to be a fantasist or a fraud and told her why. I didn’t know if he was a liar or a fantasist, but I knew he was bad news in my opinion and that was the end of him for me.

But Diana did not listen to him. As Smith writes in Diana in Search of Herself “Bashir struck a nerve with Diana, who had long suspected that she was being spied on by the royal family.”