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Author Robert Lacey (Majesty) suggests that the press, with Whitaker very much in the lead, also deserves credit for forcing Charles to marry Diana. It is not simply that in the touchy period before the engagement, as Whitaker admits in a book about the royal courtship (Settling Down), that he gave her fatherly advice for dealing with the press, including himself ("There will be times when I will ask you a question to which I need an answer desperately. I am telling you now, don't answer me"). Prince Charles was over 30, explains Lacey, and "his image as an adventurous young bachelor sowing his wild oats was getting worn out. It was the opinion of Fleet Street that he should settle down and do his duty. The press pushed Diana as a girlfriend beyond the reality of the situation in the early stages. Whitaker fell in love with her." The merciless over-coverage of Diana (including, Whitaker boasts, an 80-m.p.h. car caper in which he drove alongside the car she was driving while a photographer snapped her picture) showed the English public a maiden so sweet and wistful that the Prince would have seemed a blackguard had he failed to propose.
It was this same improbable Cupid, however, who was part of the hit team that smudged the pregnant Diana in the Bahamas a year ago. (A hit in Fleet Street lingo is a good story, and a smudge is a photo.) Armed with jungle gear and survey maps, Whitaker and Photographer Kenny Lennox entered the jungle at 5:55 one morning, just before sunup. They were on a patch of land opposite the beach where Charles and Diana were staying. Says Whitaker: "We crawled, carrying a lens the size of a bloody howitzer for a solid hour and a half. By 7:50 a.m. we were in position, a half-mile across the water from the beach. Finally Diana appeared at 11:20. When she turned up in a bikini, it was too good to be true. We also knew we'd be in trouble."
Lennox started shooting. "Diana was rubbing suntan oil on the Prince's back. Sensational! I kept saying to Kenny, 'I've never done anything as intrusive in my life.' But it was a journalistic high. I've never had such a buzz."
In Nassau, Whitaker wired the pictures to London, through New York City Editors who saw them im New York, he marvels, made offers totaling £150,000. The huge figure is believable. Picture agency editors are more secretive than nerve-gas manufacturers, but the rumor is that one big European weekly paid $35,000 for one of the bikini shots. Less sensational photos of Diana might bring anything from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the exclusivity and news value of a commodity that fluctuates like pork bellies. A top freelancer, among the dozen or so covering the royals full time, may make as much as $150,000 a year. Whitaker admits to making less than $80,000.
When the Sun and the Star ran the pictures of the royal tummy naked and protruding, the expected protests lit up the switchboards, and the standard apologies were printed. The papers said jointly that they had run the photos out of "deep affection" for Diana. The Sun ran the photos a second time, with the apology, so that everyone would know what was being discussed.