Princess Diana 'threw herself down the stairs' while four months pregnant with William

Princess Diana threw herself down the stairs while four months pregnant, newly-released recordings have claimed.

She was pregnant with Prince William when she reportedly launched herself down a staircase at Sandringham, the Queen’s residence in Norfolk, in January 1982.

The incident happened just six months after her marriage to Prince Charles, according to the secret tapes.

The recordings, made in 1991, but serialised this week in the Daily Mail, were made for author Andrew Morton’s 1992 book, Diana: Her True Story. Diana gave interviews to the author on the condition she wasn’t identified as his main source. A revised 25th anniversary edition is being released this month.

Diana told Mr Morton she threw herself down the stairs in a desperate bid to get Charles’s attention and that the Queen was ‘shaking’ and ‘horrified’.

In the same interviews, she revealed Prince William told her she was ‘the most selfish woman’ he’d ever met when he was just three years old.

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Diana said: ‘When I was four months pregnant with William I threw myself downstairs, trying to get my husband’s attention, for him to listen to me.

‘I had told Charles I felt so desperate and I was crying my eyes out. He said I was crying wolf. “I’m not going to listen,” he said. “You’re always doing this to me. I’m going riding now.”

‘So I threw myself down the stairs. The Queen comes out, absolutely horrified, shaking — she was so frightened.

‘I knew I wasn’t going to lose the baby (though I was) quite bruised around the stomach. When he came back, you know, it was just dismissal, total dismissal. He just carried on out of the door.’

Earlier this week, the Daily Mail tapes revealed details of Diana’s struggle with bulimia and her obsession about Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. The princess revealed that she tried to cut her wrists with a razor blade.

In the latest tapes to be released, the princess said: ‘I knew what was wrong with me, but nobody else around me understood me. I needed rest and to be looked after inside my house and for people to understand the torment and anguish going on in my head.

‘It was a desperate cry for help. I’m not spoiled — I just needed to be allowed to adapt to my new position.

‘I don’t know what my husband fed her (the Queen). He definitely told her about my bulimia. And she told everybody that was the reason why our marriage had cracked up, because of Diana’s eating, and it must be so difficult for Charles.

‘On the outside, people were saying I gave my husband a hard time, that I was acting like a spoiled child. But I knew I just needed rest and patience and time to adapt to all the roles that were required of me overnight.

‘By then, there was immense jealousy because every single day I was on the front of the newspapers.’

Diana also spoke of an incident in 1985 when her eldest son criticised her for being selfish – he was only three at the time.

‘Once, William and I were in the swimming pool at Highgrove and I was telling him off, and William turned around to me and said: “You’re the most selfish woman I’ve ever met. All you do is think of yourself.”

‘And I was so stunned. I said: “Where did you hear that?”

‘“Oh, I’ve often heard Papa saying it.”’

‘The one thing I’ve always prided myself on — if I may be so bold — is that I’ve never been a selfish person. But Charles was always telling me I was being selfish, and I sort of believed it.’

She said she struggled to reconcile her public image to what was going on in her private life.

‘The public side, they wanted a fairy princess to come and touch them and everything will turn into gold and all their worries would be forgotten,’ she said.

‘Little did they realise that the individual was crucifying herself inside, because she didn’t think she was good enough.’

She also recalled an incident in which she scratched her chest and thighs with a penknife.

‘I’d wanted to talk to Charles about something. He wouldn’t listen to me,’ she said.

‘So I picked up his penknife off his dressing table and scratched myself heavily down my chest and both thighs. There was a lot of blood — and he hadn’t made any reaction whatsoever.

‘I was running around with a lemon knife, one with the serrated edges. I was just so desperate.’