Princess Di’s Mum Says Media To Blame For Daughter’s Divorce Speaking From Experience, She Says Spotlight ‘Wears You Down’

Princess Diana’s mother says the media is at least partly to blame for the breakdown of her daughter’s marriage.

Frances Shand Kydd said she speaks from experience, having been through the “sheer hell” of two highly publicized divorces herself.

Being constantly in the spotlight “just wears you down,” she said in an interview Saturday in the Daily Express, a British tabloid.

But bringing the divorce into the spotlight is apparently just what the princess may have in mind, according to Sunday newspapers.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that Diana has proposed that she and Charles go on television together to explain the divorce to the nation.

The idea, according to the paper, is to assist the national “healing process” and give her a chance to say how much she still loves her estranged husband.

In a meeting Wednesday, Charles flatly turned down the proposal, the newspaper said.

And a report in the Sunday Times said he is seeking a gag order as part of any divorce settlement in an effort to keep Diana from talking any more about their marriage in public.

While Diana remained in her apartment at Kensington Palace for a second day, her divorce continued to make front-page headlines.

So did her ex-lover’s search for the highest bidder for his kiss-and-tell TV interview on their romance.

Former army officer James Hewitt reportedly has instructed author-producer Anna Pasternak to land a $4.6 million deal.

Two tapes were stolen Saturday from the home of Sebastian Rich, who filmed the Hewitt interview, but they were of U.S. troops in Somalia, said police in Surrey, where Rich lives.

For Diana, the Hewitt interview - which Pasternak said will be “very frank, honest and candid about their physical relationship” - was another piece of bad news at the end of a stormy week.

Her first round of talks Wednesday with Charles ended in a public dispute about everything except the fact she had agreed to a divorce.

By the weekend, it appeared both sides were heeding a request from Queen Elizabeth II to conduct the divorce negotiations privately for the sake of their children, Princes William, 13, and Harry, 11.

“The princess is totally supportive of negotiations between the lawyers being kept private and confidential,” her spokeswoman, Jane Atkinson, said Saturday.

She would not comment on a front-page story by Richard Kay, a Daily Mail reporter in whom Diana has confided before, that “a divorce crisis is looming.”