Diana was caught sunbathing NAKED on Kensington Palace rooftop by two builders who just 'bowed and left'
While Princess Diana was known for being the free-spirited royal who lived her life on her own terms, which often clashed with the norms and traditions of the royal family she had married into, a new book is all set to reveal that she was even more of a rebel than people know her to be.
During his research for his upcoming book, 'Kensington Palace: An Intimate Memoir from Queen Mary to Meghan Markle', which is releasing on May 14, British author Tom Quinn spoke to quite a number of Kensington palace insiders, which comprised of staff members and servants, who dished out several never-before-heard secrets of the royal family.
In an op-ed for Daily Mail, the author gave out some interesting details and incidents that his book is going to cover. One such instance was the fact that the People's Princess had the habit of sunbathing in the summers of the late 1980s and the early 1990s, often completely naked, on the rooftop of the palace, which had a garden.
Quinn said that as it would happen, Diana would at times become drowsy from the heat and forget that she was on the rooftop and unwittingly stand up, without suspecting that anyone could see her.
"There was one occasion, however, when a particular barrier was down and Diana found herself suddenly staring at two builders," Quinn wrote. "Before she could make a dive for her clothes, they both bowed deeply and turned away."
One anonymous footman told the author that the fact that the worker left the vicinity right away after being spotted, does not mean that she did not get ogled at some point. "They may have just been builders but they were gentlemen all the same," the servant said.
Since the incident was one-off, Diana remained positive that she should be able to enjoy considerable privacy on the rooftop and hence, continued to sunbathe. When helicopters flew over the palace, she was confident that the people in the choppers could only see her as an indistinct blob, and hence, she would often wave at them.
This continued till a member of her staff gently pointed out that many helicopters were fitted with high-resolution binoculars.
"In the five years until her death in 1997, her life there was a curious mix of the sedate and the frivolous. Like a naughty schoolgirl, she sometimes enjoyed throwing caution to the wind, breaking away from the restrictions of her life in ways that terrified her security staff — or her 'gaolers', as she jokingly referred to them," Quinn wrote.
Another palace employee told the author: "Diana always wanted to combine being a megastar — which is what she was in the last few years of her life — with being a completely anonymous person."
As a result, she often didn't adhere to the protocols she was supposed to follow. Sometimes, she would fail to alert her security staff that she was leaving the palace grounds. As a result, her security detail "would be frantically fanning out across the park or Kensington High Street, desperately hunting for their missing VIP."
Although she always apologized to her security officers, she maintained that it was her "own version of hide and seek."
"What she loved above all was to walk round the park while hiding her identity in drab clothes," one servant said. "She'd set off on her own, wearing dark glasses, and sit on a bench by the Round Pond, just watching passers-by. In many ways, despite her huge public profile, she wanted to be a private person."