The days preceding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on August 31, 1997, had been marked by controversy. She had taken the highly unusual step of giving an interview to Le Monde, the French newspaper, during which she had talked about her humanitarian work and her campaign against landmines.
Le Monde quoted her as saying that Tony Blair’s government, which had come to power five months earlier, was “going to do terrific work” on the issue, unlike the previous Conservative cabinet, which had been “hopeless”.
There was uproar. The Tories were livid, Labour was delighted and constitutionalists were incredulous. Kensington Palace issued a denial. Le Monde stuck by its story.
Now Annick Cojean, 68, the journalist, has disclosed the background to the article entitled The Big-Hearted Princess, which caused a four-day furore, but then became part of Diana’s legacy. One of the other quotes from it, about her happiness at “trying to help the most vulnerable people in society”, features on her memorial at Althorp, the seat of her Spencer family.
“I was deeply moved when I saw that,” said Cojean, who added that her meeting with Diana left the impression that she was looking for an international humanitarian role after her divorce from Charles the previous year.
Cojean was speaking after the publication of a graphic novel — Diana, Confidences d’Une Princesse Rebelle (Diana: Confessions of a Rebel Princess) — about her encounter with the princess. It is written by Sophie Couturier and illustrated by Sandrine Revel.
“The story is unique, incredible and no one knows about it,” Couturier said.
In the summer of 1997, Cojean, an eminent journalist, had been asked to interview global figures about a memorable photograph of them. Among the subjects were Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa and Yasser Arafat, along with Phan Thị Kim Phuc, who had become the image of the war in Vietnam when she was photographed in 1972, aged nine, fleeing naked from a napalm attack.
When Cojean said she wanted to ask for an interview with Diana too, “my editor-in-chief fell off his chair”, she said. Le Monde was an earnest Parisian daily uninterested in frivolous British princesses, he said. She insisted, explaining that Diana was an important personality and a symbol of feminine emancipation with a serious message to convey. He capitulated, largely because “he was convinced that I would never get the interview”.
He had good grounds for imagining that the idea would come to nothing. Diana spoke to journalists but mostly off the record. Sit-down interviews were very rare.
Nevertheless, she agreed to see Le Monde “to my great surprise”, Cojean said. At the time, Diana was being pursued by tabloids over her love life, notably her relationship with Dodi Fayed. Cojean said her proposal was different. It offered Diana a chance to talk about her missions, beliefs and role after her divorce. She may also have been flattered by her inclusion in a series that included figures such as Gorbachev and Walesa, Cojean suggested.
Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed in St Tropez in 1997
PATRICK BAR/NICE MATIN VIA AP
“Perhaps, it was because it was a French newspaper too,” Cojean said. “It was a step aside. It gave her more freedom.
“I also think that my letter to her came at a period of her life when she was feeling good. She was at the summit of her beauty and glory. She knew that she was liked for herself, not because she was a member of the royal family, because of her husband or her title, but for what she was.”
Cojean says it was her “easiest” interview that summer. Diana was “cheerful, natural and spontaneous”.
The journalist arrived at Kensington Palace in June 1997 with a clutch of photos from which she asked Diana to pick one to be the focus of the article. She knelt on the floor beside Diana as they went through them. “I was on my knees and we were touching. I was thinking: ‘I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s not the protocol’.” Diana did not seem worried. She chose a photograph from 1996 of her holding a young cancer patient in Lahore who died shortly afterwards.
The journalist Annick Cojean
LAURENT VITEUR/GETTY IMAGES
She went on to speak about her proximity with ordinary people “whoever they are”. “That is why I annoy certain circles. Because I am much closer to people at the bottom than at the top, the latter do not forgive me.”
She also complained about royal stuffiness, saying that “from the moment I came into this family, nothing, of any sort, could be done naturally”, and also about the “ferocious” British press. “I think in my position any sane person would have left long ago,” she said. “But I cannot. I have my sons.”
Cojean said Diana’s image changed “radically” among the Parisian elite after the interview. “People realised that this was a woman who had something to say who deserved to be heard.”
On the other side of the Channel, reactions to her praise of Labour and criticism of the Conservatives over their policies on landmines were intense. Tory MPs accused her of dragging the monarchy into the political fray. There were calls for her to be “reprimanded”. Lord Blake of Braydeston, the constitutionalist, said it was “quite the most extraordinary thing I have ever heard from a member of the royal family”.
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Kensington Palace issued a statement that read: “The Princess made no such criticism.”
Cojean insisted that she had, although the journalist conceded that its inclusion in the article had “tormented” her. Cojean had sent the quotes she intended to publish to Michael Gibbins, Diana’s private secretary, who had cleared them. But the one about the “hopeless” Conservatives was a last minute addition, she said. Gibbins never saw nor approved it.
“I was re-reading the article late and on my own in Le Monde and I thought there was something missing. It was what she had said about the landmines. I hesitated for ten minutes. I thought: ‘Am I betraying [if I include it]?
“Then I thought I could do it anyway. I was not betraying [her]. She said it to me,” Cojean said. “I added those four words and wow, what a controversy. Oh my God.”
Colin Tebbutt, Diana’s one-time minder, later told the Daily Mail that she had delayed her return to the UK because of Conservative anger over the interview. She died during that delay.
One of the other quotes from the interview about her “happiness” at “ trying to help the most vulnerable people in society” is on Diana’s memorial at Althorp
STOP PRESS MEDIA/ALAMY
Cojean had called Gibbins asking to speak to Diana. She wanted to explain herself. He agreed, Cojean says, but added she would have to wait until the following Monday, when the princess, who was in France with Fayed, was due back in London. The conversation never occurred. In the early hours of Sunday, Diana and Fayed were killed in a crash by the Seine in Paris when their driver lost control of their Mercedes trying to escape from paparazzi on motorcycles.
“I was devastated,” said Cojean, who found herself in the spotlight as media outlets from around the world called to speak to her as the last journalist to have interviewed Diana.
The interview itself is a “joyous” memory” she said, although Diana’s death and the tumult that followed was anything but. She said she put it all to one side for years, until “Sophie [Couturier] forced me to plunge back into it.”
Now, if she would like the article to be remembered for anything, it is for Diana’s self-portrait, engraved on the memorial at Althorp. “Nothing brings me more happiness than trying to help the most vulnerable people in society. It is a goal and an essential part of my life — a kind of destiny. Whoever is in distress can call on me. I will come running wherever they are.”
date:2026-02-08 18:05:00
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