Latest news with #Panorama
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Princess Diana Called Her Royal Wedding to Prince Charles the 'Worst Day of My Life'
Princess Diana Called Her Royal Wedding to Prince Charles the 'Worst Day of My Life' originally appeared on Parade. It's been 44 years since Princess Diana wed Prince Charles, and while every girl dreams that their special day will be magical, according to the princess herself, her royal wedding was actually the "worst day" of her life. The truth behind Diana's wedding day despair emerged in a 2017 documentary called Diana: In Her Own Words. The film uses audio from multiple interviews she conducted in 1991 to reveal intimate details about the 'People's Princess.' Prior to her royal wedding on July 29, 1981, Diana desperately sought guidance from her two older sisters LadySarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, hoping they might help her escape what she already sensed would be a disaster. "I went upstairs, had lunch with my sisters who were there, and I said, 'I can't marry him. I can't do this. This is absolutely unbelievable,'" Diana recalled in the documentary, per Today. "And they were wonderful and said, 'Well, bad luck, Duch. Your face is on the tea towel, so you're too late to chicken out.'" The primary source of Diana's wedding day grudge stemmed from Prince Charles' ongoing relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, who attended the ceremony despite being the other woman in what Diana would later describe as a 'crowded marriage.' During their honeymoon, Diana's worst fears about Camilla's continued presence in Charles' life were confirmed when she discovered a personal gift. "So I said, 'Camilla gave you those, didn't she?'" Diana recounted, referring to a pair of cufflinks featuring two intertwined Cs that Camilla had given Charles. "He said, 'Yes, so what's wrong? They're a present from a friend.' And boy, did we have a row. Jealousy, total jealousy." The woman Diana was referring to was, of course, Charles's long-term love, now Queen Camilla, with whom he carried on an affair that would contribute to one of the most famous divorces in royal history. "It was such a good idea, the two Cs," Diana added. "But it wasn't that clever." Diana's pain over the love triangle became even more public when she spoke candidly about it in her interview for BBC One's Panorama in 1995, delivering one of her most memorable quotes. "There were three of us in the marriage, so it was a bit crowded," she said, finally giving voice to what many had suspected for years. The audio recordings from the documentary captured another heartbreaking statement that revealed how hopeless Diana felt about her marriage. "If I could write my own script, I would have my husband go away with his woman and never come back," she said, expressing a wish that would tragically come true. A few years following the interview, Princess Diana died on August 31, 1997, after sustaining injuries from a car crash in Paris. Princess Diana Called Her Royal Wedding to Prince Charles the 'Worst Day of My Life' first appeared on Parade on Jul 29, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 29, 2025, where it first appeared.
NDTV
a day ago
- Entertainment
- NDTV
The Charles-Diana Wedding Story, An Affair, And A Revenge Dress That Changed Fashion
Forty-four years ago, on this day, July 29 in 1981 Lady Diana Spencer walked down the aisle at St. Paul's Cathedral to marry Prince Charles in what was famously dubbed the 'wedding of the century'." With millions of people watching around the globe, it looked like a real-life fairytale. But behind the pomp and public adoration was a marriage that would soon crack under pressure – and a scandal that would make global headlines. 'There Were Three Of Us in This Marriage' Diana discovered early in her marriage that Prince Charles was still emotionally entangled with his former flame, Camilla Parker Bowles. Despite being married to Diana, Charles resumed his affair with Camilla in 1986, reported Vogue. In her now-famous 1995 interview with BBC's Panorama, Diana addressed the elephant in the room with a single line that made headlines worldwide, 'There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.' The Revenge Dress On June 29, 1994, the very evening Prince Charles publicly confessed to his affair in a Jonathan Dimbleby documentary, Diana made a surprise appearance at a Vanity Fair party in a slinky, off-the-shoulder black Christina Stambolian dress. According to People, she had owned the dress for three years but had never worn it. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Princess Di (@ladydirevengelooks) The dress was her backup option after a Valentino look she originally planned to wear was leaked to the press. The now-iconic black dress quickly became known as the 'revenge dress,' a term still used today to describe a fashion choice that signals power and poise post-breakup. By 1992, the cracks in the royal marriage had widened. British Prime Minister John Major announced their formal separation that year. The couple finalised their divorce in 1996. Divorce, Tragedy, And Charles' Remarriage Just a year after the divorce, Diana tragically died in a car crash in Paris, while the press was following her. Three years later, in 1999, a French investigation found that driver of the Mercedes-Benz W140, Henri Paul, lost control of the vehicle at high speed while intoxicated by alcohol and under the effects of prescription drugs, and concluded that 'he was solely responsible for the crash'. However, Charles continued to face public scrutiny, especially over his long-standing relationship with Camilla. Eventually, he married her in 2005, turning a once-controversial affair into a royal marriage. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Royal Family (@theroyalfamily) The contrast between July 29, 1981, and June 29, 1994, couldn't be sharper. One was the day Diana became a princess. The other was the day she reclaimed her power – wordlessly, through fashion.
Spectator
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Ted Heath deserves to be remembered for more than his blemishes
For anyone born as I was, in the seventies, Edward Heath – who died 20 years ago this week – was a frequent presence in the news, and not always for the best of reasons. He was the silver-haired, curmudgeonly ex-prime minister nursing an implacable rage against his successor Margaret Thatcher, the cabinet colleague who'd ousted, then eclipsed him. Against her monetarist policies he railed, perhaps justly, though in a way that seemed at times bitingly personal. On global issues, with which he much concerned himself, Heath often appeared to be defending the indefensible. The tyrant Saddam Hussein he described as an 'astute person, a clever person'; he was openly against Western intervention in Bosnia, and came close to being a no-bones apologist for a brutal communist regime in China with whom he had, it was said, opaque business links. A confirmed bachelor, seemingly asexual, Heath cut an isolated figure, fuming in the wilderness, all too often reviled by the party he'd once led. How had this man ever become prime minister? The picture he painted of himself, it turned out, didn't do him justice, because to know something of Edward Heath, his beliefs and their formation, is to gain increasing respect for him. Heath had once seemed the great hope of conservatism, the Balliol-educated son of a Kent builder who would lead the party away from its stuffy, class-ridden image and make it fit for the modern age. The Mirror called him 'a new kind of Tory leader…who has fought his way to the top by guts, ability and political skill.' The Panorama programme pushed him as 'the man for those Conservatives who think the party needs a 'tiger in its tank.'' Even Marcia Williams, political secretary to opponent Harold Wilson, gushed about Heath's 'clean and shining silver hair, well-tended and suntanned face, immaculate blue suit and tie.' Yesterday's man once looked like tomorrow's saviour. There seem, in fact, to have been two distinct Edward Heaths – before and after he became party leader. In his Oxford days, he'd been President of the Oxford Union and head of the Conservative Association, attracting plaudits wherever he went. He'd visited Spain during the Civil War and travelled widely in Germany, attending a Nazi rally. There he saw Hitler speak and met Goebbels, Goering and Himmler, returning from the experience an ardent anti-appeaser. As artillery officer in the Second World War, he'd fought bravely through France and the low countries, described by one admiring major as 'the most capable officer I met in any department during the four years in which I had command.' In 1946, Heath attended the Nuremberg Trials, and became, ever after, a convinced Europhile: 'My generation did not have the option of living in the past; we had to work for the future…Only by working together right across our continent had we any hope of creating a society which would uphold the true values of European civilisation.' Finally, as PM, he got his wish, taking us into Europe on New Year's Day 1973. Many, seeing the wholesale dismantling of that legacy, will surely continue to feel that he was right. Certainly, he had legions of admirers in his early days. Elected as MP for Bexley in 1950, he was promoted under Eden a few years later, becoming, in Lord Chancellor David Kilmuir's description, 'the most brilliant Chief Whip of modern times…the most promising of the new generation of Conservatives.' Even Tony Benn rolled over for Heath: 'How you manage to combine such a friendly manner,' he wrote, 'with such an iron discipline is a source of respectful amazement to us all.' With his classical conducting and his yachting – the latter of which he excelled at, winning two international cups – Heath had real hinterland too. 'He changed the scale of my thinking,' said one colleague who worked for him. 'He is what I would like to be.' But it was as leader and then PM that his limitations became clear. 'Gone,' as minister Ian Gilmour put it, 'was the genial, human and successful Chief Whip and in his place…was a brusque and dour leader of the party.' In speeches, Heath was leaden and uninspiring, forever torturing the House with turgid, fact-laden addresses. His honesty and integrity were acknowledged, but party members sniped about his social background (his voice was almost comically posh and plodding, though the 'ow' sounds gave him away). They also speculated darkly and ad nauseam about his 'confirmed bachelor' status ('The voters of Aldershot,' wrote Julian Critchley, 'evidently much preferred dull wives to no wives at all.') Curt and brusque, with a deadpan humour too subtle for many and an intolerance of dissent, Heath made needless enemies among MPs and party members. What stands out, though, is the loyalty and affection many close colleagues went on feeling towards this awkward, bloody-minded man. 'I don't know what it is – it's a mystery to me,' said Willie Whitelaw. 'I only know I trust him more than I've ever trusted anyone.' Having won a surprise election victory in 1970, Heath, a meticulous planner, arrived with the boldest of intentions, speaking of 'a change so radical, a revolution so quiet and yet so total that it will go far beyond the programme for a Parliament.' Yet his free-market, non-interventionist aims quickly hit the rocks. Soon he was bailing out companies and, amidst an endless barrage of walkouts and work-to-rules, caving into union demands like the best of them. Following two miners' strikes, a compulsory 'three-day week' to conserve energy, and an eye-watering five 'states of emergency' in four years, Heath went to the country in 1974, losing by a wafer to Harold Wilson. When he lost another election later that year, it was clear to everyone except Heath himself that it was time for change. Enter Margaret Thatcher, and the Great Sulk began. At conference after conference, Heath lambasted her policies, all attempts at a rapprochement scotched by him. He denounced her to the press as a 'traitor' and at one public event, presented with a chocolate image of her face, reportedly picked up a knife and stabbed it into splinters, to the glee of onlooking hacks. In an open letter to the Times, his biographer and onetime acolyte George Hutchinson laid into him: 'You are already estranged from a number of old friends…You are in danger of losing the goodwill and respect of the party.' Heath, as so often, sailed on regardless. Yet as he did so, his real achievements – taking us into Europe, the abolition of Resale Price Maintenance – seemed to recede on the horizon. Heath may now be the forgotten man – widely considered a failed prelude to Thatcherism – yet this is unjust. What the electorate could embrace in the eighties – after a decade of industrial woe, an IMF bail-out and the Winter of Discontent – was miles on from what they'd have swallowed a decade before. As Ian Gilmour put it: 'To attack Ted Heath for not having behaved like Margaret Thatcher is little more sensible than to say that the First World War could have been won more cheaply by using the methods of the second.' Meanwhile, his term in office has lessons for today's bunch of leaders. Kemi Badenoch, in her great policy-purdah, might recall Heath's rigorous planning and lofty aims for national renewal – all torpedoed, within weeks, by the intransigence of actual, unforeseen events. Keir Starmer could reflect on the words of Enoch Powell (probably Heath's deadliest foe) about the perils of abandoning core policies: 'Does my right hon. Friend not know that it is fatal for any Government or party or person to seek to govern in direct opposition to the principles on which they were entrusted with the right to govern?' As for Heath himself, he deserves, perhaps, more credit than he's customarily given. The smouldering resentment of his later years too often undermined what was at times a formidable, even inspirational career. As Labour MP Denis Macshane pointed out, he had, by the end of it all, 'made and lived more history than any other British politician in active service.' The last word, though, surely goes to Philip Ziegler, his official biographer: 'He was a great man, but his blemishes, though by far less considerable, were quite as conspicuous as his virtues, and it is too often by his blemishes that he is remembered.'
CTV News
14-07-2025
- CTV News
Toddler struck and killed by vehicle in Surrey
The scene of a fatal crash in Surrey is seen on Sunday, July 13. A three-year-old girl has died after being struck by a vehicle in Surrey on Sunday night. The collision appears to have happened near the entrance of a townhouse complex near 64th Avenue and 138 Street in the Panorama neighbourhood. Police say they were called to the area around 8:15 p.m. 'Our officers arrived and BCHS paramedics were administering lifesaving medical intervention to a young child, but tragically, the three-year-old girl died,' said Staff Sgt. Lindsey Houghton of the Surrey Police Service. A crowd of very distraught people, including what appeared to be the child's family, gathered in the complex. 'We know that, sadly, the child was hit in the roadway. Investigators are trying to piece together, based on witness accounts, based on CCTV and dash cam footage, the exact series of events that led up to this.' said Houghton. The cause of the collision remains under investigation. 'The driver is an adult male and remained at scene and is co-operating with the investigation. There's no indication at this point there's any criminality behind the collision,' said Houghton. Police say at this early stage, investigators do not believe that speed or impairment were contributing factors. The area has since fully reopened to traffic. Houghton says these kinds of tragedies are devastating to the entire community. 'These take a significant emotional toll on people who are there and on first responders, you know, from paramedics to firefighters to our investigators on the police side that deal with sometimes dozens of these in a career, let alone a year, the emotional toll adds up, and these are very distressing calls for all of us to go to and investigate,' said Houghton. He's reminding drivers to be particularly careful during the summer months when the days are long, the weather is nice, and more kids play outside. 'That sometimes brings those kids into conflict with vehicles. You know, whether the kids are on foot or on bikes, you know, we want people, if they're driving, slow down, know that there's going to be a lot of kids out there enjoying the summer evenings. And we want parents and kids to be mindful that these streets are busy,' said Houghton. Police are asking any witnesses to the collision or anyone who may have any information, including CCTV or dashcam footage, to call them at 604-599-0502.
BBC News
07-07-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Gloucestershire trust has resolved midwife shortage, boss says
The chief executive of a hospital trust where the maternity services have been ranked as "inadequate" since 2022 has said it now employs more midwives than ever McNamara, who leads Gloucestershire Hospitals Trust, said its maternity services had been "a real issue but a real focus" since he took up the post in January are three maternity units in Gloucestershire and, since 2022, one has been partially shut and another entirely shut, both due to midwife shortages. Mr McNamara said the trust's midwife shortage had been "resolved" and that a health needs assessment was being carried out to determine local demand for maternity services, including the closed units. In June, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced a national investigation into maternity care in England, listing Gloucestershire as one of "the trusts of greatest concern".Women can give birth in Stroud but there is no postnatal care available there, while the entire Aveta Birth Unit in Cheltenham is McNamara joined the trust shortly before its maternity service failures, including maternal deaths being twice the national average, were highlighted on the BBC's investigative documentary show Panorama."Last year, we were in a very precarious position when it came to the number of midwives," Mr McNamara said."We've resolved that issue, we now have more midwives than we ever have done in the service but there's more work to do with some other staff groups." Mr McNamara said midwives were "being spread too thinly" so had been "consolidated" at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital in Gloucester, which has the county's only fully open maternity unit."I recognise that's disappointing for the community but what I have been clear on is I don't want to compromise safety at the expense of choice," he said the health needs assessment, when it is finished in the autumn, would help to find out what is required from the trust's maternity services over the next five to 10 years.
