PRINCESS Diana’s dance teacher has recalled the heartbreaking moment the late royal broke down in tears during their lesson as she battled to save her marriage.
Anne Allan, then a dancer with the London City Ballet, was hired in 1981 to teach the Princess of Wales how to dance.
She spent the next nine years helping Diana on the dancefloor, building a close bond with the royal during that time.
And as well as using her lessons to pick up the skill of dancing, Diana also confided in Anne about difficulties in her personal life – including her struggle to save her marriage to Prince Charles, as he was then.
Anne has opened up about some of the most heartbreaking moments in a new memoir titled Dancing With Diana, as she recalled the time Diana told her she was desperate to make Charles happy.
“I do love him so and want to make him happy and to be proud of me as his wife,” Anne said Diana told her.
Within minutes, Diana was overcome with emotion and sobbing, Anne said, as she told her teacher: “You must think me awful”.
Things went from bad to worse for Diana, Anne said, as she opened up about Charles’ affair with Camilla Parker Bowles – now Queen Camilla.
“I know he is seeing Camilla again,” Anne said Diana told her.
“Am I expected to accept that, like the other Princesses of Wales before, one just turns a blind eye to husbands having a mistress! Why does he not love me?
“I really don’t understand. I have tried everything, I tried to conform to his wishes even though I don’t always agree.
“There is no affection between us, and I am always on my own. I just want to be loved.
“I can’t keep going on like this. They are really expecting me to just say nothing and keep going? How do I do that?!”
While Diana tried to concentrate on her dancing during her time with Anne, she struggled to contain herself as she opened up to the teacher about her “unbearable situation”.
“I haven’t seen Charles for weeks and he doesn’t want to talk to me,” Diana said, according to Anne.
“I thought he would come back to me, and we could work things out. How do I go on when I’m not wanted?”
Diana is also said to have told Anne that her biggest priority was “keeping her family together”, for the sake of sons William and Harry.
She apparently told Anne about her various attempts to rekindle things with Charles, including when she had set up a picnic in his favourite garden.
However, when Charles saw the table set up, he demanded a butler take everything in because he “doesn’t eat outside”, Anne said Diana had cried.
Elsewhere in the memoir, Anne claimed that Diana also spoke to her about the time she confronted Camilla about her relationship with Charles at a party in the 1980s.
“Camilla, I’d just like you to know that I know exactly what’s going on,” Diana is said to have told Camilla after finding her and Charles in a room with a group of other men.
“I know what’s going on between you and Charles and I just want you to know that.”
Camilla apparently replied that Diana had “all the men in the world” falling in love with her, as well as “two beautiful children”, adding: “What more could you want?”
“I want my husband,” Diana replied, simply, Anne remembered.
After the exchange with Camilla, Diana told Anne about the confrontation, and added: “I feel a tremendous shift, Anne, in myself”.
