Andy Webb’s upcoming book represents the culmination of extensive investigation into the Bashir scandal, featuring interviews with key figures, including Princess Diana’s brother and possibly Prince William, though Webb does not identify him by name.

The release of this book comes at an inconvenient time for the BBC. Titled “Dianarama: The Betrayal of Princess Diana,” it could bring renewed scrutiny to the broadcaster, which is already facing legal challenges from the President of the United States concerning a brief altered version of Donald Trump’s Capitol Hill address.

For Diana’s family, particularly her sons and the future King of Britain, this book promises to provide much-needed clarity on the Panorama interview that, according to Webb, sent Diana’s life down a perilous path.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Webb shared, “A close confidant of Prince William referred to the interview as a ‘wound that will not heal.'”

He elaborated, “The wound in question stems from the profound uncertainty about whether Diana’s life could have taken a different direction had the BBC acted differently.”

Webb asserts that he has pinpointed at least four crucial documents that have mysteriously vanished from the BBC archives, all of which relate to its investigation into Martin Bashir.

His track record with the BBC, which initially stonewalled his Freedom of Information requests, ‘leads me and, I would suggest, William to suspect there’s more to come’.

Until it is proven otherwise, the Royal Family ‘won’t be happy’, Mr Webb argues, adding it’s crucial for the BBC – that claimed to operate with ‘radical transparency’ under fallen Director General Tim Davie’s leadership – to come clean.

A new book about Princess Diana’s Panorama interview with Martin Bashir in 1995 could spell fresh trouble for the BBC that is currently fending off legal threats from US president Donald Trump. The late Princess of Wales, who died in a car crash in Paris 18 montsh after the interview aired, during her conversation with now-disgraced journalist Martin Bashir

But for Diana’s family, including her son and Britain’s future King, it will hopefully, finally, deliver some ‘real answers’ about the Panorama interview that set the Princess’s life on a ‘terribly dangerous course. In his 2021 statement about the Dyson inquiry’s findings, William said his mother was ‘failed not just by a rogue reporter, but by leaders at the BBC who looked the other way’

‘I make this reference in the book, but it’s too ironic for words that the BBC operates under a Royal Charter. 

‘Well, if the future King issuing the Royal Charter doesn’t trust Britain’s public broadcaster, there’s a big problem,’ Mr Webb continued. 

The Panorama interview certainly drew the ire of the Royal Family when it was first broadcast in 1995. 

The late Queen Elizabeth was so furious that she removed the BBC’s exclusive rights to the production of her annual Christmas broadcast, in what was seen as an act of revenge.

It was on this day, 30 years ago, that Diana sat down opposite Bashir for her Panorama interview that was initially hailed as a broadcasting landmark. 

Speaking about the breakdown of her marriage to King Charles, Princess Diana famously said, ‘there were three of us in the marriage, so it was a bit crowded’ and 20 million viewers, world over, collectively held their breath. 

Shortly after the Bafta-winning interview was aired, the Mail on Sunday revealed the BBC’s then-star reporter had forged bank statements to earn Diana’s trust – but that was only the tip of the iceberg. 

An internal inquiry spearheaded by the BBC’s former Director General Tony Hall, then head of news, cleared Bashir of any wrongdoing as Lord Hall ruled he was ultimately an ‘honest and honourable man’.

When he began investigating the scandal in 2007, Mr Webb felt that ‘one corner’ of it had already been exposed by the Mail’s report about Bashir’s forgeries ‘yet was generally ignored’. 

The cover of Andy Webb’s new book that lays bare the full extent of the Bashir scandal 

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Mr Webb (above) called the interview the ‘wound that will not heal’ for William, who was 13 when the Princess of Wales died 

It was that year that he submitted his first Freedom of Information request, asking to see all the documents related to Lord Hall’s inquiry. 

Despite being shut down, Mr Webb renewed his FOI request during lockdown on the 25th anniversary of Diana’s interview, explaining this time that he was working on a Channel 4 documentary about the subject. 

Days before the release of his 2020 Channel 4 documentary about Diana’s Panorama interview, Mr Webb finally received a tranche of documents about Bashir’s forgeries, including internal memos and reports.

On page 43 of the heavily-redacted 67-page PDF Mr Webb received was a note the former DG had allegedly prepared for his meeting with the BBC’s governors in 1996 that suggested it was Diana’s brother Earl Spencer who had shown Bashir the forged bank documents.

When Mr Webb reached out to Earl Spencer for comment, ‘he was outraged’ and declared: ‘I did no such thing.’

This was the turning point that ‘blew the lid off’ the cover up that began in 1996, Mr Webb said.  

After his conversation with Mr Webb, Diana’s brother approached the BBC’s newly-appointed Director General Tim Davie by email and recounted the extraordinarily unethical lengths Bashir went to secure his scoop. 

A polite acknowledgement of receipt followed, but ‘Spencer was not easily put off’, Mr Webb wrote in his new book Dianarama, exclusively serialised by the Daily Mail.

The book includes interviews with Diana’s brother Earl Spencer (above) 

Diana with her younger brother at Althorp House in Berkshire 

When a 900-world email from Mr Davie, which ‘bore every sign of having been composed by a team of lawyers, Mr Spencer couldn’t believe what he was reading.

‘Davie had written: “Unfortunately, the account you give does not accord with the account that Mr Bashir gave the BBC at the time.”’

Mr Spencer then supplied a meticulously recorded account of Bashir’s first meeting with Princess Diana at a Knightsbridge flat in London in September 1995 – including the astonishing falsehoods he peddled to fuel her paranoia and win her trust. 

Speaking about the BBC’s cover-up that began in 1996 and went on for a quarter of a century, Mr Webb said Tim Davie’s role in the ‘latter stages of this story raised huge, huge questions’. 

He suggested that ‘the fiction that was created in 1996’ under Lord Hall ‘survived under Davie’. 

Mr Webb, who embarks on his UK book tour this week, also revealed how Mr Davie signed off on over £1million of licence-fee-payers’ money to ‘stop me seeing some emails’ during a three-year legal contest. 

How and why would have been some of the ‘difficult questions’ that the former DG – whose tenure saw multiple scandals – would have to answer if he hadn’t ‘fallen over his own sword over Trumpgate’. 

The release of Mr Webb’s book comes less than two years before the BBC’s Royal Charter comes up for renewal. 

In an excerpt from Dianarama, serialised exclusively by the Daily Mail, Mr Webb noted that several ‘incriminating internal documents…mysteriously went missing’ during his dogged pursuit of the truth. 

In some cases, the BBC declined to reveal documents outright – including as recently as 2024, when the corporation refused to release the letter it received from Buckingham Palace ahead of the Panorama interview being aired on November 20, 1995. 

Prince William (left) and Prince Harry bowing their heads as Diana’s coffin was taken out of Westminster Abbey after her funeral in London in 1997

 Even the existence of the letter – which is understood to have come from the Queen’s office – was only confirmed in 10,000 pages of heavily redacted documents that the BBC finally released on a judge’s order. 

If true, it is not surprising that Prince William believes there is still more to the BBC’s ‘whitewash’ of the scandal.

But, said Mr Webb, it’s easy to forget what this story is really about when it’s buried under official paperwork. 

‘What happened to Diana is a matter of intense concern, interest and distress for her family. 

‘William is now 43 years of age – or seven years older than his mother was, when she died. 

His eldest son is 12. William was 13 when he watched this infamous interview go out on television. 

‘So, it’s getting into your head that this really matters, it matters to some living, breathing human beings.

‘When you look at the circumstances of what the BBC management knew at the time, and what they didn’t do, and you put yourself in the mind of a member of Diana’s family, like her brother Earl Spencer and, indeed, William – I thought it was important to highlight that.’