Exclusive: Princess Diana’s Former Butler Says She “Willingly Gave Up” Harry and William in the Summer for Heartbreaking Reason

With summer break in full swing for Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, they’ll be enjoying long days outside with their family in Norfolk and Balmoral—with time carved out for royal events like Wimbledon, of course. But Princess Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, tells Marie Claire that summer break looked much different for Prince William and Prince Harry amid their parents’ split in the ’90s.

When asked what summer looked like for Diana and her boys at Kensington Palace, Burrell—speaking on behalf of Casino.org—says their time together was far too brief. Prince Charles and Princess Diana separated in 1992, and from then until her death, she “only ever had the boys for two weeks every year because she gave them up,” he shares. “She said it’s important for them to grow up with her cousins, with the Royal Family at Balmoral.”

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Burrell continues that Diana made the choice knowing William’s destiny. “Summer was fun for her, but she realized that the rest of the year and the time away from boarding school, that they would be with their father and their friends,” he says. “She realized that they were growing up and they had to be integrated into the Royal Family because William one day will be King and Harry will be there to support him.”

Princess Diana is seen during a 1990 trip to Necker Island with Prince Harry, Prince William, her sister, Sarah Mccorquodale, and her sister’s children, Emily and George McCorquodale. | Credit: Getty Images

“She willingly gave them up,” Burrell adds. “She missed them.” Burrell—who worked for Princess Diana for a decade before her 1997 death—explains that unlike the Royal Family, who own various properties across the U.K., Diana “had nowhere to take her boys.”

“She only had Kensington Palace, so she had to take them away on a holiday, and it was usually a beach holiday,” he tells Marie Claire. In the summer of 1997, Prince Harry and Prince William enjoyed one last vacation with their mother before joining Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in Scotland. Burrell shares that during “the last summer of [Diana’s] life, they’d been to the Mediterranean, and they played on jet skis, and they’d had fun. Then she brought them back home so that they could go to Balmoral.”

“That’s why they were at Balmoral at the time of the princess’s death, because they’d had the two weeks with Diana in the summer,” he adds. “She’d usually take them to Necker Island, or somewhere remote.”

Burrell says Princess Diana, seen with William and Harry at Eton College, “lost” her kids to boarding school and the Royal Family. | Credit: Getty Images

Prince Harry and Prince William both attended Eton College, and Burrell notes that Diana—who “was a devoted mother”—did the school run every day and “was always there for nappy changes and bedtime stories” when they were little. However, when the boys went to boarding school, she “kind of lost them.”

The former butler says, “she began to lose them to the outside world and to the Royal Family. Not emotionally, but physically, which was very sad.”

However, the Prince of Wales is determined not to let history repeat itself. “It’s a different world for William and Kate now because they’re understanding all those lessons they learned, or rather the lessons William learned when he was young, he’s not going to repeat those,” Burrell muses. “So, he’s doing things differently, making sure those things don’t happen again.”