The late Diana, Princess of Wales, once asked her hairdresser to “smuggle” a requested item inside the Palace while she was a member of the Royal Family. Princess Diana’s longtime hairdresser Richard Dalton says she secretly arranged for tabloids to be taken inside Kensington Palace for her to read.
Mr Dalton told People magazine: “One of the hairdressers smuggled them in. Did I say that? They were smuggled in, but it’s not to do with me.” He added: “She used to say, ‘Richard, can you bring them in for me?’ Nobody questioned it because nobody knew. Once I’d got through security and into the pantry, it was all plain sailing from there.”
The hairdresser, who met Diana for the first time in 1978, served as her official hairdresser from 1981 to 1990.
According to Mr Dalton, one of the tabloid rumors that hurt Diana the most centered on the who the parent was of her youngest son, Prince Harry.
“They always [went] on about, ‘Is Charles the father of Harry?’” Dalton says of the tabloid speculation surrounding King Charles (then Prince Charles). “Of course he is.”
He added: “Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, when I used to cut his hair, his hair was bright red. Lady Sarah, also red. The Spencers definitely had red hair. But at that time, I wasn’t in a position to actually say, ‘Hello, Charles Spencer’s hair was red.'”
Dalton has been sharing his memories of the late princess with the encouragement of his friend Renae Plant.
As founder of The Princess Diana Museum, she has devoted herself to preserving Diana’s legacy.
Plant launched the virtual Princess Diana Museum in 2019, and the collection houses more than 2,700 of Diana’s personal and historical items.
The collection will make its first physical exhibition in Los Angeles, California, in November 2026.
After a six-month stay, it will tour the US before moving on to Canada, parts of Asia, Australia and then Europe. She wants the museum to eventually find a permanent home in the UK to honor Diana.
In the early hours of August 31, 1997, Diana died from injuries sustained in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, France, earlier that night.
