American TV to air secret Diana tapes

Secret tapes in which Diana, Princess of Wales, recorded her private fears about Camilla Parker Bowles and her own troubled marriage are to be broadcast for the first time next month.

A US television company has bought the rights to audio and videotapes made five years before Diana died in a car crash in Paris in 1997. The audiotapes were used by Andrew Morton to write his 1992 book Diana: Her True Story, which showed the tensions between the Prince of Wales and Diana.

NBC said yesterday that its two-hour documentary, Princess Diana: The Secret Tapes, would also feature video footage taken of Diana during the same period.NBC said the video came from an hour of footage shot with Diana's permission between September 1992 and December 1993 and shows a "relaxed, candid Diana at times laughing and interacting with her young sons".

The audiotapes offer an account of the princess's life before marrying Prince Charles, her struggle with bulimia, her suicide attempts, the heartache over her husband's infidelity and her strained relations with other members of the Royal Family.

Those recordings, about seven hours of responses to Morton's written questions, were secretly made in Kensington Palace in 1991 during a series of interviews conducted through an intermediary.

Morton will publish a sequel to his 1992 biography in May. Michael O'Mara, his publisher, said Diana in Pursuit of Love would include details from the tapes not in his first book.