SUE REID: So why DID researchers for Harry’s new memoir quiz me about Diana’s

On the day Princess Diana was laid to rest in September 1997, her 12-year-old-son Harry walked behind his mother’s cortege as it travelled past the weeping crowds lining London‘s streets.

A quarter of a century later, the image of that young boy remains imprinted on the public’s consciousness, and Prince Harry says he has never forgotten the traumatic experience. ‘Before I knew it, I found myself with a suit on and a black tie . . . I was part of it,’ he has said.

In another interview in 2017, he added: ‘My mother had just died. I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television. I don’t think any child should be asked to do what I did — under any circumstances.’

It is a moment Harry is sure to revisit in his eagerly awaited ghost-written memoir, due to be published next Tuesday.

On the day Princess Diana was laid to rest in September 1997, her 12-year-old-son Harry walked behind his mother’s cortege as it travelled past the weeping crowds lining London’s streets

A quarter of a century later, the image of that young boy remains imprinted on the public’s consciousness, and Prince Harry says he has never forgotten the traumatic experience

Entitled Spare — a reference to the Prince’s secondary place in the royal pecking order, behind the ‘heir’, his brother William — it is expected to explore in detail Harry’s thoughts about his emotional role at Diana’s funeral and, it appears, much else.

Reports in the British Press in recent days have suggested the 38-year-old Prince will also examine the key events leading up to that terrible night in August 1997 when his mother died with her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, after a car crash in Paris. And I have good reason to believe them.

The world has always been told it was a ‘tragic accident’ that occurred as the couple, following dinner at the Ritz hotel, hurtled through Paris in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes to their secret love nest near the Champs-Elysees.

But researchers for Harry’s memoir have contacted many of those who remember — or were otherwise connected to — the crash in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel. These include eyewitnesses, French police who attended the scene and journalists — including me — who have investigated in great detail how and why Diana came to die.

The official thesis, rubber-stamped by French and Scotland Yard investigations and later at a public British inquest, is that the crash was the result of ‘gross negligence’ by the Ritz’s intoxicated chauffeur, Henri Paul, who was speeding to escape moped-riding paparazzi tailgating the Mercedes, trying to photograph the Princess and her Egyptian lover.

It is a moment Harry is sure to revisit in his eagerly awaited ghost-written memoir, due to be published next Tuesday

Entitled Spare — a reference to the Prince’s secondary place in the royal pecking order, behind the ‘heir’, his brother William — it is expected to explore in detail Harry’s thoughts about his emotional role at Diana’s funeral and, it appears, much else

Diana, of course, was the most famous woman in the world. She was then aged 36 and her face was on the front of virtually every glossy magazine and newspaper across the globe as the media covered the minute details of her blossoming romance with film producer Dodi.

He was the son of Mohamed Al Fayed, the Egyptian-born multi-millionaire who then owned London’s luxury department store Harrods, and was a man the Royal Family distrusted and disliked. That summer, rumours were rife that Diana and Dodi were about to get engaged. Reportedly, in evidence that emerged at Diana’s inquest, Prince Philip had privately dubbed Dodi an ‘oily bed-hopper’, a comment which had only added to the media frenzy.

Recently divorced after her famously unhappy marriage to Prince Charles, Diana had arrived in Paris on a private jet with Dodi just ten hours before the crash, following a Mediterranean cruise when paparazzi had captured them kissing on Mohamed Al Fayed’s yacht, Jonikal.

Later that day Diana was due to return to Britain to see her sons, who were holidaying with the Queen and Prince Charles at Balmoral.

The final haunting picture of Diana shows her sitting beside Dodi in the back of the Mercedes, after they had left the Ritz via the back door in a failed ploy to avoid photographers.

In the picture, Diana is twisting her head to peer out of the rear window to check if the car is being tailed. In the front is the couple’s bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, who would be the sole survivor of the crash. At the wheel, chauffeur Henri Paul — looking alert and clear-eyed — was to die instantly moments later.

Reports in the British Press in recent days have suggested the 38-year-old Prince will also examine the key events leading up to that terrible night in August 1997 when his mother died with her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, after a car crash in Paris

What happened in the two minutes…