In “Dianaworld,” a new biography excerpted exclusively by PEOPLE, Diana is said to have disguised herself in “male drag” — wearing an army jacket, leather cap and aviators — to slip undetected into a London gay bar
Princess Diana’s legacy continues to captivate decades after her death — and a new biography revisits the legendary night she disguised herself to sneak into a London gay bar alongside Queen frontman Freddie Mercury.
In Dianaworld: An Obsession (out April 29), Edward White examines the late Princess of Wales’ life, legacy and lasting impact as a global icon.
The vivid biography paints a picture of the Princess of Wales that the world didn’t know, spanning from her Spencer family’s generations of connections to the British royals before her marriage to the future King Charles to her lesser-known ambitions for her private life after their divorce, before her death at age 36 in 1997 following a car accident in Paris.
In Diana’s mythology, furtive nocturnal activity plays an important role as moments when she secretly revealed hidden aspects of her true self. At boarding school, so she told others, she crept out of her dormitory either to perform a dare or to practice her dancing all alone in the school hall; at other times she raided kitchen fridges in search of the brief, fleeting comfort that binge eating brought. And nighttime offered the possibility of reinvention and anonymous adventure; the best-known example being the alleged occasion when Diana took a trip to one of London’s most famous gay bars.
In her memoirs, the actress Cleo Rocos describes an evening she spent with Kenny Everett, Freddie Mercury, and Diana, who she had befriended in the late eighties. At some point in the evening, Rocos claims, Diana persuaded them to take her to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a place that Everett warned was “not for you . . . full of hairy gay men.” Diana was insistent, however, so Everett helped her disguise herself in male drag: “a camouflage army jacket, hair tucked up into a leather cap and dark aviator sunglasses. Scrutinizing her in the half-light we decided that the most famous icon of the modern world might just . . . JUST, pass for a rather eccentrically dressed gay male model.”
