Princess Diana Didn't Want to Move Away From England, Butler Claims

File Photo Showing Diana, The Princess Of Wales, In London With Her Butler, Paul Burrell, In 1994

(Image credit: Photo by Antony Jones / Getty)

published 30 January 2023

Prince Harry has made the choices he felt were best for him in recent years: namely, leaving the U.K. and speaking out about life in the Royal Family via a Netflix docuseries, a memoir, and various TV interviews.

But according to his late mother Princess Diana's former butler, this is not the path the princess would have chosen for herself.

"I think he’s convinced himself that this is the way his mother would want him to go but I could counsel him with that and say, 'your mother was a huge supporter of the Royal Family. She was very proud of you, Harry, being part of that family, and your brother,'" Paul Burrell tells Marie Claire on behalf of Slingo.

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"'She always supported the monarchy, she was proud to be a royal princess too. Even when she died she was still a princess—Diana, Princess of Wales—and she wanted to continue to support the Crown in anything she did.

"'There is a huge difference between your mother’s work and what she wanted in [her] life and yours. Just because she wanted to have a bolthole in Malibu in California to take you and your brother on vacation once or twice a year isn’t to say she was about to abandon the country.'"

With all that said, these claims from Burrell actually contradict ones he previously made in 2003.

At the time, the A Royal Duty author implied that Diana wanted to make a new life for herself in California.

"A lovely house … saw all the plans for it. It was going to be in Malibu," he said.

"I saw the plans. We sat on the floor, spread out all the maps and the layout of the house.

"She said, 'This is our new life, just won't it be great, think of the lifestyle the boys—nobody's judgmental here in America, you don't have the class system, you don't have the establishment.'"

Of course, it's likely we'll never know what Diana's plans really were, since she tragically passed away in 1997.

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Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.