Prince Harry reveals he feels guilty for not weeping publicly for his mother after her death.
The royal, then aged 12, only shed tears once – at Princess Diana’s private burial at her ancestral home at Althorp, Northants.
Harry, 38, tells ITV pal Tom Bradby in a candid 90-minute interview aired tomorrow: “Everyone knows where they were and what they were doing the night my mother died.
“I cried once, at the burial, and you know I go into detail about how strange it was and how actually there was some guilt that I felt and I think William felt as well, by walking around the outside of Kensington Palace.
“There were 50,000 bouquets of flowers to our mother, and there we were shaking people’s hands, smiling.”
Harry added: “I’ve seen the videos, right, I looked back over it all.
“And the wet hands that we were shaking, we couldn’t understand why their hands were wet, but it was all the tears that they were wiping away.
“Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum, and the two closest people to her, the two most loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment.”
The interview will be screened on ITV at 9pm tomorrow night, two days ahead of the official release of his controversial new book Spare.
Harry was aged just 12 and William 15 when Diana died in a Paris car crash in August 1997.
The interview, filmed at a house in Montecito, California, near the Sussexes’ home shortly before Christmas, will be watched carefully by Palace officials as well as a TV audience of millions.
Harry’s book includes a string of startling revelations about his life as well as brutal takedowns of members of his family, including Prince William and his wife Kate.
But it is the passages about his mum that are among the most emotional. In it he tells how he had initially believed his mother had faked her own death to escape Press intrusion into her life.
Harry reportedly wanted to cancel publication of the book during his visit to Britain for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June but later decided to press ahead.
He admits in the book he has spent the subsequent decades trying to find out exactly what happened on the night his mother died.
He even asked his chaffeur to drive through the Paris tunnel where his mother died at the 65mph her car had been travelling at before the crash that killed her, boyfriend Dodi Fayed and chauffeur Henri Paul.
Harry also claims his father Charles, now 74, didn’t hug him after coming to his bedside to explain that doctors had been unable to save Diana.
And he recalls the first time his then-girlfriend Meghan visited Diana’s final resting place at Althorp she kneeled next to the grave to ask for guidance.
