Rarely-seen portrait of Diana will grace Tatler’s January cover

A rarely-seen portrait of Princess Diana will grace the front cover of January’s issue of Tatler next year. The black and white snap, shot by renowned celebrity photographer David Bailey, is understood to have been taken in 1988 and looks to be featured in the National Portrait Gallery collection. The magazine will also feature a scathing piece about The Crown from historian Hugo Vickers, who told the publication that filmmakers of the hit show had ‘no interest at all’ in the truth.

He writes: ‘It got worse and worse as it got closer to today. In fact, they were all awful. It is just that people found portrayals of the 1950s less offensive than the saga they remembered – Prince Charles, Diana, Camilla etc. I can only imagine how distressing it will have been for the young members of the Royal Family to see the drama surrounding Diana’s fatal car accident the central feature in Series 6, not to mention her reported reappearance as a ghost. How low can the producers stoop?’ The portrait of Diana is thought to come from a shoot David, 85, did with the late Princess of Wales in the 80s.

Last year, the legendary snapper revealed the secrets behind some of his most famous pictures of royal figures. The photographer, who pictured everyone from supermodels to the Queen during his lengthy career, said Princess Diana had ‘terrible hair’ while the ‘girlish’ monarch’s skin was ‘beautiful’. Speaking to The Telegraph , he recalled how his assistant dropped a light on Diana’s head during a shoot in 1988, adding: ‘I thought, ‘Oh [expletive]!’. She said: ‘Don’t think about it; it was a terrible accident’. ‘I told her she had been very magnanimous – that’s right, because she asked me what magnanimous meant.’

David is known for his eye-catching black and white portraits and among his images is one taken of Diana, then aged 27. English portrait photographer Norman Parkinson was initially suggested to take photos of Diana, however the royal herself chose Bailey – who had previously shot Princess Margaret’s husband, the Earl of Snowdon. Elsewhere in the interview he explained how Diana’s hair was ‘solid as a plastic dummy’ because of the ‘hairspray.’ Meanwhile, Hugo’s Tatler story is not the first time The Crown has attracted criticism, especially for its latest season.

A famous photoshoot of Prince Charles and his two sons in 1997 is misrepresented in the latest series as a response to Princess Diana ‘s new romance, a Mail podcast has revealed this week . In the second episode of ‘The Crown: Fact or Fiction,’ Mail royal expert Richard Kay disclosed that he was present at the photocall in Balmoral that is portrayed in the hit series. It took place about two weeks before Princess Diana was killed in a car crash and saw Prince William , then 15, and Prince Harry , 12, posing on the banks of the River Dee with their father.

The final series of The Crown tries to present the photoshoot as a ploy by palace officials to respond to recently published pictures of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed kissing on a yacht. The character in the show call a local photographer and he is shown arriving to take the pictures in private, which, according to Kay, could not have been further from the truth. ‘We had been told three days, I think, before the pictures of Diana and Dodi had even been published that the palace were going to hold a photocall of Charles and his sons, who were going to arrive at Balmoral early,’ Kay told the podcast.

‘I think in all there were about 40 of us: camera crews, photographers and a handful of reporters,’ Kay added. The second episode of The Crown’s sixth series presents the photoshoot as a rainy, windswept day, when in actuality, the Press and the Royals basked in sunshine. Kay continued: ‘They performed, I guess that’s the best way to put it. Charles was very pleasant, wished us all a good day, the boys were awkward, but they were young and didn’t like this kind of thing.’ A palace official who organized the event was even asked at the time whether the photocall was a response to the Diana and Dodi pictures, Kay recalled. He said: ‘She absolutely angrily denied it and pointed out that it had been organized before the pictures had even emerged of Diana and Dodi so it was not a quid pro quo.’

Mail writer Robert Hardman and the Mail on Sunday’s Royal Correspondent Natasha Livingstone also unpicked scenes from the episode showing Diana raising awareness of the impact of landmines. The Crown shows the princess making a trip to Bosnia to meet with survivors of the deadly buried weapons, recreating her famous walk of a mined area. In fact, Diana did not walk through a minefield in Bosnia at all. Instead, the pictures that have become instantly recognizable were taken during a trip to Angola to promote the vital work of the Halo Trust, in January 1997- months before the scene in The Crown was set. Hardman also revealed the ‘comedy press conference’ portrayed in the series that showed Diana being bombarded with questions about her personal life never took place.

In the show, she wore a badge that said ‘ReliefAid,’ which is a charity based in New Zealand that has nothing to do with landmines. At the time, she was actually raising awareness for the Landmine Survivors Network and wore a badge that said ‘British Red Cross.’ Her Angola mission was to support another anti-mine charity, The Halo Trust. Insiders at The Halo Trust felt it was ‘a shame’ that Netflix bosses chose not to include them, as the series could have promoted the charity to The Crown’s global audience of 73 million viewers.

Want more stories like this from the Daily Mail? Visit our profile page here and hit the follow button above for more of the news you need.