THE NEW MUSEUM IN PARIS. PINAULT MUSEUM, Bourse de Commerce, Paris.

 

A Self-Styled ‘Troublemaker’ Creates a Different Paris Museum

 

Contemporary art owned by the billionaire François Pinault is displayed beneath the rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce and frescoes of a colonialist past.

 

Roger Cohen

By Roger Cohen

May 25, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/arts/paris-bourse-de-commerce-francois-pinault.html

 

PARIS — François Pinault, the French billionaire, has never had much time for convention. “Avoid the paths already trodden,” has been his motto. Bored with acquiring Impressionist or Cubist works with surefire credentials, he said to himself four decades ago: “It’s impossible that we have become so stupid today that there are no human beings alive capable of creating tomorrow’s masterpieces.”

 

The fruits of that conviction are now on display in a contemporary art museum that opened in Paris on Saturday under the cupola of the Bourse de Commerce. With the Louvre to one side and the Pompidou Center to the other, this upstart in the cultural life of Paris combines tradition and modernity.

 

Once a grain exchange, the light-filled building has undergone a $170 million redevelopment conceived by the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who previously worked with Pinault at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Ando installed a 108-foot-diameter concrete cylinder inside the central rotunda, creating a core display area while retaining the framework of the original.

 

“A palimpsest of French history,” as Martin Bethenod, the museum’s director, put it.

 

No layer of the palimpsest has been concealed. Restored 19th-century frescoes beneath the dome illustrate the global commerce of the time. Titled “Triumphal France,” they amount to a primer in the demeaning stereotypes of a Eurocentric colonized world where white traders did business with bare-chested African warriors.

 

The juxtaposition with the many works in the galleries below by Black American artists, including David Hammons and Kerry James Marshall, is potent. Their pieces, driven by reflection on the grotesqueness and lasting wounds of racism, seem charged by the setting.

 

Transience is a theme. Nothing lasts, yet nothing is entirely gone. At the center of the museum’s initial exhibition stands a wax replica of the 16th-century Giambologna statue “The Abduction of the Sabine Women,” three writhing figures intertwined. Created by the Swiss artist Urs Fischer, it was set alight at the museum’s opening on Saturday and will burn for six months, leaving nothing behind.

 

So a high mannerist masterpiece becomes an elaborate giant candle: Sic transit gloria mundi. The Bourse de Commerce itself has been rented from Paris City Hall on a 50-year lease — a reminder that the museum’s life span may not be eternal. Ando’s cylinder is designed so that it can be removed once the lease expires.

 

Pinault, 84, a self-styled “troublemaker,” has always been more interested in disruption than permanence.

 

Born in rural Brittany, he went on to parlay a small timber business into a $42 billion diversified luxury-goods conglomerate, including brands like Gucci and Saint Laurent. I asked him about time passing. “Well, I am like everyone: As you grow older, that issue gnaws at you a little, but I am not obsessed by the time that may be left to me,” he said in an interview. “I hope it will be as long as possible.”

 

How, he asked, can anyone take himself for important, confronted by the sweep of history? “Humility must be worked on with a pumice stone every day,” he said. “The ego is something that grows if you don’t apply weed killer.”

 

Behind him in his office at the Bourse de Commerce hangs “SEPT.13, 2001,” a work in black and white by the Japanese artist On Kawara. It is a reminder that the unimaginable can happen — that as Victor Hugo put it, “Nothing is more imminent than the impossible.” Yet life continues nonetheless.

 

“The ego is something that grows if you don’t apply weed killer,” said François Pinault, the luxury goods billionaire whose collection is on show at the Bourse de Commerce.

 

For Pinault, the project represents a long-held ambition to house some of his more than 10,000 works by artists including Cy Twombly, Cindy Sherman, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Marlene Dumas in a Paris museum. That effort began about 20 years ago with plans, later aborted, to take over a disused Renault car factory in the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt.

 

Although Sherman’s work is on prominent display — including a haunting photograph of a platinum-blonde woman, back turned, standing on a deserted American highway with her suitcase beside her in a shadowy half-light — the exhibition does not dwell on the giants of the Pinault Collection, as if the main aim were to jolt Parisians emerging from months of coronavirus lockdown with an injection of the new and little known in France.

 

Pinault said he had met David Hammons, a generally reclusive artist who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s, more than 30 years ago. Hammons learned that Pinault was the uneducated son of a peasant from a small Breton village. “He said we were alike, and I burst out laughing and told him, ‘Well, not exactly!’”

 

So was an unlikely friendship born. Its fruit is the more than 25 Hammons works on show at the Bourse de Commerce.

 

But what of those murals glorifying European colonization, with Christopher Columbus sweeping down from the sky in a caravel to find half-naked Native Americans? “We were convinced for a long time that we constituted civilization, the most evolved people,” Pinault said. “I never accepted that.” In the frescoes, he added, was “the beginning of global commerce, but dominated by Europe and France” — in short, “everything that a David Hammons detests.”

 

When the artist was shown a video of the frescoes, and giant antique maps tracing post-slavery trade routes dominated by European navies, he asked that his “Minimum Security” installation, inspired by a visit to death row at San Quentin State Prison, be placed against this backdrop. The squeaking and clanging of a cell door seems to carry the echo of centuries of oppression.

 

“Some will criticize us and say it’s shameful,” Pinault said. “We could have hidden the fresco — you can always hide something, that is cancel culture. And here, a great African-American artist said, ‘Don’t hide it.’”

 

Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the Pinault Collection’s chief executive, said: “When you show it, that does not mean you approve it. This was the image of trade at that moment, and you can’t think yesterday with the mind of today.”

 

Art is provocation. With almost Duchamp-like playfulness, Hammons challenges the viewer to think again, as with “Rubber Dread,” deflated inner tubes woven into dreadlocks. He reimagines detritus.

 

Kerry James Marshall, another Black artist whom Pinault has collected for years, seems to upend a whole Western tradition — Goya’s “Maya” or Manet’s “Olympia,” — with an untitled painting of a Black man, naked but for his socks, lying on a bed with a sidelong gaze, a Pan-African flag coyly covering his genitals.

 

Pinault said that his museum would not add much to Paris, but perhaps as a private institution it could move faster while the committees at state-owned museums pondered. “So perhaps you have a collection of things that would not otherwise be here.” Perhaps, yes. He was being modest.

 

He described himself as a restless nonconformist: “My roots are under the soles of my shoes.” When life presents something important enough to entice you into a journey, he suggested, “you have to take your suitcase, like that woman beside the road in the Cindy Sherman photograph — my favorite.”

 

He was 19 when he left Brittany for the first time and came to Paris. He enlisted in the army and went to Algeria, where war was raging. It was 1956. A parachutist, he was ordered to comb through villages looking for Algerian rebels fighting French colonial dominion. But the rebels were long gone; all that was left were houses full of women, children and older people. Pinault said he confronted his officer: “What the hell are we doing here? This war is already lost.”

 

“Shut up, Pinault,” he recalled the officer saying.

 

But he never has shut up. Instead, Pinault has made a fortune, a unique collection of contemporary art and a life out of anticipation. “Only anticipate” could be another of his mottos. As a result, Paris, sometimes a little set in its ways, has something different, disruptive and challenging on offer at the Bourse de Commerce.

 

Roger Cohen is the Paris Bureau Chief of The Times. He was a columnist from 2009 to 2020. He has worked for The Times for more than 30 years and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. Raised in South Africa and Britain, he is a naturalized American. @NYTimesCohen

Sir Lachlan Hector Charles Maclean 28th Chief, 12th Baronet of Morvern, 24th Laird of Duart, CVO, DL, 8th Lord Maclean* // VIDEO: Castle Isle of Mull For Argyll Scotland

 

Sir Lachlan Hector Charles Maclean

28th Chief, 12th Baronet of Morvern, 24th Laird of Duart, CVO, DL, 8th Lord Maclean*

Sir Lachlan Hector Charles Maclean, Bt, CVO

http://macleanhistory.org/chiefs/sir-lachlan-hector-charles-maclean-28th-chief/

 

Major the Honorable Sir Lachlan Maclean, Bt, CVO, DL became the 28th Chief of the Clan Maclean, 12th Baronet of Duart and Morvern, and 8th Lord Maclean on the 8th of February in 1990, upon the death of his father. Though today he is known as being kind, humble, soft-spoken, and genuinely warm, Sir Lachlan was a special operations officer, corporate executive, and is today the embasador of his ancient clan.

 

Among only a handful of Maclean Chiefs to witness the passing of a century, Sir Lachlan holds the distinction of being the only among them to preside over the passing of a millennium. Keenly ware of the significant role the Macleans have played in Scotland and around the world throughout the last eight centuries, Sir Lachlan has worked to preserve the Clan’s history and historicial sites. He was instrumental in creating the Clan Maclean Heritage Trust, and continues lead the ancient and world-wide clan the Macleans have become.

Early Life

8 year old Sir Lachlan learning to throw a hammer from Jack Hunter at the Argylleshire Gathering in Oban in 1950

Click to Enlarge

Sir Lachlan was born on the 25th of August in 19421 to Lord Charles and Elizabeth Maclean, née Mann, in Windsor, Berkshire of southeast England.9 Weeks after his birth Sir Lachlan was taken to Duart because the western Highlands were safer than suburbs of London durring World War II. The honor of carrying the future chief across the threshold of the ancient fortress was given to Jennie Macleod, a long-serving housemaid of the Maclean family.1 Sir Lachlan’s early years were spent at Duart.1

 

Sir Lachlan received his early education in Berkshire. Due to distance between school and his home on Mull, many of his half-term holidays were spent with the Manns—his maternal grandparents—at their home in Wiltshire.1 Like his grandfather and great-grandfather, Sir Lachlan attended Eton Colege.1 Among his Eton classmates were 20 future government officials and politicians, 5 future judges, 4 members of royal households, and a number of future celebrities.11

 

Family

In 1966 Sir Lachlan married Mary Helen Gordon. Born on the 31st of October in 1943, Lady Mary was the eldest daughter of William Gordon Gordon of Lude and Helen Gordon who lived in Blair Atholl, Perthshire. The couple married while Sir Lachlan was still in a Lieutenant in the British Army. Together they had five children—Emma Mary Maclean, the Maid of Morvern, Sarah Elizabeth Helen Maclean, Malcolm Lachlan Charles Maclean the Younger of Duart and Morvern, Alexandra Caroline Maclean, and Andrew Lachlan William Maclean. Following Sir Lachlan's retirement from military service, the family made their home at Arngask House in Glenfarg, Perthshire. In 1990, Sir Lachlan inherited the estate of Duart and the family relocated to Mull. Lady Mary passed away on the 30th day of December in 2007.

 

On the 8th of September in 2010, Sir Lachlan married Mrs. Rosemary (Rosie) Mayfield. Lady Rosemary is the widow of Lt.-Col. Richard Mayfield, DSO, LVO, a fellow Scots Guards officer of Sir Lachlan’s. Lady Rosemary is the daughter of Col. Donald Matheson,10 and her family came from Dornie in the West Highlands.10 She and her late husband had a son and a two daughters; their son won the Sword of Honour on his commissioning from Sandhurst into the Scots Guards in 1986.10 The two families have been friends since Sir Lachlan and Richard served together.

 

Military Service

Officer Cadet Maclean was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Scots Guards upon graduating from Eton on the 13th of January in 1962.2 The majority of Sir Lachlan’s military career was with the Scots Guards, who from 1962 till 1972 were deployed to Kenya, Uganda, Zanzibar, Malaysia, Sarawak, Sabah, Iserlohn, Munster, Northern Ireland, Hong Kong, and Honduras. It is unclear which operations Sir Lachlan may have taken part in.

Sir Lachlan was selected to serve with the British Army’s elite Special Air Service (SAS).1 He likely transfered to the 22nd SAS Regiment in 1968 or 1969 and remained with the regiment until his retirement from the Army in 1973. The world-renowned all-volunteer14 special forces corps is known for its expertice in special operations, counter-terrorism, reconnaissance, and hostage rescue. Only 10% of SAS candidates make it through the gruling five month selection process of the Special Forces Aptitude Test.14

 

During his time in the SAS, Sir Lachlan took part in a special joint-training program with the United States Army Rangers. Sir Lachlan served with Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank,12 who then commanded a Squadron of the 22nd SAS Regiment13. Operation Storm, a counteraction to the Dofar Rebellion famous for the Battle of Mirbat where 9 SAS soldiers held off a force of 400 Adoo guerrillas,15 began shortly after Sir Lachlan transfered to the SAS and continued four years after his retirement.

 

Sir Lachlan served in combat operations, for which he was awared the General Service Medal and the the United Nations Medal. His United Nations Medal is suspended from the Operation UNFICYP ribon indicating that he served in the Limassol and Larnaca Districts of Cypress as part of the the United Nations Peacekeeping Force.

 

At the age of 29 and having reached the rank of Major, Sir Lachlan was at a crossroads. Sir Lachlan recalls, It was a case of staying in for life, which I didn’t particularly want to do, or leaving before I was thirty, which would give me a chance to start a new career.1 Sir Lachlan decided to retire from military service in 19736 and settled his family north of Edinburgh in Arngask.

 

Professional Career

Upon leaving military service, Sir Lachlan enjoyed a stable—and far more quiet—corporate career with United Biscuits. At the time, Sir Lachlan’s uncle, John Mann, was a non-executive director for the company and helped arrange the initial interview, but after that, Sir Lachlan notes, I was on my own. Though he received a number of job offers, Sir Lachlan ultimatly decided to accept the one from United Biscuits. About the time Sir Lachlan started his new career with United Biscuits, the giant food conglomerate acquired the United States based Keebler Company for $53 million.16 Sir Lachlan’s career at United Biscuits also saw the company’s acquisition of the Wimpy hamburger chain.17

 

Eventually, Sir Lachlan retired as an executive of the United Biscuits.1 In contrast to the corporate life, Sir Lachlan spent several years in private business as a restaurateur. Today Sir Lachlan enjoys running Duart Castle, his childhood home, and light farming at his winter home in Perthshire.

 

Public Service

In 1993 Sir Lachlan was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Argyll and Bute. He is a member of the Royal Company of Archers, the historic bodyguard of the British Monarch in Scotland, where he served as Adjutant and later one of the four Lieutenants of the organization. In this role he served as Silver Stick for Scotland during the 1999 state visit of Queen Elizabeth II for the opening of the Scottish Parliament.

 

For many years, Sir Lachlan served on the Board of Trustees and as Seretary of the Robertson Trust, an independent charitable Scottish trust who’s priorietys are community-based care, health, education, art, and sport. The Robertson Trust works to improve the quality of life and realise the potential of people and communities in Scotland.

 

In ages past a chief’s primary public service would have been to his clan—though the focus has shifted from raising armies and protecting territory, Sir Lachlan continues in that ancient tradition by fostering the world-wide kinship of his modern clan while preserving its history for generations to come. The work of both Sir Lachlan and his late wife, Lady Mary Maclean, was recognized when Duart Castle was awarded the Caledonian MacBrayne Award for Excellence in Tourism in 2008. Their dedication made Duart Castle, the ancestral home of the Clan Maclean, accessible to the family it once protected.

THE RETURN OF THE OVERALLS

 

Overalls, also called bib-and-brace overalls or dungarees, are a type of garment usually used as protective clothing when working. The garments are commonly referred to as a "pair of overalls" by analogy with "pair of trousers".

 

Overalls were originally made of denim, but they can also be made of corduroy or chino cloth. Overalls were invented in the 1890s by Levi Strauss and Jacob W. Davis at Levi Strauss & Co., but they went through an evolution to reach their modern form. Initially only used for protective clothing in work settings, they have become a garment of high fashion as "potential cult items".

 

The first evidence of overalls being mass-produced are those made by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis in the 1890s. The first "jeans" they invented were actually overalls ("waist overalls" or "waist-high overalls"), consisting of suspenders attached to denim pants with buttons but with no top part with a bib. From the beginning, denim overalls were popular workers' garments due to their durability. In fact, Levi, Strauss & Co.'s slogan in the 1880s-1890s was "Never Rip, Never Tear".

 

In 1911, Harry David Lee made the first bib overalls, made of pants with pockets with a bib and straps over the shoulders.

 

In 1927, Lee's developed a "hookless fastener" and created "buttonless" overalls. Zippers replaced buttons. Soon after, suspender buttons were traded in for belt loops to attach over-the-shoulder straps.

 

The Overalls Movement of 1920

In 1920, groups of "Overalls Clubs" formed around the United States. They took overalls as their symbol to protest the rising cost of clothing, and profiteering in the garment industry.

 

The Great Depression

In the 1930s, the poorest segments of the American population wore overalls: farmers, miners, loggers, and railroad workers. They were most commonly worn by men and boys in the Southern and Midwestern United States. They can be seen in many of Walker Evans's photographs.

 

Modern history

Bib overalls (in different colors and textiles) have become popular garments among American youth, from the 1960s onward.

 

In the 21st century, overalls have evolved into high-fashion garments. Designers such as Stella McCartney feature them in ready-to-wear collections for men, women, and children. Stella McCartney's children's overalls sell for as much as $138.[8] Nordstrom sells overalls for as much as $1,080.

 

Brands

Lee's and Levi, Strauss & Co. were not the only companies making overalls in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

 

One of the oldest brands of overalls, OshKosh B'gosh, founded in 1895 in Wisconsin, specialized in hickory-stripe (blue-and-white stripe) bib overalls. The company produced bib overalls for children in the late 1960s.

Larned, Carter & Co., from Detroit, called themselves the "World's Greatest Overall Makers". They marketed their products as uniforms for railroad workers.

One of the biggest overall manufacturers was Blue Bell, which began in North Carolina in 1904. It was popular among railroad workers.

Jellico Clothing Manufacturing Co., later renamed Big Ben, was a major competitor of Blue Bell. Big Ben bought Blue Bell in 1926 and continued under the name Blue Bell. Blue Bell then bought the overalls company Casey Jones.

 

Garments adapted from overalls

 

Salopettes for a motorcycle rider

Shortalls (a contraction of the words "short" and "overalls") are overalls adapted so the part of the garment below the waist is shorts.

 

Salopettes is the French word for bib-and-brace overalls. The word is used in English for a similar garment to overalls worn for sailing, skiing, diving, and other heavy-duty activities. They are made of wind-and-waterproof trousers, traditionally with a high waist reaching to the chest and held up by adjustable shoulder braces.

 

Historically, military "overalls" were loose garments worn in the 18th and early 19th centuries over soldiers' breeches and gaiters when on active service or in barracks. After 1823, the term was replaced by that of "trousers" in British Army documents, but it survives to the present day in reference to the tight-fitting garments strapped under the instep, worn as part of the mess dress and full dress uniforms of cavalry regiments.

 

 A Brief History of Overalls and the Origins of Blue Jeans

http://www.waltontaylor.com/overallshistory.html

 

The term for this clothing is always the plural term overalls, as in "a pair of overalls" and is never the singular "overall." Overalls were introduced about 1750 as a protective article of clothing intended to prevent work related wear and tear to breeches and stockings, which were the standard clothing items required by fashion at the time. The "trowsers" of the day were very loose, reached only to the upper calf, and were basically only worn by "sailormen."

 

Overalls evolved from thigh-high gaiters known as "spatterdashes" or "kneecaps"; side-buttoning canvas or leather gaiters that covered almost all of the shoe in addition to most of the leg, that came into use about 1650. A buckled garter strap was fastened about three inches above the knee to prevent slippage. Spatterdashes were made both with and without straps which buckled or buttoned under the shoe sole. The lower part of the gaiter covered the shoe top and hopefully kept out water and mud, while the upper portion protected the stockings and breeches. In the case of riders, the side buttoning feature allowed them to be put on over the riding boots. To keep the tight, second skin look demanded by fashion of the time, kneecaps were closed up and down the outside by many, usually bright, buttons. The placement of the buttons could then be adjusted to maximize tightness. In those days, it was more important to look good, than to feel good. Spatterdashes were used by cavalry, foot soldiers and civilians alike when working outside or campaigning. Canvas spatterdashes with full canvas feet and a leather sole were called "mud boots."

 

By 1750, tight spatterdashes became part of the dress uniform for some regiments, even though originally they had been only a protective cover for the stockings and breeches of the dress uniform while on the march. About the same time, civilians got the idea to extend the spatterdashes all the way up to the waist (that's about an inch above your navel), adding a seat, crotch, and fall front, so the leggings were transformed into something like what we might call trousers today. The new garment was an overall covering for the shoetops, stockings, breeches, and even the bottom of the waistcoat, if desired; all clothing from the waist down was protected. Thus a pair of spatterdash leggings had been transformed into the first pair of overalls. This transformation first took place either in England or in her thirteen colonies, and was strictly for civilian work wear.

 

The first use of overalls as part of a military uniform was probably by the Americans. In fact, the earliest written reference to "overalls" in the English language dates to 1776 in the uniform regulations of various American militia units organized to fight in the American Revolution. Overalls were also used by loyalist units, as well as by patriots. As with the gaiters they replaced, military overalls of the Revolutionary War were very tight in the leg, and while some styles retained the full buttoned sides, most relegated the buttons to the distance from mid-calf to the hem. The gaiter style foot covering was retained, as the first military overalls were intended for infantry soldiers. Early regulations and military records show that overalls were stricitly a protective layer of clothing for the breeches and stockings for the first couple of years of war. However, the 1778 uniform regulations for the Continental regulars specifically state that overalls, made of linen for summer and wool for winter, will be issued as a replacement for breeches. This is the first purposely non-protective use of overalls in place of breeches as a regular piece of clothing.

 

Canvas and osnaburg overalls for cavalry were soon introduced which omitted the gaiter style foot covers. Since cavalry overalls were intended to be worn over the rider's breeches and boots, and tightly so, many cavalry style overalls retained the fully buttoned sides of the spatterdashes and some were reinforced with leather in the seat, inside the leg, and often at the ankle. The French soldier term for cavalry overalls was "pantalons á cheval" literally "horse pantaloons." Previously, "pantaloons" was a term used for tights (from the tight wearing stock-character "Pantalon" in Italian "Commedia dell'Arte"). As with the infantry overalls, people soon took to wearing skin-tight horse overalls as garments in their own right and not just as protective wear. Although nothing like tights, overalls worn in this manner were known as pantaloons, with the term most likely picked up from the French. By 1785, civilians in England and America were wearing what started out as protective overalls instead of the breeches and inside the boots they were originally protecting. "Pants" were born. Even traditional sailor's "trowsers" with drawstring waists and calf-length striped bloomer legs had transformed into a white canvas or wool version of the cavalry overall with a narrow-fall front and ankle length leg by the 1790's. Pantaloons evolved from overalls and trowsers evolved into pantaloons so that what was essentially the same garment had three different names by 1800, due to the military tendency to retain outdated clothing terms. What civilians quickly came to call pants (or pantaloons for the classy) continued to be called overalls by the Army (until the 1850's) and trowsers by the Naval Services.

 

Civilian overalls continued as protective clothing to be worn over less durable breeches or pants. It also became common in hot weather for workers to wear overalls in place of pants or breeches, just as Washington's orders had first stipulated for the Continental Regulars in 1778. With the availiability of cheap cotton in the 1800's, cotton canvas, duck, and denim replaced the linen canvas and osnaburg used in the overalls of the 1700's. Many, many local tailors and bulk manufacturers produced overalls and jumpers for working men all across America. The next development in the history of overalls would be the invention of "Levis" by adding copper rivets to the stress points of cotton duck overalls.

Château de Versailles: Final preparations before the 'grand reopening'

Prince Harry says trauma of Diana's death led him to use drugs to 'mask' his emotions |

Prince Harry says heavy drinking masked pain of mum Diana's death

By Dulcie Lee

BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57187138

Published1 day ago

 

The Duke of Sussex has said he was willing to drink and take drugs to try to cope with his mother's death.

 

He has also spoken about his family's unwillingness to talk about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and how he was expected to "suffer" in silence.

 

Prince Harry was talking to US talk show host Oprah Winfrey in their new streaming series on mental health.

 

He also talked about anxiety and panic attacks, his "biggest regret" and his experience of his mother's funeral.

 

Princess Diana died in a car crash while being pursued by photographers in Paris in August 1997.

 

Speaking to Winfrey for the Apple TV+ series The Me You Can't See, Harry described being aged 28 to 32 as "a nightmare time in my life", in which he had panic attacks and severe anxiety.

 

"I was just all over the place mentally," he said.

 

"Every time I put a suit on and tie on... having to do the role, and go, 'right, game face,' look in the mirror and say, 'let's go'. Before I even left the house I was pouring with sweat. I was in fight or flight mode."

 

He added: "I was willing to drink, I was willing to take drugs, I was willing to try and do the things that made me feel less like I was feeling."

 

He said he would drink a week's worth of alcohol on a Friday or Saturday night, "not because I was enjoying it but because I was trying to mask something".

 

The duke also told Winfrey his family did not talk about his mother's death and expected him to deal with the resulting press attention and mental distress.

 

He said: "My father used to say to me when I was younger, he used to say to both William and I: 'Well it was like that for me so it's going to be like that for you.'

 

"That doesn't make sense. Just because you suffered doesn't mean that your kids have to suffer, in fact quite the opposite - if you suffered, do everything you can to make sure that whatever negative experiences you had, that you can make it right for your kids."

 

Prince Harry and his family standing beside his mum's hearse at her funeral

image captionPrincess Diana's funeral was nine days before Harry's 13th birthday

Prince Harry famously walked behind his mother's coffin at her funeral, alongside his brother, father, uncle and grandfather.

 

"For me the thing I remember the most was the sound of the horses' hooves going along the Mall," he said.

 

"It was like I was outside of my body and just walking along doing what was expected of me. Showing one-tenth of the emotion that everybody else was showing: this was my mum - you never even met her."

 

'My biggest regret'

In addition to his own unhappiness, Harry told Winfrey about his anger and regret at the way his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, was treated by sections of the media.

 

"My biggest regret is not making more of a stance earlier on in my relationship with my wife, calling out the racism when I did," he said.

 

"History was repeating itself.

 

"My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone that wasn't white - and now look what's happened.

 

"You want to talk about history repeating itself? They're not gonna stop until she dies."

 

Talking about his mother, Prince Harry said he "no doubt" she would be "incredibly proud" of him for living the life she would have wanted and added that one of his son Archie's first words was "grandma".

 

"I got a photo up in his nursery and it was one of the first words that he said, apart from 'mama', 'papa' it was then 'grandma', Grandma Diana," he said.

 

"It's the sweetest thing, but at the same time it makes me really sad, because she should be here."

 

The prince, 36, has campaigned for discussions around mental health to be normalised, and started speaking in detail about his personal experiences recently.

 

In March, he and his wife Meghan were interviewed by Winfrey about their life in the Royal Family, and its impact on their mental health.

 

And on a podcast last week, Prince Harry said he was determined to "break the cycle of pain" of his upbringing when parenting his own children, and shared that he had gone to therapy.

 

The duke said the happiest time of his life was his 10 years in the Army, as there was no "special treatment" for him.

 

He left the Army aged 30, and met his wife-to-be Meghan on a blind date a year later.

 

The duke said family members previously told him "just play the game and your life will be easier".

 

"But I've got a hell of a lot of my mum in me," he said. "I feel as though I am outside of the system - but I'm still stuck there. The only way to free yourself and break out is to tell the truth."

 

The streaming series sees Prince Harry, Winfrey, Lady Gaga, Glenn Close and others tell their own stories about mental health and wellbeing.

 

It was first announced in April 2019, almost a year before Harry and Meghan announced they were stepping back as senior royals in January 2020.

Diana Interview: Dyson report expose decades of BBC cover up

BBC interview did not harm Diana, claims Martin Bashir

 

Journalist defends 1995 Panorama special saying he and Diana stayed friends after the broadcast

 

Martin Bashir says Diana was not unhappy about the contents of the 1995 interview.

 

PA Media

Sun 23 May 2021 00.35 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/23/martin-bashir-says-he-believes-bbc-interview-did-not-harm-diana

 

Martin Bashir has said he “never wanted to harm” Diana, Princess of Wales with the Panorama interview, adding: “I don’t believe we did.”

 

The journalist’s reputation is in tatters following Lord Dyson’s report that he used “deceitful behaviour” to land his world exclusive 1995 interview.

 

Speaking to the Sunday Times, Bashir maintained Diana was never unhappy about the content of the interview and said they continued to be friends after the broadcast, with the princess even visiting his wife, Deborah, at St George’s hospital in Tooting, south London, on the day Deborah gave birth to the couple’s third child, Eliza.

 

He told the newspaper: “I never wanted to harm Diana in any way and I don’t believe we did.

 

“Everything we did in terms of the interview was as she wanted, from when she wanted to alert the palace, to when it was broadcast, to its contents … My family and I loved her.”

 

He said he is “deeply sorry” to the dukes of Cambridge and Sussex, but disputes William’s charge that he fuelled her isolation and paranoia.

 

“Even in the early 1990s, there were stories and secretly recorded phone calls. I wasn’t the source of any of that,” he said.

 

Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, has said he “draws a line” between the interview and his sister’s death, claiming Bashir’s actions led her to give up her royal security detail.

 

Bashir, who left the BBC last week due to ill health, said: “I don’t feel I can be held responsible for many of the other things that were going on in her life, and the complex issues surrounding those decisions.

 

“I can understand the motivation [of Earl Spencer’s comments] but to channel the tragedy, the difficult relationship between the royal family and the media purely on to my shoulders feels a little unreasonable … The suggestion I am singularly responsible I think is unreasonable and unfair.”

 

Bashir commissioned documents purporting to show payments into the bank accounts of members of the royal household and showed them to Earl Spencer, according to Lord Dyson.

 

He said: “Obviously I regret it, it was wrong. But it had no bearing on anything. It had no bearing on [Diana], it had no bearing on the interview.”

 

He said he is now concerned the scandal will overshadow the content of what Diana said in the interview.

 

“She was a pioneering princess. When you think about her expressions of grief in her marriage, when you think about the admission of psychiatric illness – just extraordinary! And her sons have gone on to champion mental health,” he said.

 

“I don’t understand what the purpose of this is ultimately? OK, maybe you want to destroy me, but outside of this, what’s the point?

 

“I did something wrong … but for pity’s sake, acknowledge something of the relationship we had and something of what she contributed through that interview.

 

“One of the saddest things about all of this has been the way the content of what she said has almost been ignored.”

 

Bashir’s comments come after former BBC director-general Lord Hall quit as chairman of the National Gallery after he was heavily criticised in the Dyson report for his botched inquiry into how the interview was obtained.

 

They won’t remind us, but the tabloids hurt Diana just as much as Panorama did

Marina Hyde

The BBC makes a convenient scapegoat when in reality all of us were part of the ecosystem that destroyed Diana

 

Photofusion/UIG via Getty Images

Fri 21 May 2021 13.05 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/21/tabloids-hurt-princess-diana-panorama-bbc-scapegoat?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0StU_iFuQSTfeQCuUmrE0IVcVKWDo5ASAl2Bn0kwUbO_ovcwh7mwh34gE#Echobox=1621599050

 

“It brings indescribable sadness,” ran Prince William’s statement on the damning report into Panorama’s interview with his mother, “to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her.”

 

“Paranoia” – what a word to take you back. When Martin Bashir’s Diana interview aired in 1995, the MP (and friend of Prince Charles) Nicholas Soames was roundly attacked for describing Diana as in “the advanced stages of paranoia” and in the grip of “mental illness”. It’s fair to say his verdict didn’t come from a place of total support. Soames has since expressed regret for it, adding that he wasn’t a doctor. Now Diana’s elder son uses the same word – with few these days disagreeing how cruelly she was driven to it – while her younger son absolutely refuses to draw some comforting veil over her state of mental health.

 

The conclusions of the Dyson report are a shameful stain on the BBC, deeply compounded by coming 26 years after the offence, by way of cover-up and whitewash. How completely stunning that former director general Tony Hall judged Bashir “an honest and honourable man”, when anything more than cursory scrutiny marked him out so clearly – and I’m not a doctor – as a complete wrong ’un. It feels particularly gracious that Prince Harry’s own statement tacitly acknowledged the BBC for “taking some form of accountability” and “owning it”.

 

And so to people yet to take ownership of their own actions. I think we can live without today’s preposterous moralising from much of Fleet Street, who know very well the terrible things they and others did on countless occasions to get stories relating to Diana or her wider family. “Defund the BBC,” was last night’s pontification from former Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie, who once put Diana’s covertly recorded private phone calls on a premium-rate line so readers could ring in and have a listen. And those were the good years. Half the stuff these guys did in pursuit of Diana stories is, mercifully for them, completely unprintable.

 

Alas, we will spend the next few days hearing of the BBC’s shame from some of the most shameless hypocrites in human history. The tabloids may not like Prince Harry’s reincarnation as a super-rich Californian wellness bore, but it does have the moral edge over pulling people’s medical records and hacking the phones of murdered 13-year-old girls.

 

But of course, few have rewritten their own history more than Fleet Street’s Diana-watchers. The overnight timing of the Paris crash meant the early editions of the Sunday papers had already been printed and contained, as usual, large amounts of unfavourable stuff about whatever else Diana had been up to the previous week. “Troubled Prince William will today demand that his mother Princess Diana dump her playboy lover”, ran an exclusive by the News of the World’s Clive Goodman, who probably scraped it from the “troubled” schoolboy’s phone. There were acres in similar vein across the titles. “The Princess, I fear,” feared the Sunday Mirror’s Carole Malone, “suffers from the ‘Open Gob Before Brain Engages’ syndrome – a condition which afflicts the trivial and the brain dead.” When Diana’s death was announced, the reverse ferrets were so total that it’s genuinely quite a surprise the Sunday Mirror didn’t next week salute itself as “the paper that broke the tragic news Di was brain dead”.

 

As for the editors, the person they secretly canonised was the driver, Henri Paul. Because once it was discovered he was over the alcohol limit, then what happened to Diana in the tunnel couldn’t have been anything to do with the ecosystem in which they (and the chasing paparazzi who supplied them) were such voracious feeders.

 

Twenty-four years later, a full-spectrum failure to acknowledge any of this means many of these same people now sit and venerate Diana in the course of slagging off her troubled son, Prince Harry (it’s what she would have wanted). They know very well the pain and turmoil of Diana’s final years, having been such a helpful part of it, yet cannot tolerate the understandably damaged child raised amid it.

 

And so it is that Prince Harry is now locked in his own grimly symbiotic relationship with sections of the British media. He won’t shut up, which is what they claim to want, but don’t, because his every SHAMELESS! AND! DISGRACEFUL! UTTERANCE! drives traffic. Attacks on Harry do huge business, so they continue. He, in turn, can point to those attacks as continued evidence of persecution. (Indeed, his livelihood might end up depending on wounded, marquee interviews. I’m not sure that long-term ratings lie in the Sussexes’ dull-sounding ideas for documentaries in which they themselves do not feature.) This is nearly as toxic a cycle as the one in which Diana was locked, and is unlikely to have a happy ending, or even a happy middle.

 

I once saw some old news footage in which the Queen and Prince Philip returned home from a royal tour after leaving their children for six months. A mere part of the welcome party, the unsmiling five-year-old Prince Charles waits dutifully – simply required to shake his mother’s hand. Anyone claiming this was entirely normal “in those days” has royal brain worms. Yet Prince Harry’s recent suggestion that neither he nor his father had an especially healthy childhood is regarded as some kind of grotesque blasphemy, mostly by people who would be quite happy to refer to the above vignette as child abuse were anyone other than the Queen involved. These days, what is expected of the royals has become so warped that it is perfectly standard to find MailOnline commenters fuming of Prince Harry “how DARE he bring his mother into this?”

 

Which brings us to the final group not to own their own actions: the great British public. Millions bought insatiably into Diana’s pain, and newspaper sales spiked for all the most obviously intrusive stories. The pall of blameless sanctimony that descended after her death was a stunning exercise in mass hypocrisy. People were simply incapable of imagining that they too had been part of the ecosystem, and those who pointed it out were demonised by deflection. Private Eye was monstered for its cover, which carried the headline “MEDIA TO BLAME” above a crowd of people outside Buckingham Palace. “The papers are a disgrace,” read one speech bubble. “Yes, I couldn’t get one anywhere,” ran its reply. “Borrow mine,” went a third, “it’s got a picture of the car.” WH Smith banned the edition from its stores, while taking money for the papers hand over fist.

 

From Diana to Harry, damaged people do damaged and sometimes very damaging things. But it’s important to remember, as far as the royal family is concerned, that the public likes it so much better that way. Royal pain sells far more than royal happiness. Panorama may have lied – but the sales tallies and the traffic figures and the ratings never do.

 

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Former BBC boss Lord Hall resigns from National Gallery after Diana row

 

As controversy rages over Panorama interview, Tony Hall says continuing in role ‘would be a distraction’

 

Nadeem Badshah

Sat 22 May 2021 14.18 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/22/ex-bbc-director-general-lord-hall-resigns-as-national-gallery-chair-martin-bashir-diana-interview

 

Tony Hall has resigned as chairman of the National Gallery amid the controversy over the BBC Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1995.

 

The corporation’s former director general was severely criticised in Lord Dyson’s report for overseeing a flawed and “woefully ineffective” internal investigation into how Martin Bashir obtained the interview.

 

Lord Hall said his continued presence at the gallery would be a “distraction”.

 

The peer, who was director of BBC news and current affairs at the time that Bashir interviewed Diana, said: “I have today resigned as chair of the National Gallery.

 

“I have always had a strong sense of public service and it is clear my continuing in the role would be a distraction to an institution I care deeply about.

 

“As I said two days ago, I am very sorry for the events of 25 years ago and I believe leadership means taking responsibility.”

 

The report by Dyson, a former master of the rolls, found that Bashir had engaged in “deceitful behaviour” by commissioning fake bank statements to secure the interview. It also found that Hall was aware the journalist had told “serious and unexplained lies” about what he had done to persuade the princess to speak to him.

 

When other media began asking questions about how the programme had secured the world exclusive, Dyson said the corporation “covered up in its press logs” what it knew.

 

The report said: “Without justification, the BBC fell short of the high standards of integrity and transparency which are its hallmark.”

 

Sir John Kingman, deputy chair of the National Gallery’s board of trustees, said: “Tony Hall has been doing a superb job as chair of the National Gallery, where he is much respected and liked. The gallery is extremely sorry to lose him, but of course we entirely understand and respect his decision.”

 

Dr Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery, thanked Hall for his work at the institution. He said the former BBC director general had “demonstrated extraordinary commitment to the gallery and it has been a great pleasure to work closely with him as we have faced the challenges of Covid and as we prepare to mark the gallery’s bicentenary in 2024”.

 

Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother, is reported to have written to the Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, asking the force to investigate the BBC and saying his sister had been the victim of blackmail and fraud.

 

A spokesperson for the Met said it would not be adding to its previous statement, which confirmed a further assessment following publication of Dyson’s report.

 

The force said this week: “Following the publication of Lord Dyson’s report we will assess its contents to ensure there is no significant new evidence.”

 

On Thursday, Prince William and Prince Harry also condemned the BBC over the Panorama interview. William said the corporation’s failures contributed to the fear their mother felt in her final years, and Harry said it was part of a “culture of exploitation and unethical practices that ultimately took her life”.