Princess Diana reportedly compared the country home she shared with Prince Charles to a prison
- Princess Diana reportedly compared Highgrove House to returning to prison.
- According to biographer Andrew Morton, the princess "loathed her country home."
- One reason was its close proximity to Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Princess Diana compared Highgrove House - the country home she shared with Prince Charles - to prison, according to her royal biography.
The Prince of Wales purchased the residence, near Tetbury, Gloucestershire, in 1980. Charles and Diana spent a lot of time there during the early years of their marriage in the 1980s.
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The residence was close to where Camilla Parker-Bowles lived at the time.
"But Charles' friends were not the only reason why she loathed her country home," Andrew Morton wrote in the 1992 biography, "Diana: Her True Story," according to The Express and Cheat Sheet. "She referred to her trips to their Gloucestershire home as 'a return to prison' and rarely invited her family or friends."
Morton added: "As [Diana's friend] James Gilbey said: 'She dislikes Highgrove. She feels that Camilla lives just down the road and regardless of any effort she puts into the house, she never feels it is her home."
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Morton's biography was written using secret interviews with Diana in 1991. The princess agreed to be interviewed at her Kensington Palace home by a friend of Morton's, under the condition that her involvement with the book would be kept a secret.
However, after the princess died in 1997, Morton released a revised version of the book: "Diana: Her True Story - In Her Own Words," and for the first time admitted that the biography had been created "with the full co-operation and input" from the princess.
In 2017 some of the tapes were aired for the first time in the National Geographic documentary "Diana: In Her Own Words."
Highgrove is today an official residence of Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.
According to the Prince of Wales' official website, he chose the residence in Gloucestershire "because of its easy access to London, Wales, and other parts of Britain including the Western counties where the Duchy has most of its properties."