A Royal Romance

While Diana’s sisters Jane and Sarah landed jobs at Vogue when they went out into the working world, Diana decided that looking after children was all she really wanted to do, aside from going to London to share in the independent lives of her sisters and her friends there.

After relentlessly pressurising both of her parents Diana was allowed to share her mother’s Cadogan Square flat with two other girls, an old West Heath school pal Laura Greig, and Sophie Kimball, whom she had met and befriended on a Swiss skiing holiday.

She then took on various low-paid jobs as an apprentice ballet teacher, a house cleaner and a child careers before she went to work as a part-time assistant at the Young England kindergarten run by former West Heath girl Kay King, who later praised Diana’s “incredible ability” to get down to the children’s level.

Diana also worked part-time as a nanny for an agency called Occasional and Permanent Nannies, with the important stipulation that she only performed her duties in the smartest, safest areas of London, within easy reach of where she lived.

In July of 1979 Diana moved to 60 Coleherne Court, an exclusive flat in a mansion block on the borders of South Kensington and Chelsea found for her by her sister Sarah (who was working for Savills estate agents at the time). The £50,000 flat was a gift from her mother as a coming-of-age present and she shared it with three girlfriends.

It was a fun time for Diana, and while she attended a few country house parties she was happier sitting at home watching television or driving round London in her Mini Metro. Though she was reportedly quite flirtatious and had many male friends who would have liked to build a more intimate relationship with her, she kept them at arm’s length. It may have been that Diana felt she was special and destined for higher things, which as it happened were only just around the corner.

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