With Christmas just days, a story about the late Princess Diana’s dislike of the royal celebrations at Sandringham has resurfaced. She always preferred celebrating it in a “close-knit and simple way.”

According to Marie Claire, former royal butler Paul Burrell revealed that Diana had told her biographer Andrew Morton that Sandringham Christmases were “terrifying and so disappointing.” And because of this, she had decided she would rather spend it alone rather than be a part of them anymore.

Burrell worked with Diana during the last decade of her life and was still working for her when she died in a car crash in 1997. According to him, Diana could not stand the protocol of the royal palace and tried her best to fit in at Sandringham. But what disappointed her most was the endless timetables that she was expected to follow.

According to Burrell, Diana was supposed to be downstairs for breakfast, then for lunch in the dining room at 1 o’clock, at 5 PM for tea in the drawing room, and then they had to change again to go down for a drink before dinner at 8:15 PM. She found this schedule “relentless.”

Burrel further added, “The day flew by, yet it was all so regimented, and you always had to be dressed appropriately. Royal women were expected to change three or four times throughout each day,” he continued. “She felt trapped.”

He also claimed that Diana used to tell him that she would climb the walls at Sandringham because she didn’t fit in. “I don’t belong to that Victorian world. I want to be free of it.”

Burrell also revealed that after Prince Charles and Diana separated in 1992, she celebrated only two Christmases at Sandringham post it. But after the celebration of 1994, she felt she received an icy reception from the royal family, and this marked an end to her presence at the celebrations there.

The last two Christmases of her life were spent at her home in Kensington Palace, where her celebrations were actually “straightforward and never elaborate at all.” Diana would send her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, to join the royal family in Norfolk during the holidays. But, before sending them, she would make sure to have their own small celebration at Kensington Palace.

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
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Burrell also said that she would be alone on Christmas and start her day by exercising and then “sit at her desk for most of the day writing ‘Thank You’ letters for all the presents she had received.”

Despite spending such a happy day in isolation, Diana did not complain a bit as “that was the way she liked it.” According to People, her hairdresser had told the author of The Royals, Kitty Kelley, that she “hated going to Sandringham for Christmas.”

In fact, the royal biographer Ingrid Seward also claimed that Diana always used to leave the royal retreat as soon as possible. “When things were really not going at all well, she was to dread these royal family Christmases.”

Her former bodyguard, Ken Wharfe’s, revelation was further proof of the fact that Diana did not enjoy spending her time at Sandringham. According to People, he had revealed that she would confine herself to spending time in the kitchen with the chef or with people like him in the hope that time would pass by and she could get back to London.

Princess Diana did not enjoy celebrating with the royal family, and it is evident from everyone’s statements. She would have chosen to stay alone rather than spend her time there.