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Inside the Superyacht Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed Spent Their Final Vacation On

A look at the vessel that saw the beloved royal’s last vacation.

It was hot gossip, this adventure that the princess took abroad after having finalized her divorce from then Prince Charles less than a year before—something that was hinted at at the end of season 5 of The Crown as Queen Elizabeth is pressed to endorse a vacation a-sea with Fayed and her grandchildren, Prince Harry and Prince William. Diana was famously photographed sitting on the passerelle of this boat. Years later, in real life, Harry described the trip in his memoir, Spare , with fond recollection. “Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven,” he wrote.

While the series was filmed on a lookalike super yacht in Mallorca , the real boat was equally lavish. The 208-foot ship was commissioned by Dodi’s father, former Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, who brought on naval architect Vincenzo Ruggiero to design it in the late 1980s. It was built by Italian shipyard Codecasa and launched in 1990. The steel and aluminum super yacht boasted nine staterooms that altogether accommodate up to 18 people, in addition to a crew of 26. Amenities included a Jacuzzi, swim platform, sun deck, formal dining room, a bar, and office space. Mohamed had named the yacht Jonikal (it has subsequently been called Sokar and is currently called Bash ) .

Shortly after Diana’s and Dodi’s deaths, Mohamed gave the interior a redesign by H2 Yacht Design and a refit that included extending the hull. He attempted to sell the yacht on a number of occasions, ultimately parting with it in 2014 to an anonymous buyer. The new owner carried out further work, including machinery upgrades, a repaint, and fresh teak decks. In 2021, the yacht came into the hands of Bassim Haidar , the founder of Intercomm and GMT, who gave it a further $9.7 million refit after a reported bridge deck fire—and its current name Bash . It’s now back to turn-key condition after an 18-month remodel completed in April 2023 by marine engineering and management company Capax and boat interior company Bobic Yacht Interiors . It features a beauty salon, massage area, high-tech gym, and a spacious main salon.

In May, Robb Report reported that Bash is available for charter in the Mediterranean starting at $278,000 per week, plus expenses. In June, Haidar listed Bash for $16.8 million, according to Boat International .

There was a second motor yacht named Cujo, which Diana and Fayed also took earlier that summer. It was built in Italy in 1972 for John von Neumann, who commissioned the Italian Baglietto shipyard to build the world's fastest motor yacht. She was given two 18-cylinder engines that allowed it to go as fast as 42 knots. Fayed had bought the boat from his cousin, Saudi businessman and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. In August, the Mediterranean Sea reclaimed Cujo, as the 62-foot artifact of Diana’s life hit an unidentified object off Beaulieu-sur-Mer on July 29 and sprang a leak, Vanity Fair reported. The seven people on board were rescued by teams from Antibes and safely returned to shore.

An imitation of Jonikal will feature in The Crown season 6, a set that was intended to visually illuminate the tension between Diana and the royal family. “Diana’s south of France adventure was bright and lovely pastel colors, and her world even in Kensington Palace is optimistic and warm, compared to the queen’s residence at Balmoral, which is very static, with gloomy light and drab colors,” set decorator Alison Harvey tells ELLE DECOR.

Filming on the yacht off the island of Mallorca (a St. Tropez stand-in) required many moving parts with few do-overs. “We brought in the drapes, the artwork, many furnishings,” Harvey explains. “Everything was set in the early ’90s, so we thought hard about the colors and textures that we brought in.” Harvey’s team had just half a day to dress the yacht, and then it was off to sea. “There was no getting on or off after that,” Harvey says, adding that they were “subsumed by the logistics of what we had to achieve and the time we had to do it.”

However painstaking the process, the yacht scenes will offer an intriguing context—though largely fictitious—for the iconic photographs that exist of those final weeks leading up to Diana’s death.

Rachel Silva, the Assistant Digital Editor at ELLE DECOR, covers design, architecture, trends, and anything to do with haute couture. She has previously written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, and Citywire.

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The Crown: The Sad, Strange Details of Princess Diana’s Last Vacation

By Julie Miller

The Crown The Sad Strange Details of Princess Dianas Last Vacation

Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed are lounging on the sundeck of a reportedly £15 million yacht in The Crown ’s season six episode “Two Photographs” when Dodi’s domineering father telephones an onboard employee with an urgent question.

“Are they sleeping together?” Mohamed Al Fayed demands to know.

It’s an audacious question—but Mohamed really was checking in on the couple hourly during this August 1997 cruise, according to Tom Bower , who wrote an unauthorized biography of the billionaire called Fayed. The late princess was aware that these calls were coming in—so much so that she joked to Dodi, “God is calling,” when she heard a ring, according to Dodi’s spiritual healer, Myriah Daniels, who was onboard. In 2007, during the inquest into the 1997 crash that killed the princess, Dodi, and their driver, Henri Paul, Daniels said that this became one of Diana’s inside jokes with Dodi. “They’d both have a giggle,” she said.

Diana had vacationed with Mohamed, as well as Prince William and Prince Harry, aboard the Jonikal earlier that summer. As depicted in The Crown ’s season six episode “Persona Non Grata,” that first Jonikal vacation featured Jet Skis and a flirtation between Diana and the flotilla of press nearby.

“The young princes didn’t like [the trip] much,” Tina Brown writes in The Palace Papers. “The flash and excess of [Mohamed’s] hospitality—the groaning buffets and the palatial bathrooms—embarrassed William in particular.” Dodi, who was asked by his father to join the trip midway, did not help matters by making the “oddly flamboyant gesture of renting a disco for William and Harry to enjoy privately,” according to royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith in Diana in Search of Herself.

Mohamed was a controversial figure who long craved social acceptance by the British elite, and hoped a relationship between his son and the recently-divorced Diana would seal the deal.

During the summer of 1997, the billionaire ordered Dodi to drop everything—including his model fiancée, Kelly Fisher —and romance the late princess. Speaking about Mohamed, Bedell Smith previously told Vanity Fair, “He was really the puppet master behind Dodi and Diana’s very brief, barely more than a month, romance…. Dodi basically did whatever his father told him to do.”

Diana’s association with Mohamed caused serious backlash in the press. “These days, Diana, you are no longer the Teflon Princess,” warned Andrew Morton , the biographer behind her bridge-burning tell-all, Diana: Her True Story, in The Sun. “You might have the run of a £20 million yacht, but your friends and fans see a woman who is drifting on the sea of life, seriously in danger of becoming shipwrecked.” Referring to Diana’s cat-and-mouse game with the paparazzi during that initial trip, columnist Judith Whelan wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald, “Diana has been erratic before. This time, however, she has done it while hosted by one of the most reviled men in Britain.”

Despite the press outrage over her association with Mohamed, Diana agreed to return to the Jonikal for the intimate trip reimagined in “Two Photographs.” “Alone in August and attracted to [Dodi], [a] sympathetic, unthreatening listener, she accepted the invitation for a second trip alone with Dodi to the Jonikal on 31 July,” wrote Bower in Fayed. “Over the next six days…the two frolicked on the sundecks, inside the sumptuous craft and in the sea.”

Dodi indulged Diana with her favorite meals—“which included carrot juice in the morning, fruit at lunch, and fish in the evening, as well as plenty of Champagne, caviar, and pâté de foie gras,” according to Diana in Search of Herself. The music was Diana’s selection as well: George Michael’s 1996 album, Older, the occasional Frank Sinatra tune, and the soundtrack of The English Patient. “Such a marvelous film,” Diana raved to Dodi’s butler, Rene Delorm, according to Fayed. “And you miss the music when you’re watching.”

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Mohamed’s staff was so attentive to Diana that the Jonikal ’s chief stewardess, Deborah Gribble, could remember the tiniest detail, like that some of Diana’s birth control packets were half-used. Speaking at the inquest, she also confirmed that Dodi and Diana “were clearly having a relationship and were a couple.”

Dodi lavished Diana with gifts during their six-week courtship, including a pearl bracelet, a diamond-studded wristwatch, a silver photo frame, and a gold-and-diamond ring. When the Jonikal docked in Sardinia’s Porto Cervo, according to Brown’s The Diana Chronicles, Diana and Dodi went shopping and returned with cashmere sweaters for the princess—one in every color.

Mohamed, meanwhile, was busy behind the scenes calling press. News of the relationship between Diana and Dodi broke the first week of August, less than a month before Diana’s death. The Sun ran the news with the headline “Di’s Secret Hol With Harrods Hunk Dodi,” while Mohamed’s publicist touted the relationship as “the romance of the century.”

But by the end of the trip, according to those who knew Diana, she intended their fling to be just that. The late princess suspected that Dodi might propose to her, according to Brown, but she told a friend that an engagement ring would be “going firmly on the fourth finger of my right hand” should it be presented. As recreated in “Two Pictures,” there was “a chaotic evening ashore in Monte Carlo when Dodi suddenly decided to send for the tender and take the princess for a walk.” Rather than going for a romantic stroll, however, Dodi “got her lost after a long pant up a hill trying to evade the paparazzi,” Brown writes.

It was so embarrassing, she continues, that Trevor Rees-Jones, a bodyguard on Mohamed’s payroll, “began to feel sorry for the princess; he believed she deserved better.”

According to Gribble, Dodi also became impatient with the amount of press attention Diana was receiving.

“The tension was noticeable throughout the trip and increasing as time wore on,” Gribble revealed during the inquest. “By the time we went to Paris, there was real tension. It was incredible. It was all so tense.”

Days before her fatal accident, Diana called her sister from the Jonikal, confiding that any love spell cast on her earlier had been broken. While she did not get into specifics, Sarah McCorquodale later told the court, “I just did not think the relationship had much longer to go.”

During that final trip on the Jonikal, Diana was photographed sitting alone on a diving board in an aqua swimsuit. The image remains so iconic that, 26 years after it was taken, Netflix recreated the visual in its promotional materials for The Crown ’s sixth season.

Contrary to what the photo showed, though, Diana was never really alone. By the end of the cruise, the princess suspected that Mohamed was doing more than periodically checking in with the Jonikal staff. As McCorquodale revealed during the inquest, “She thought the boat was being bugged by Mr. Al Fayed Senior.”

Julie Miller

Hollywood correspondent.

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‘The Crown’: Behind the Photo of an Embrace That Changed Princess Diana’s Life

In the show, Mohamed al-Fayed sends the photographer Mario Brenna to capture shots of Diana and al-Fayed’s son, Dodi, on vacation. The portrayal is inaccurate, Brenna says.

In a blurry photo from 1997, a woman in a pink swimsuit is seen from behind, embracing a topless man wearing sunglasses.

By Alex Marshall

Reporting from London

It’s summer 1997, and Princess Diana is flirting with Dodi Fayed, a globe-trotting playboy, on the Jonikal, a yacht floating on sparkling Mediterranean waters.

Diana, teasingly, says that she likes men who have lips that are “just the right temperature.”

“Are mine the right temperature?” Dodi replies.

“I don’t know,” Diana says: “Need to check.” Then, the couple kiss, blissfully unaware that just a few meters away, Mario Brenna, a slick Italian photographer, is on a boat, with a long-lens camera trained on the couple.

A few days later, Brenna’s shots of the princess and her new beau are on the front pages of newspapers worldwide.

This is a central scene in the sixth and final season of Netflix’s royal drama “The Crown” — the first batch of episodes premiered on Thursday — and a moment that signaled the start of a tabloid frenzy around the couple that many blame for their deaths on Aug. 31, 1997, in a car crash in Paris as they were chased by photographers.

Yet the depiction is far from accurate, according to Brenna, speaking in what he said was his first interview with an English-language newspaper.

For a start, “The Crown” has Mohamed al-Fayed — Dodi’s father, and a retail and hotel tycoon who died this year — appearing to hire Brenna to take the shots, in an effort to push Diana and Dodi’s relationship into the public eye, and cajole the pair to marry.

In an email, Annie Sulzberger, the head of research for the show — she is also the sister of The Times’s publisher, A.G. Sulzberger — said that “there are a few theories about how Brenna managed to find the Jonikal moored somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea,” but the one the team found most credible was that one of al-Fayed’s employees leaked the boat’s location to Brenna.

But Brenna said the idea that al-Fayed hired him was “absurd and completely invented,” and that no one leaked information about the yacht’s whereabouts to him. Every summer at that time, he was in Sardinia so he could take paparazzi shots of famous people, he said, and coming across Diana and Dodi was simply a “great stroke of luck.”

On Aug. 1, 1997, Brenna said he approached Diana’s yacht on a fast moving inflatable boat after mistaking a blonde woman making a telephone call on its upper deck for an old acquaintance. As he got closer, he was stunned to realize it was the princess.

Bruno Malka, Brenna’s agent at the time who helped sell the images to Paris Match magazine, said in an email that he thought Brenna was familiar with the yacht, “without knowing it was Diana and Dodi” onboard that day. Brenna was successful, Malka added, because he had spent so many years working in the region.

After spotting the couple, Brenna said he spent the next few days stalking the boat, including climbing a cliff to get a better view. From that elevated position, about 400 meters away from Diana, he took several photos of Diana and Dodi in an embrace. The shots were almost blurred, Brenna said, because the heat haze meant he struggled to get the pair in focus.

Still, he knew immediately he’d secured “a historic photo.” He’d also captured an image that “solved my personal and family problems,” he said, at a time when he had recently divorced and so “was not swimming in wealth.”

He unloaded the rolls of film from the camera, then buried them to make sure they didn’t get exposed to the sun as he tried to take more images, and also as he feared a competitor might have seen him at work and try to steal his camera and so obtain the images every other photographer in the Mediterranean had been hoping to get first.

On Aug. 10, the Sunday Mirror, a British tabloid, splashed Brenna’s image on its front page . “The Kiss,” the headline read. Soon, Brenna said, he was selling the pictures worldwide. In the following six-to-eight months, he said, he made about 1.7 million pounds, or $2.1 million, from his photos of the couple.

Brenna’s pictures — and the prices news outlets paid for them — sparked a frenzy. In 2013, Jason Fraser, a British photographer who helped Brenna sell his images, told The Daily Mail that after they were published, over 2,000 photographers arrived in the Mediterranean hoping to get their own snaps of Diana and Dodi. “I felt the whole thing was spinning out of control,” Fraser said. Weeks later, the couple died.

In “The Crown,” Brenna (portrayed by Enzo Cilenti) explains his methods to camera. To capture celebrities misbehaving, the fictional Brenna says, you have to take risks. Paparazzi also have to act like “hunters … killers.”

Brenna said in the email interview that he did not share this opinion of his work (“I do not identify with the term ‘killer,’”) and that he was never contacted by anyone from “The Crown” to learn about his experiences (Netflix did not respond to a request for comment).

After Diana and Dodi’s death, al-Fayed sued Fraser, the British photographer, for taking photos of Diana and Dodi on a boat, saying it was an invasion of privacy. Brenna said he did not face any such action, adding his images were legal as they “were taken outdoors, in a public place.” And he regretted the privacy crackdown that happened since, with governments and stars trying to stop the paparazzi from taking photos: “There is still the right to report,” he said.

Today, Brenna lives near Lake Como, in Italy, where he said he’s photographed celebrities including George Clooney, Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé, even as the dawn of social media had impacted his profession significantly, including its financial rewards.

Brenna said he and his family enjoyed the success of the photos throughout August 1997. But then, Diana died. When he heard the news, Brenna said, he “couldn’t believe it” and cried, not least because he had two children himself and so could understand what her death would mean for Diana’s boys. He made a decision “not to speak or disclose anything about the incident until William and Harry reached adulthood.”

The mere thought that his images “could have contributed to fueling the hunt for Diana and Dodi obviously saddens me,” Brenna said. But he did not think his work added significantly to the furor around the princess.

“If it hadn’t been me,” he added, “someone else would certainly have captured those images.”

Alex Marshall is a European culture reporter, based in London. More about Alex Marshall

What Really Happened During Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s Vacation?

The Crown depicts her jaunts on Mohamed Al-Fayed’s yacht, the Jonikal, where her romance with Dodi kicked off.

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Diana was invited by Mohamed, a friend and businessman, to vacation in Saint-Tropez with her sons in July 1997. The Harrods owner would also goad his own son to join, too. The invitation came at a good time, after a few rough blows for Diana: Prince Charles was throwing a lavish birthday party for Camilla Parker Bowles at Highgrove, the house he and Diana once shared. And she had just broken up with surgeon Hasnat Khan, due to the media frenzy around their relationship. It was the month before William and Harry would be at Balmoral with their father and the rest of the royals, who no longer accepted her. So off she went, straight to the $20 million yacht that Fayed bought just before the trip to impress her—Tina Brown writes in The Diana Chronicles .

Prince Harry has looked back fondly at that trip, mostly because of the quality time they spent with their mom. “Actually, we’d been with Mummy weeks earlier when she first met him [Dodi], in St. Tropez,” he writes in her memoir Spare , per Today . “We were having a grand time, just the three of us, staying at some old gent’s villa.

“There was much laughter, horseplay, the norm whenever Mummy and Willy and I were together, though even more so on that holiday. Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven. The weather was sublime, the food was tasty, Mummy was smiling.”

But the cameras followed her, like they always did. The Crown depicts photographers sailing out toward the Jonikal to snap images of the princess sunbathing and swimming in her one-piece. It also shows her approaching the boats filled with paparazzi to forge a deal: She’ll pose for them for a few shots if they’ll leave her and her kids alone.

princess diana, elizabeth debicki, poses for photographers in the crown season 6, part 1

Part of this is true. The New York Times reported in 1997 that Diana was quite cooperative with the press, at least during the first trip in July: “Three times, on separate occasions, she went out to the sea front and jumped off a small pier into the water, with photographers around her. Then, after leaving for 10 days with Mr. Fayed on the boat trip during which the photographs of the embracing couple were taken, she returned.”

“It was clear enough to all of us that she wanted to show the British establishment she was free,” Frederic Garcia, who photographed Diana on the trip, told the paper at the time. But her and the Al-Fayeds’ exasperation with the media grew after helicopters flew over the boat, according to the NYT .

Perhaps her openness to being photographed was her response to Camilla’s birthday party. “She just wanted to make the people at Balmoral as angry as possible,” her friend, art collector Lord Palumbo, told Brown. Now it wasn’t just a revenge dress; it was a revenge photo shoot with revenge swimsuits on a revenge vacation.

Brown even writes that the biggest photos from the trip, of the princess kissing a shirtless Dodi on the boat, “were the direct result of tips from Diana herself.” After they were published, she called photographer Jason Fraser, who “was in cahoots” with Mario Brenna, who shot the images, to ask why the pictures were so grainy. But she wasn’t the only one working with the press. Mohamed also had a publicist tip gossip columns on her and Dodi’s whereabouts and frame their getaway as a sensational romance, according to Brown.

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Meanwhile, Dodi was juggling this burgeoning love story with another one. He was already engaged when he first joined Diana on the boat at his father’s behest in July. His fiancée was Kelly Fisher , an American actress and model, and their wedding was scheduled for the following month, on August 9, 1997. He had even left Fisher in Paris to board the Jonikal in St. Tropez. She joined later but, just as it’s shown in The Crown , she was relegated to a different Al-Fayed boat, where Dodi would visit her at night, Brown writes. Fisher soon caught on. In August, she sued Dodi for breach of contract, and was represented by high-profile lawyer Gloria Allred. But she withdrew the suit after his death.

In Spare , Harry remembered thinking Dodi was “cheeky” but overall was content with the relationship: “As long as Mummy’s happy, I told Willy, who said, he felt the same.” But Brown reported in her 2007 book that Prince William grew concerned. He told friends it was weird that they were on vacation with what seemed like a “substitute family.” When photos of Diana and Dodi on the boat were published, William complained to her that the boys at school would mock him for it.

After doing significant charity work in Bosnia with land mine victims, Diana reconvened with Dodi on the Jonikal in August. “The fact that she came back for a second visit so soon really shows her loneliness more than it does a passion for Dodi,” Dominick Dunne reported for Vanity Fair in 2008. But the privacy—or whatever amount of it that they had—might have appealed to her. “A splendid yacht. A helicopter. A private plane. Guards to keep the paparazzi at bay. She probably knew that she was being used by a social climber for his and his son’s advancement in London society, but in high society it was a fair deal. Each benefited.”

Dodi and Diana’s romance would be short-lived, but he showered her with gifts during their six-week relationship, including a pearl bracelet and diamond wristwatch, according to Vanity Fair . With him, the princess felt “so taken care of,” her confidant Lady Elsa Bowker told Brown. And on top of that, he was a “sympathetic, unthreatening listener,” wrote Tom Bower, author of Mohamed Al-Fayed’s unauthorized biography.

thecrown221007ep603stillsdanielescale0042arw

But their relationship probably wasn’t going to be a lasting one. According to Brown, Diana suspected Dodi might propose to her, but told a friend that the ring would go “firmly on the fourth finger of my right hand,” meaning she would not have accepted. Her sister Sarah McCorquodale later testified, “I just did not think the relationship had much longer to go.”

It’s been believed that the romance was even orchestrated by Mohamed himself. According to Bower, the older Al-Fayed would check in on Dodi and Diana during the trip (which is also portrayed in The Crown this season). McCorquodale also told the court that Diana “thought the boat was being bugged by Mr Al-Fayed Senior.”

On that second trip in August, Diana and Dodi were photographed together in the South of France and Sardinia, before heading to Paris for their tragic final days. There, they would be chased by cameras again for the last time.

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The princess and her paramour vacationed on the yacht shortly before their tragic deaths in 1997.

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Just a month before their passing, Diana and Dodi—joined for part of the trip by her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry—traveled the South of France aboard a superyacht. Then named the Jonikal (it has subsequently been called the Sokar , and the Bash ), the yacht was owned by Dodi's father, former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed , when Diana traveled on it. Following the 1997 car crash that led to the couple's deaths, Mohamed attempted to sell the yacht on a number of occasions before ultimately parting with it in 2014.

In 2022, it was announced that the 208-foot yacht, which saw the beloved royal's last vacation, would be going up for sale. According to Boat International , the vessel sold in June of 2023 following a €9 million refit.

The ship, which was first launched in 1990, reportedly has nine staterooms to hold up to 12 guests with amenities including a jacuzzi, swim platform, sun deck, formal dining room, a bar, and office space. Though the ultimate sale price for the vessel has not been revealed, the asking price was reportedly €15,500,000.

Lauren Hubbard is a freelance writer and Town & Country contributor who covers beauty, shopping, entertainment, travel, home decor, wine, and cocktails.

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madrid, spain april 24 queen letizia of spain hosts an official lunch for the miguel de cervantes 2023 award at the royal palace on april 24, 2024 in madrid, spain photo by carlos alvarezgetty images

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Princess Diana in a blue swimsuit sat on a diving board with the sea beneath her

Princess Diana was always a fashion icon , we can never forget her legendary 'revenge' dress , but one of her best-known looks was snapped when she holidayed on the Jonikal yacht with the al-Fayed family, scenes which were immortalised in the fifth and sixth seasons of The Crown .

The holiday that Diana enjoyed, alongside sons Prince William and Prince Harry , would be her last before she was tragically killed in a car accident in 1997. One of the most memorable photos saw the late Princess of Wales sat on the yacht's diving board looking out over the sea.

Even though the photo of Diana in the teal swimsuit is now one of the most poignant photos of the late royal, how much do you know of the story behind it? Read on to find out all you need to know…

Why was Diana on the yacht?

Princess Diana had become friends with the businessman Mohamed al-Fayed, with the pair reportedly meeting a polo match before becoming friends. Following her divorce from the then Prince Charles and the ending of her relationship with heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan, Mohamed invited Diana to join him and his family on a trip to St Tropez, in southern France.

Ahead of the trip, Diana had been in Milan to attend the funeral of fashion designer and friend Gianna Versace, who had been murdered by Andrew Cunanan. The late royal later travelled to Sarajevo, in Bosnia, to highlight the issue of landmines in the country. During her time in the city, she met with people who had been injured by the mines.

Who took the photo?

On 10 August, paparazzi photos were published in the Sunday Mirror showing Princess Diana and Dodi sharing a kiss, which intensified media presence around the couple and their holiday. Paparazzi photographers began renting dinghies to try and get new photos of the royal, with some even going for prices up to £1million.

READ: I followed expert budget beauty tips on how to look like a royal for a week

INSIDE STORY: The time Princess Diana called a journalist to her home after reading an article she didn't like

It's ultimately unknown which photographer grabbed the photo of Diana on the side of the yacht, which was published on 24 August, a week before Diana died. The snap saw the Princess in her teal swimsuit sat at the end of the yacht's diving board, with a life ring floating in the water beneath her.

See below for more images of Diana on the Jonikal…

Diana and Dodi

Diana and Dodi grew close on the trip, and in this photo the pair shared an intimate moment as they relaxed in the sun together.

Princess Diana with Mohamed al-Fayed and Dodi al-Fayed on a yacht

Diana with the al-Fayed family

The late Princess of Wales had been invited on the trip by Mohamed al-Fayed, and she enjoyed the businessman's company during her time onboard.

Dodi al-Fayed and Princess Diana on a yacht

Diana in blue

Diana favoured the teal swimsuit during her time in St Tropez.

Princess Diana in a green and blue swimsuit on the deck of a yacht

Diana's paparazzi moment

The royal was aware of the media presence, and she light-heartedly teased photographers in this photo, mimicking a pair of binoculars with her hands.

Princess Diana stretching on the deck of a yacht

Diana stretches

The mum-of-two also brought this stunning green and blue one-piece with her on the trip, and in this photo she enjoyed some morning stretches on the yacht's deck.

Princess Diana on the phone with a young Prince Harry

Diana's family moment

Diana didn't go on the holiday alone, and she also enjoyed time with her sons Prince William and Prince Harry, and a young Harry can be seen here with his mum while she spoke to someone on the phone.

British Royals
Princess Diana

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‘The Crown’: The Story Behind That Princess Diana Yacht Photo

Perched on the edge of a diving board in a blue swimsuit, the famous paparazzi shot caught the former royal in a moment of reflection

It’s telling that the lead image in the promotion of the final series of The Crown, a show ostensibly about Queen Elizabeth II and her ascendent line of heirs, is not of HRH. Instead, it’s an iconic shot of the person who's really at the centre of the Netflix show's sixth season: the late Princess Diana.

The photo in question has become embedded in popular culture since it was taken on Diana’s last holiday before her death. The ex-royal sits, pensively, on the diving board of a superyacht, looking out to sea in a turquoise swimsuit. But what is the true story behind one of the most famous images of the Princess Of Wales?

The backstory

In July 1997, Diana was on a Mediterranean holiday with her boyfriend at the time, Dodi Al Fayed, son of the then-Harrods’ boss, the late Mohammed Al Fayed. Diana and Dodi – and the Princes William and Harry – all spent time together in Castle St. Therese, Al Fayed’s 30-bedroom villa in St. Tropez in the South of France.

But Diana was called to Milan on 22 July, where she attended the funeral of her friend Gianni Versace, who was murdered by a fan on the steps of his Miami home on 15 July.

The author and friend of Diana, Tina Brown, later wrote: “The murder of the flamboyant fashion star Gianni Versace... while Diana was on Al Fayed's yacht, was a meteor shower in the exploding sky of her final summer.”

With the weight of the death of her friend still on her mind, in early August, Diana travelled alone to Sarajevo to publicise the fight against landmines in the country. Here, she came face to face with some horrific tales of mutilation of the people, and spent time working with rehabilitation groups of survivors.

By early August, after an emotionally turbulent few weeks, Diana was back on holiday with Dodi, this time on his yacht, known as Jonikal.

But on 10 August, pictures of Diana and Dodi kissing in Sardinia were published in the Sunday Mirror , and all hell broke loose; especially when it was claimed Diana could possibly be engaged, or even pregnant. In the trailer for series six, Imelda Staunton’s Queen is shown the front-page splash and told: “Interest in the princess’ private life is unlikely to die down any time soon”, and it’s likely that in real life Diana would have received a stern phone call from the palace.

From this point onwards, it only intensified the swarms of paparazzi clamouring for pictures of the pair on holiday. Video footage from the trip shows dinghies filled with men with long-lens pictures surrounding the yacht, desperate to catch another money-spinning shot of the couple together – with figures going as high as £1 million a photo.

On 24 August, Diana, dressed in just the teal swimsuit, took a walk out to the diving board of the yacht and sat down on it. She would have had a lot to process from the past few weeks.

She would also have known the press were desperate for pictures of her and Dodi together – perhaps she told him to stay below deck to protect him while she gave photographers a shot to appease them.

But according to one paparazzo in the documentary Sex & Power , the romance was just for show: “No-one knows this, so it’s actually quite interesting. [The crew member] said, ‘They don’t share the same bedroom, he calls her ma’am, is incredibly deferential and respectful. But as soon as she goes outside to wave to the paps, she’s bending over and kissing him and hugging him’... The truth [of their romance] is the opposite.”

Was this then another posed shot designed to reset the narrative, or was it simply a candid picture of the troubled princess in genuine thought? Whatever the case may be, the photo's melancholy pull is still being felt.

The first half of The Crown series 6 streams on Netflix from November 16.

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The True Story Behind 'The Crown’s Infamous Kiss Photograph

Princess Diana became the most photographed woman in the world after "The Kiss."

Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Season 6 of The Crown.

The Big Picture

Princess Diana's life was constantly invaded by the paparazzi, who followed her every movement and turned her personal relationships into a public spectacle.
Mario Brenna's photograph of Diana and Dodi Fayed sharing an intimate moment on a yacht sparked a frenzy in the press and fueled a relentless pursuit for their pictures.
The paparazzi's obsession with capturing Diana's image ultimately contributed to her tragic death in a car crash, and "The Kiss" photograph played a significant role in these events.

Since the imminent rise of paparazzi culture during the 1990s, candid photographs of celebrities have always held a negative stigma, especially after the tragic death of Princess Diana ( Elizabeth Debicki ). Part 1 of The Crown 's final season, streaming on Netflix, has a major focus on the summer of 1997, when the recently divorced Princess of Wales became the prized jewel of a media frenzy. Without the personal security of the Royal Family, Diana was not afforded the kind of privacy she was given during her marriage to Prince Charles ( Dominic West ). Her every movement was followed through long-lens cameras ( Diana reportedly yelled at a photographer outside a movie theater in London and shouted, “You make my life hell!" ), and the press made her life into a scrutinized fishbowl — even her personal relationships were not her own.

Episode 2, "Two Photographs," revisits the paparazzi's ruthless pursuit of Princess Diana's picture. The start of the show introduces the audience to a real-life character who was responsible for capturing the infamous Sunday Mirror photograph, Italian paparazzo Mario Brenna . The photograph shows "Di" and Dodi Fayed ( Khalid Abdalla ) sharing an intimate moment aboard a yacht on the Mediterranean Sea. Although the latest season of The Crown is a dramatized account of these events , it's no secret that Brenna's successful photograph is shown to have preluded Diana's deathly car chase less than a month later. But there's so much more to the story behind "The Kiss."

Follows the political rivalries and romance of Queen Elizabeth II's reign and the events that shaped the second half of the 20th century.

What's the Truth Behind Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's Romance?

On July 11, 1997, Diana and her sons, Prince William ( Rufus Kampas ) and Prince Harry ( Fflyn Edwards ), were kindly invited to join Mohamed Al-Fayed ( Salim Daw ), the business owner of Hôtel Ritz Paris and Harrods department store, at his Saint Tropez villa for a summer vacation. Dodi Fayed unexpectedly joined the party aboard Al-Fayed's yacht t he Jonikal, which becomes an integral character of its own seen in the final season of The Crown . Di, Dodi, and the Princes were said to have enjoyed a splendid time aboard the yacht, and Diana and Dodi grew fond of one another during this period.

According to Netflix's Beneath The Crown: The True Story of Diana and Dodi's Last Summer , both Princess Diana and Dodi were involved with other romantic partners before they met. Diana was reportedly dating heart surgeon Hasnat Khan ( Humayun Saeed ), whom she often referred to as "Mr. Wonderful," and clearly had big plans for their future . In the summer of 1997, Dr. Khan was rumored to have broken up with the Princess because of the consistent media attention surrounding them. On the other hand, Dodi, being a successful film producer , had a reputation as a playboy and was seen dating multiple A-list women over the course of his Hollywood career, including actress Brooke Shields, before meeting model Kelly Fisher, whom he was engaged to at the time he met the Princess of Wales.

After the vacation, Diana returned home to an apartment full of roses and an $11,000 gold Cartier watch as a present from Dodi. Diana's friends believe she developed an interest in dating Dodi to make Dr. Khan jealous . Just 11 days later, the Princess returned alone to the Jonikal and embarked on a week-long trip with Al-Fayed's son. The media went crazy, with rumors spreading of a possible romance. Most of the press coverage was heavily negative, which sparked numerous amounts of controversy around the pair. Photographers rose in numbers as the couple's relationship grew truer every day. Per Beneath The Crown , it surfaced that Mohamed Al-Fayed asked renowned publicist Max Clifford to positively endorse their relationship. Photographers were then tipped off to find Diana and Dodi's location, and on August 10, Mario Brenna found them first.

How Did Mario Brenna's "The Kiss" Change Princess Diana's Life Forever?

Per The Independent , Mario Brenna was an official photographer for the Versace fashion house who lived in Monaco in 1997. Brenna happened to discover the yacht on an inflatable boat off of the Sardinian coast (He claims he spent occasional summers around the Mediterranean Sea to catch celebrities vacationing, as stated in the National Post .) He slowly approached the Jonikal when he thought he had seen a former acquaintance. To his shock, it was actually the "People's Princess" in the arms of Dodi Fayed. Captured from 500 yards away, Brenna hurriedly snapped photos of the couple "kissing" onboard and flew straight to London to show fellow celebrity photographer Jason Fraser the historic images.

Brenna recounts finding the couple that day as a “great stroke of luck." Despite the summer haze, the photograph sparked a chaotic bidding war between major publishing companies. Brenna ultimately sold "The Kiss" to the Sunday Mirror for £250,000 . The Sun and The Daily additionally paid him £100,000 each. Fraser, who helped in negotiating the deals, sold the rights internationally, which brought their earnings to over $2.1 million in global sales.

Following Brenna's phenomenon, "The Kiss" fueled an all-out paparazzi hunt for Princess Diana and Dodi's picture. Everywhere they traveled, the paparazzi hounded the couple, with no respect for their privacy. If Brenna could make a fortune out of one photo, other photographers had a chance to do the same. Diana participated in several humanitarian works following the picture, including becoming an advocate for landmine removals in developing countries. However, her efforts were regularly overlooked by her affair with Dodi. The couple also received racist backlash after "The Kiss," with most comments disapproving of Dodi's ethnicity as depicted in The Crown .

Swarms of press, even helicopters, surrounded the yacht in which Dodi and Diana often stayed. As stated in Beneath The Crown, Dodi had encouraged Diana to dabble in Hollywood acting, with talks to co-star alongside Kevin Costner in a sequel to the box-office hit The Bodyguard . These dreams would never come to fruition. On August 31, 1997, Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were declared dead following a car crash through a tunnel at Place de l’Alma in Paris, France . There are countless conspiracies revolving around their deaths, but it was undeniable that their car was mercilessly tailed by a pack of paparazzi who wanted to snap the couple's picture. Mario Brenna confesses to The New York Times that he couldn't help but think "The Kiss" triggered the horrifying events that led to the death of Princess Diana: "If it hadn’t been me, someone else would certainly have captured those images."

What Does 'The Crown' Get Right and Wrong About "The Kiss"?

The Crown is no stranger to negative criticism when it comes to dramatizing the lives of the Royal Family. Aside from a few historical flaws, Episode 2, "Two Photographs", surprisingly does an adequate job of re-imagining the events that made Princess Diana one of the most photographed persons of all time. What the show changes is Prince Charles's reaction to seeing the picture in the Sunday Mirror. The episode depicts Charles hiring Scottish photographer Duncan Muir, a fictionalized character, to take pictures of him with William and Harry as a ploy to outshine the publicity from Diana's controversial photo. It is later revealed that the Scotland photoshoot dominated the front pages of The Mirror and The Daily Record, but this didn't happen.

According to Business Insider , on August 12, 1997, the young Princes and their father participated in a photo shoot at the royals' annual vacation at Balmoral. A handful of photographers snapped the photos, not one, and the images were featured only on pages eight, nine, and five of the respective newspapers. The failed Scotland pics were still overshadowed by the public's fascination with "The Kiss," and the press made rather unfavorable remarks with subheadings like: "Young princes look embarrassed by dad's Harry Lauder image."

"Two Photographs" also mixes up some facts regarding how Dodi started courting the "People's Princess." In the show, Mohamed Al-Fayed acts as a matchmaker for the couple, endlessly pressuring Dodi to flirt with the Princess in order to prove he is worthy of inheriting his father's wealth. Dodi seems stressed about making a connection with Diana during her vacation onboard the yacht as he is engaged to Kelly Fisher (a fact that is accurate). When the couple does become more intimate, The Crown implies that Al-Fayed tipped off Mario Brenna as to their whereabouts, but Brenna claimed the misconception that Al-Fayed hired him to take "The Kiss" was "absurd and completely invented."

What the final season does right in Part 1 is the portrayal of Diana and Dodi's romantic affair and the paparazzi's relentless invasion of their private lives. Di and Dodi briefly dated for a little over a month, and their relationship was always under the microscope. As shown in The Crown , the pair did develop fond feelings for one another, and a rumored engagement as well, but the press could only imagine what their true relationship entailed. History has proven that Diana was nothing but a cash grab to the paparazzi who sought her out only in hopes of making a fortune overnight. Once she and Dodi became the eye of the world, the media never respected her space, time, or family when it came to capturing "the shot." The Crown ultimately does not sugarcoat the brutal paparazzi culture that led to Princess Diana's final moments .

Per the National Post, Brenna admitted that The Crown never made an effort to contact him about the true story of how he captured "The Kiss" or his feelings following the doomed aftermath. Furthermore, he told the Times he does not agree with how he or the paparazzi are represented in the final season. "Two Photographs," despite its blemishes, urges fans to acknowledge the prestigious drama as a fictionalized chronicle and acts as a time machine to reflect on the unfortunate events that shocked the world into a bitter period of grief. If "The Kiss" was never captured, would the "People's Princess" still be here today?

The Crown is available to stream exclusively on Netflix in the U.S.

Watch on Netflix

Yacht that Princess Diana spent last summer on with Dodi Al-Fayed sinks to bottom of Mediterranean

Cujo, which made front-page news around the world back in the summer of 1997 when Diana was entertained on board a year after her divorce from Prince Charles, went down in 2500m (8200ft) of water.

Thursday 3 August 2023 17:00, UK

A motor yacht used by Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed on their final summer holiday in the South of France before they died in a Paris car crash has sunk.

The 19m (62ft) Cujo went down 21 miles (35km) off Beaulieu-sur-Mer after sending out a mayday call last Saturday.

The seven people on board the luxury vessel, which was taking on water, were rescued by teams from Antibes before it sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean at a depth of 2500m (8200ft).

They were safely returned to shore.

The area was monitored for pollution as the boat sank with 7,000 litres of diesel in its tanks.

Cujo made front page news around the world back in the summer of 1997 when Al-Fayed entertained Diana onboard, a year after her divorce from Prince Charles, which was finalised in August 1996.

That summer, Diana was also photographed on Sokar, the yacht then owned by al Fayed's billionaire father Mohamed.

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Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's iconic love boat is now at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea

The yacht on which Princess Diana holidayed with Dodi Fayed is now at the bottom of the sea, per The Times .
The boat, named Cujo, sank after it collided with an unidentified object off the French Riviera.
Cujo has changed hands multiple times in recent years and was most recently owned by a wealthy Italian family.

The yacht where Princess Diana spent part of her last summer with Dodi Fayed has sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

The boat, named Cujo, sank on July 29 after colliding with an unidentified object off Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, The Times reported.

The Gendarmerie des Alpes-Maritimes uploaded a statement onto their Facebook page confirming that they responded to a distress call from a boat that was in trouble about 35 kilometers, or 22 miles, off the coast.

By the time the coast guards arrived at the scene, the yacht was already partially submerged.

"The distressed yacht is already starting to sink from the front and the 7 shipwrecked are just next to it in a life raft," the statement said. "The cabins of the yacht are already flooded, only a few suitcases located in the kitchen and on the deck can be retrieved."

Watch: The rise and fall of the cruise industry

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clock This article was published more than 6 years ago

Diana’s final hours: Dodi’s yacht, a Ritz suite, a diamond ring and relentless photographers

The last day of Princess Diana’s life began on the top deck of her lover’s yacht, with croissants and fresh jams.

Diana and her beau, Dodi Al Fayed, sipped their coffee marveling at the breathtaking Emerald Coast in Sardinia. Diana took hers with milk. Fayed took his black. There were kiwis, too.

“They were in a good mood,” his butler remembered later. “They were always laughing, holding hands.”

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Their romance was a whirlwind — passionate, thrilling, scandalous. Fayed, the son of Harrod’s department store owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, was a rich playboy. Diana, divorced from Prince Charles after he cheated on her, was the mother of the future King of England and the most photographed woman in the world.

[ How Britain and the world mourned Diana, the ‘People’s Princess’ ]

That Saturday — Aug. 30, 1997 — promised to be a moment of change. The Princess knew it. She snuck a call to Richard Kay, a friend who covered the Royals for the Daily Mail, and told him, as he later wrote , “she had decided to radically change her life.”

“She was going to complete her obligations to her charities,” Kay continued, “and then, around November, would completely withdraw from her formal public life.” Diana had not told Kay why, but he had a hunch: “They were, to use an old but priceless cliche, blissfully happy. I cannot say for certain that they would have married, but in my view it was likely.”

In the 20 years since she’s been gone, there have been countless revisions to this love story. Her friends and relatives: They weren’t in love! His friends and relatives: They were in love!

Last week, in the Daily Mail, Kay published an article with this headline: “Was Diana about to dump Dodi?” In it, he quoted Diana’s private secretary saying she’d planned to return home after becoming bored with Fayed.

“It’s very much a personal view,” the secretary said, “but I don’t think she would have seen Dodi again once she got back.”

Whatever the case, Fayed wanted to propose that fateful night. It was summer. As they were on holiday, Britain announced plans to invite the Irish Republican Army for peace talks. Conspiracies theories about the suicide of Vincent Foster, President Bill Clinton’s lawyer, were spreading. Israel and Lebanon were sparring with one another.

Fayed’s primary concern was the six-figure diamond ring waiting in Paris. People close to Fayed said the couple picked it out a week earlier even though they had been dating less than a month.

The danger of their relationship wasn’t its brevity. To royal watchers, to Buckingham Palace, and no doubt to the British tabloids whose photographers were hounding them, the threat was something the couple apparently had not yet considered, even as rumors swirled that Diana was already pregnant.

“For the mother of the future king of England to bear the child of a Muslim Arab, a child who would be the half sibling of the heir to the throne, would be embarrassing in the eyes of the royal family and the ruling Establishment,” former Time magazine reporters Tom Sancton and Scott MacLeod wrote in their book, “Death of a Princess.”

Fayed’s calendar that day had just one entry — at 6:30 p.m., he was to pick up the ring at a store near his father’s hotel in Paris, The Ritz. They left the boat for Fayed’s plane around 11:30 a.m., taking along the butler and a masseuse for Fayed’s painful back.

As soon as they landed in Paris, Fayed saw the paparazzi out his window.

“Dodi did not want this special occasion ruined by a bunch of a shutter-happy cowboys trying to corral them on motorcycles and shoving lenses in their faces,” the ex-Time reporters wrote. “As soon as the door opened, cameras started clicking.”

Diana and the media: She used them, and they used her. Until the day she died.

The aggressiveness of the photographers — and their sheer numbers — would increase as the day progressed.

Diana and Fayed arrived at The Ritz in the late afternoon. She went to the salon for a hair appointment. He went to the jeweler. The couple then rested in the hotel’s Imperial Suite before going to Fayed’s apartment to get dressed for dinner. She checked in with her children, who were in Scotland with Prince Charles and the Queen.

“On that Saturday evening, Diana was as happy as I have ever known her,” her friend Kay wrote in the Daily Mail. “For the first time in years, all was well with her world.”

They left for Fayed’s apartment around 7 p.m., trailed by photographers. More were waiting at the building’s front door when they arrived. Fayed fumed. There was an ugly shoving match.

Once inside, Fayed pulled his butler aside, telling him about his plan to propose that night.

“The ring was on the nightstand in his bedroom,” author Christopher Anderson wrote in “The Day Diana Died.” “Dodi had checked to make sure they had several bottles of Dom Pérignon on ice for the big moment.”

But dinner was a bust.

The first restaurant they tried — Chez Benoit, a cozy, casual bistro not far from the city center — was quickly overrun by photographers. They split and headed for The Ritz, ducking into the dining room hoping to be left alone.

The Princess ordered vegetable tempura. Fayed ordered grilled turbot.

“No sooner had they ordered,” the ex-Time reporters wrote, “they began to feel the indiscreet stares of other diners.”

JFK’s last birthday: Gifts, champagne and wandering hands on the presidential yacht

The couple left and had the food delivered to the Imperial Suite. Fayed’s plan was in shambles. They had to get back to the apartment. But how? The hotel was swarming with photographers.

Fayed devised a plan: The couple’s driver and bodyguards would make a big show out front, appearing to get their caravan of Mercedes sedans ready to leave. Meanwhile, the Princess and Fayed would slip out the back door, in a borrowed car driven by a hotel security officer.

What happened next was the subject of lengthy investigations and conspiracy theories that live on today. The couple did get away. But the driver, it turned out, was drunk.

As the couple sped off, the photographers out front got tipped off about the escape, quickly catching up on their motorcycles. Their driver darted in and out of traffic, wrecking spectacularly inside the Pont de l’Alma tunnel near the Eiffel Tower.

Fayed died instantly. Diana died at the hospital.

Her death startled the world.

An up-and-coming anchor named Brian Williams broke into regular coverage on MSNBC to announce the news to Americans in the early morning hours of Aug. 31.

“I’ve just been handed from the Reuters news service what has been marked ‘bulletin,’” Williams said, speaking slowly. “It says, ‘Princess Diana has died.’”

She was 36.

Accessibility Links

Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed and the story behind my brother’s boat

The sinking of the yacht on which the princess and the film producer holidayed is just the latest twist in its colourful past. i should know, says petra khashoggi.

Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed on the French Riviera. Right, Diana on the Al Fayed yacht Jonikal in 1997

Challenge yourself with today’s puzzles.

O n July 29 a famous yacht hit an unidentified object 21 miles off the French Riviera from Beaulieu-sur-Mer. The seven people on board were evacuated unharmed as the 80ft luxury speedboat sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean. The name of the vessel was Cujo , once owned by Dodi Fayed and splashed across the world’s front pages during the summer of 1997 while he was on the Riviera with his girlfriend, Diana, Princess of Wales.

It was less than a year after Diana’s divorce from Prince Charles and Diana’s first summer of freedom from the royal family, and, some might say, the beginning of a true love story. Days later Dodi and the princess were killed in a Paris car crash by a drunk

Yacht used by Diana during her last summer sinks

Diana's last day: Dodi's yacht, a Ritz suite, a diamond ring and relentless photographers

Diana, divorced from Prince Charles after he cheated on her, was the mother of the future king of England and the most photographed woman in the world

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By Michael S. Rosenwald

The last day of Princess Diana’s life began on the top deck of her lover’s yacht, with croissants and fresh jams.

Diana and her beau, Dodi Al Fayed, sipped their coffee marveling at the breathtaking Emerald Coast in Sardinia. Diana took hers with milk. Fayed took his black. There were kiwis, too.

“They were in a good mood,” his butler remembered later. “They were always laughing, holding hands.”

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Their romance was a whirlwind — passionate, thrilling, scandalous. Fayed, the son of Harrod’s department store owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, was a rich playboy. Diana, divorced from Prince Charles after he cheated on her, was the mother of the future king of England and the most photographed woman in the world.

That Saturday — Aug. 30, 1997 — promised to be a moment of change. The princess knew it. She snuck a call to Richard Kay, a friend who covered the Royals for the Daily Mail, and told him, as he later wrote, “she had decided to radically change her life.”

In the 20 years since she’s been gone, there have been countless revisions to this love story. Her friends and relatives: They weren’t in love! His friends and relatives: They were in love!

Get a dash of perspective along with the trending news of the day in a very readable format.

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“It’s very much a personal view,” the secretary said, “but I don’t think she would have seen Dodi again once she got back.”

Fayed’s primary concern was the six-figure diamond ring waiting in Paris. People close to Fayed said the couple picked it out a week earlier even though they had been dating less than a month.

As soon as they landed in Paris, Fayed saw the paparazzi out his window.

The aggressiveness of the photographers — and their sheer numbers — would increase as the day progressed.

“On that Saturday evening, Diana was as happy as I have ever known her,” her friend Kay wrote in the Daily Mail. “For the first time in years, all was well with her world.”

They left for Fayed’s apartment around 7 p.m., trailed by photographers. More were waiting at the building’s front door when they arrived. Fayed fumed. There was an ugly shoving match.

Once inside, Fayed pulled his butler aside, telling him about his plan to propose that night.

But dinner was a bust.

The first restaurant they tried — Chez Benoit, a cozy, casual bistro not far from the city centre – was quickly overrun by photographers. They split and headed for The Ritz, ducking into the dining room hoping to be left alone.

The princess ordered vegetable tempura. Fayed ordered grilled turbot.

“No sooner had they ordered,” the ex-Time reporters wrote, “they began to feel the indiscreet stares of other diners.”

The couple left and had the food delivered to the Imperial Suite. Fayed’s plan was in shambles. They had to get back to the apartment. But how? The hotel was swarming with photographers.

What happened next was the subject of lengthy investigations and conspiracy theories that live on today. The couple did get away. But the driver, it turned out, was drunk.

Fayed died instantly. Diana died at the hospital.

Her death startled the world.

An up-and-coming anchor named Brian Williams broke into regular coverage on MSNBC to announce the news to Americans in the early morning hours of Aug. 31.

“I’ve just been handed from the Reuters news service what has been marked ‘bulletin,'” Williams said, speaking slowly. “It says, ‘Princess Diana has died.'”

She was 36.

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Inside the £13m 208ft ‘love boat’ yacht where Princess Diana & Dodi Fayed had their romantic fling which is on The Crown

Becky Pemberton
Published : 12:36, 16 Nov 2023
Updated : 12:36, 16 Nov 2023

THE famous £13million superyacht where Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed enjoyed their romantic fling is featured on the new season of The Crown.

The glamorous royal and her wealthy boyfriend were famously pictured kissing on the luxury “love boat” Jonikal, which is now called Bash, before their tragic deaths in 1997.

Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed on their romantic Mediterranean break on his family yacht, Jonikal

Photos of the couple’s Mediterranean getaway circulated around the world, with The Sunday Mirror paying £250,000 for first rights to the collection.

The fall out of the photos was depicted on the sixth and final season of Netflix’s The Crown, with the Queen , played by Imelda Staunton , seen viewing the multi-page spread back home.

The stunning 208ft yacht can hold up to 18 people across nine staterooms, along with 26 crew members.

It also offers a range of impressive amenities including a jacuzzi, swim platform, sun deck, formal dining room, a bar, and office space.

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The yacht belonged to Dodi’s multi-millionaire father Mohamed Al-Fayed .

The billionaire former Harrods owner amassed his astonishing fortune running several high-profile business ventures and a Premier League football club prior to the announcement of his death in August 2023.

The ship was first launched in 1990, and has had a number of owners over the years.

According to Boat International, it was sold earlier this year, and although the sum hasn’t been disclosed, the asking price was €15,500,000 (£13million).

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Diana’s final month included two cruises on The Jonikal.

The holidays sparked unfounded rumours that Diana was pregnant and about to announce plans to marry Dodi .

Dodi died aged 42 in a Paris car crash with Diana 26 years ago.

The pair first met at a polo match in 1989, but they did not get together until Dodi invited the princess to stay at his father's 30-bedroom villa in St Tropez in July 1997.

Much of Dodi's fortune was spent on impressing a string of beautiful models and actresses.

The playboy was linked to Blue Lagoon actress Brooke Shields, Val Kilmer’s ex-wife Joanne Whalley, Stranger Things star Winona Ryder and Frank Sinatra’s daughter Tina.

Following the 1997 car crash that led to the couple's deaths, Mohamed attempted to sell the yacht on a number of occasions before ultimately parting with it in 2014.

It was most recently purchased by Bassim Haidar in June of 2021, who sold it just over a year later with plans to upgrade to a larger vessel.

Photos of Diana sitting on the yacht circulated around the world

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What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in The Crown Season 6 Part 1

Did diana really have a psychic on call and did william really adore street fighter ii we break down what’s true and what’s invention..

Appearing with perfect timing not long after its principal character has left the world stage, the final series of The Crown brings us to the last years of Elizabeth II’s reign. The first part of Season 6 (Part 2 will be released by Netflix in December) announces its dramatic trajectory right from the start, as a Parisian walking his dog late at night spies a Mercedes limousine racing down a Seine embankment pursued by several motorbikes, then hears a sickening crash.

Dramatizing the early years of Elizabeth II’s life was a more straightforward proposition for the show, dealing with events that most of the audience had not experienced firsthand and so was unlikely to be emotionally invested in. Also, the scriptwriters had a lot less guesswork: Official notes and documents by government officials in the corridors of power at the time have since been made accessible to the public (under British law, most government notes and documents can be put in the public domain 30 years after they are created), and significant figures in the story have published a trove of memoirs and diaries.

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By contrast, a large contingent of the audience has preexisting views, and indeed conspiracy theories, about the events leading up to Princess Diana’s death. Showrunner Peter Morgan has said the show “is a fictional dramatization, imagining what could have happened behind closed doors.” So, while we will never know for sure if Dodi Fayed ever actually proposed to Princess Diana (at least until those memoirs and diaries appear), or why Diana decided to make that fateful stopover in Paris before returning to London, or how the queen reacted to the news of her death, we do have Morgan’s educated guesses, deriving from psychological extrapolation blended with his dramatist’s instinct. As the emotion of the era has finally started to subside and the fog of speculation dissipates, we look at what’s fact and what’s fiction in the first four episodes of The Crown ’s ultimate season.

Was Dodi Engaged to Someone Else When He Started Pursuing Diana?

At the start of the season, Dodi Fayed—occasional film producer and man-about-several-towns, considered to be something of a lady killer despite being under the thumb of his domineering father, Mohamed—is more or less happily engaged to American model Kelly Fisher. But then he is summoned to the family yacht by his father, who has managed to lure Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and her sons there for a vacation and is keen for Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) to become Diana’s next husband. Dodi and Diana bond over their difficult relationships with their fathers and, with Mohamed pushing in the background, Dodi dumps his fiancée as his romance with Diana blossoms.

In reality, Fisher, who modeled in campaigns for brands such as Victoria’s Secret, Armani, and Calvin Klein, first met Dodi Fayed in Paris in July 1996. They allegedly became engaged in February 1997, with Dodi giving her a large sapphire-and-diamond ring (very similar, ironically, to the engagement ring Prince Charles gave Diana). However, only seven months later—after photographs of Dodi kissing Diana on his father’s yacht the Jonikal appeared on the cover of the British tabloid the Sunday Mirror, then everywhere else—Fisher realized that the relationship was in trouble.

Fisher retreated to the U.S., hired powerhouse lawyer Gloria Allred , and held a press conference in Beverly Hills to announce she was suing Dodi for breach of contract, claiming that Dodi had bought her the ring and had promised to buy them a house in Malibu to live in after their marriage. She also said that Dodi asked her to give up her career so she could spend more time with him and had offered her $500,000 to do so. Ultimately, she said, she received $60,000 plus a check for $200,000, which bounced.

The Fayed family, unsurprisingly, has denied that Dodi ever proposed to Fisher. As The Crown depicts, when Fisher flew to St-Tropez in July to stake her claim during Diana’s first trip to the boat, the Fayeds parked her on another, smaller yacht while she waited for Dodi to visit her in the evenings. In 2008 transcripts of calls between Fisher and Dodi were made public. In them, she accuses him of “two-timing” her, saying, “You even flew me down to St-Tropez to sit on a boat while you seduced Diana all day and fucked me all night.” In another call transcript, she asserted, “We were together the whole time. And you knew it.” Dodi, not quite the gentleman he is presented as in the drama, responded by calling Fisher “hysterical” and insisting they had already split up by the time Diana appeared on the scene.

Was William Really a Fan of Street Fighter II ?

The show depicts Diana taking up an invitation from Harrods tycoon Mohamed al-Fayed to escape both press attention and the big party Prince Charles is throwing for Camilla Parker Bowles’ 50 th birthday by vacationing on his luxury yacht off the South of France. When Diana arrives on board with her two sons, al-Fayed immediately introduces William and Harry to his three younger children, who are frolicking in the yacht’s pool. As word of Diana’s presence gets out, the yacht is surrounded by paparazzi on motorboats, leading William to prefer staying on board playing Street Fighter II with Harry over swimming in the sea, where he might be photographed.

According to former BBC royal correspondent Michael Cole (speaking on a September 2022 Diana-oriented podcast ), William and Harry “didn’t have things at home that other kids did” and, deprived of video games, would come to Harrods, the famous department store then owned by Mohamed al-Fayed, to play them. “They would come to the fourth floor—the toy department, the floor for the children—and they would spend hours there,” Cole said. Of course, as Harrods’ former PR director and spokesman for al-Fayed, Cole is not an entirely disinterested reporter.

At any rate, al-Fayed’s daughter Camilla recalled that not only did William and Harry have video games at home in Kensington Palace, they had a newly refurbished game room, where she and her siblings (who, far from being introduced to the princes in the summer of 1997, had known them for several years) had played computer games with William and Harry earlier in the summer. “That summer we all became a team,” she told the Daily Mail in 2010. “I was 11 at the time and my sister Jasmine was 15. We used to hang out with William and Harry all the time at Kensington Palace.” That William and Harry enjoyed playing video games either at Harrods or with Dodi’s sisters at Kensington Palace has not been verified by anyone who is not connected to the al-Fayeds.

Also, one wonders if Princess Diana, then deep into her anti–land mine campaign, was aware of the Jonikal ’s provenance when she accepted al-Fayed’s invitation. It had previously belonged to the son of Adnan Khashoggi, who had sold it to his uncle Mohamed al-Fayed (whose first wife, Dodi’s mother, was Adnan Khashoggi’s sister). The elder Khashoggi was a leading arms dealer and purveyor of land mines, sales of which presumably helped pay for the yacht.

Could Paparazzi Really Get £250,000 for a Photo of Diana and Dodi Kissing?

In Episode 2, an Italian paparazzo named Mario Brenna tells an interviewer that he got 250,000 pounds from the Sunday Mirror for the first pictures of Diana and Dodi kissing on the yacht deck.

If anything, this seems like an understatement. According to the Guardian, by the time Brenna had sold the photos to not only the Sunday Mirror but the Daily Mail and the Sun, he made 3 million pounds. Even grainy photographs of the pair could command 650,000 pounds, which accounts for the omnipresent packs of prowling paparazzi that constantly pursued the couple.

Did Diana and Dodi Visit a Psychic?

After their July fling on the yacht, Dodi flies Diana up to Derbyshire in the Harrods helicopter to visit a psychic, where they both inquire about their futures.

This actually happened. In 2003 professional psychic Rita Rogers told her local paper the Derbyshire Times that Diana had twice driven up from London for a consultation before she met Dodi. “I’d told her she would meet a man of foreign descent with the initial D on water—and that the man would be connected with the film industry,” Rogers declared. Apparently, Dodi was so struck by this prediction he asked to meet Rogers on Diana’s next visit. Rogers claims she told Dodi to avoid France and not to change his limo driver because she foresaw an accident in a tunnel but says she still can’t understand why she failed to envision that Diana would be involved in the same accident.

Not that Diana was short on warnings about threats to her life. It was well known that before and after her divorce she visited an assortment of psychics, spiritual advisers, and mediums; in fact, in October 1995, her divorce lawyer Lord Mishcon wrote that Diana had told him she had learned from “reliable sources” that by 1996 there would be an attempt on her life, or at least an effort to leave her severely injured or unbalanced. However, according to the official inquiry into Diana’s death, Lord Mischon did not regard these warnings relayed by the princess as remotely credible.

Did Diana and Dodi Stop Over in Paris at Mohamed al-Fayed’s Insistence?

The program shows Diana telling Dodi that, heartily sick of being harassed by the paparazzi as well as wanting to discourage him from taking the relationship too seriously, she intends to return to London Aug. 28, sooner than expected, so she can see her sons when they return from visiting the queen at Balmoral. However, al-Fayed pressures Dodi into insisting that she fly back on the family’s private jet rather than on the British Airways flight she has booked and that they spend the night in Paris.

Al-Fayed further insists that on the way to the Ritz, Dodi’s driver take a lengthy detour out of Paris to Villa Windsor, his fancy house on the city’s outskirts that was formerly the residence of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, so he can intimate to Diana that should she marry Dodi, the couple can live there with his children. Diana, who has no interest in either marrying Dodi or residing in the Villa, is keen to get away as soon as possible so as not to miss a scheduled phone call from her sons at Balmoral.

Indeed, Diana’s lack of interest in visiting the Villa was attested to during the inquest into her death when Reuben Murrell, the villa’s security chief, said she had had no curiosity about the house and stayed for only 28 minutes. As for al-Fayed’s motivations for insisting on the visit, the late, always-informed Dominick Dunne wrote in Vanity Fair : “I have always felt there was a subliminal meaning, part of al-Fayed’s game plan, that Dodi was taking Diana to see the house where they would live and raise their child after they were married.”

But Diana may have stopped over in Paris for her own reasons, not because of Dodi’s entreaties. Colin Tebbutt, at the time Diana’s driver and security aide in Britain, said in 2021 that she delayed her return “because the Tories were having a go at her again over landmines. She was accused of using the campaign to boost her own image, which was nasty and upset her. So she contacted us and said she didn’t want all the hassle that would be waiting for her in the UK. She would return at the weekend instead.”

Did Diana Appear as a Ghost to Console Charles and to Urge the Queen to Loosen Her Stiff Upper Lip?

Only Rita Rogers knows.

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Boat of the Week: Meet ‘Cujo,’ the 80-Foot Yacht Where Late Movie Producer Dodi Al-Fayed Once Wooed Princess Diana

The couple spent some of their final summer cruising around saint-tropez aboard this fast, military-looking yacht., howard walker, howard walker's most recent stories.

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Cujo is an 80 foot motoryacht that was owned by Dodi Al-Fayed and used by Princess Diana before their deaths in 1997.

For a few brief weeks back in the summer of 1997, Cujo was the most famous boat in the world.

Not because of her intimidating military lines, or blistering 40-knot performance. It’s because Diana, Princess of Wales, hung out aboard in Saint-Tropez with the boat’s owner, and romantic partner Dodi Al-Fayed.

Countless paparazzi shots show the once future Queen of England on Cujo‘s narrow sidedecks, soaking up the Mediterranean sun. By the end of August that year, both Diana and Dodi would be dead after that fatal car wreck in Paris.

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Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed spent some of their final summer cruising around Saint-Tropez aboard Cujo . Courtesy Patrick Bar-Nice Matin/AP Images

Yet this rakish 80-footer was a headliner long before Diana stepped on board. Her first owner was Austrian Johnny Von Neumann, an entrepreneur, playboy and passionate sports-car racer who became the largest Porsche-VW distributor in the US.

In 1972, Von Neumann commissioned the Italian shipyard Baglietto to build him a boat with one goal: It had to go fast—faster than any other motoryacht on the water. To deliver, the shipyard installed twin 54-liter V-18 turbo diesels delivering a combined 2,700 horsepower.

Flat out, Cujo —said to be an ancient Indian word meaning “unstoppable force”—could easily top 40 knots, or 46 mph. Von Neumann blasted up and down the Cote d’Azur for a few years before ordering an even faster Baglietto—this time with jet turbine power. He sold Cujo to arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi who, at the time, was reckoned to be the richest man in the world.

The fast, military exterior gives way to an almost old-fashioned cockpit with wood cabinets and leather seats. Courtesy Simon Kidston

Khashoggi eventually passed the boat on to his nephew Dodi Al-Fayed, who immediately sent her to the CARM shipyard in Lavagna, Italy, for a full refit.

Back in Saint-Tropez, and moored in her reserved spot on the town’s main quay outside the famed Le Sénéquier restaurant, Fayed would invite many of his Hollywood friends for a cruise. During the summers, everyone from Clint Eastwood, Tony Curtis, Bruce Willis and one-time girlfriend, Brooke Shields, were seen aboard.

Following Dodi and Diana’s death, Cujo quickly fell into disrepair. Decommissioned in 1999, she was hauled out at the CARM yard and spent several years in storage.

The main salon is smaller than many contemporary 80-foot motoryachts, but few other boats its size have the same 40-knots-plus top end. Courtesy Simon Kidston

The boat was eventually rescued by Dodi’s cousin Moody Al-Fayed, who spent over $1 million bringing her back to life. Part of the work included uprating those massive diesels to deliver 1,650 hp each.

Now fast forward to February last year. After two summers of cruising Cujo around Sardinia and Italy’s Amalfi coast, Moody decided to sell. Strangely, he entered the boat in the Retromobile classic car auction in Paris.

That’s where well-known British car collector, buyer, seller and restorer Simon Kidston appeared. Kidston had spied Cujo in the Retromobile auction catalog, read that it was being sold by his old school-friend Fayed, and decided to bid.

The 1972 Baglietto has innovative features like the amidships helm and social area, and two sunbeds on the foredeck. Courtesy Simon Kidston

“On the day of the auction, I was tied up with clients so asked a colleague to go down and take a look. I told him that if it was going cheaply, put in a bid for a bit of fun,” Kidston tells Robb Report .

“The bidding opened at just 150,000 Euros—that’s around $165,000. My colleague bid 160,000 Euros,” says Kidston. “Trouble was, no one else bid. The hammer went down and I had bought a boat. The feeling was a mix of excitement, tinged with terror.”

Unfortunately, just as Simon took delivery of Cujo at Lavagna, where she was moored, Europe was starting to lock down with the coronavirus pandemic.

The internal helm station is outfitted with modern electronics, but in a nod to its historic past, the wheel is definitely old school. Courtesy Simon Kidston

But he did get to take her out during a video shoot in and around Portofino for his YouTube channel Kidston Productions, where the boat meets up with Simon’s own ’70s Lamborghini Miura supercar. Entitled A Portofino Affair, the footage of Cujo at speed is breathtaking.

“She has immense presence,” said Kidston. “No boat of its size commands that kind of attention when she comes into a harbor.” Especially an Italian harbor when nervous local boat owners think she’s with the financial police.

“As you’d expect, those engines have tons and tons of performance,” Kidston adds. “We’ve seen 41 knots. But they have a very different sound than I was expecting; instead of a roar from the exhausts, there’s this amazing whistle from the turbos.”

The diesel engines were upgraded from the original 2,700 to 3,300 horsepower. Courtesy Simon Kidston

While Kidston and his family had planned to cruise the Med this summer, the car enthusiast received an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“A young member of a prominent Italian business family—he’s 30 years old—had seen Cujo in Lavagna, fallen in love with her and asked if she was for sale,” he says. “He took delivery last week, just in time for his birthday.”

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Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s Former Yacht Sinks Off the Coast of France

By Katherine McLaughlin

Diana Princess Of Wales is seen in St Tropez in the summer of 1997.

Before their untimely deaths in the late summer of 1997, Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed spent a few brief paparazzi-festered weeks aboard Cujo, a 65-foot, military-style superyacht. As Robb Report described it, the boat was once the most famous in the world thanks to her high-profile passengers. Now, a little over a quarter of a century later, the infamous boat has sunk off the coast of France, reports The Independent .

The boat sank quickly after the distress call was made.

According to a Facebook post from the Gendarmerie des Alpes-Maritimes, a division of the French military, passengers issued a distress call around 12:30 local time on July 29. A little under an hour later, a rescue boat arrived, finding the vessel’s bow already partially submerged. “The cabins of the yacht were already flooded, and only a few suitcases located in the kitchen and on the deck could be retrieved by the gendarmes,” reads the statement. The seven passengers who were on board had already evacuated and were safely on a nearby lifeboat. Rescuers and passengers then quickly left the area, as the boat sank 2,500 feet to the ocean’s floor. The cause of the accident was not shared; however, according to Boat International , sources claimed that the ship hit an unknown object floating near the center of the hull.

Cujo was already halfway underwater when rescuers arrived.

The impressive yacht was originally launched in 1972, commissioned by its first owner John von Neumann. According to Robb Report, Von Neumann hired Italian shipyard Baglietto to build him a boat that was “faster than any other motoryacht on the water.” During its maiden voyage, Cujo had largely achieved this goal thanks to its twin 54-liter V-18 turbo diesel engines, which provided 2,700 horsepower and allowed it to easily hit 46 miles per hour. Von Neumann eventually sold the boat to arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who later passed the boat to Dodi Fayed, his nephew.

top of boat seen as it sinks into the ocean

At one point, the vessel was among the fastest in the world.

Though Princess Diana was among the most notable guests onboard—largely fueled by vicious tabloid coverage—other high-profile passengers hosted by Fayed included Clint Eastwood, Tony Curtis, Bruce Willis, and Brooke Shields. In addition to jaunts on Cujo, the sensationalized couple also spent time on superyacht Jonikal , which most recently sold in June of 2023. Following the passing of Di and Fayed, Cujo fell into disrepair and decommissioned in 1999. After many years in storage, Fayed’s cousin Moody Al-Fayed purchased the vessel and brought it back to life. He later sold the boat to Simon Kidston, a British car collector and restorer and the last-reported owner of the vessel.

Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's South of France superyacht is up for sale

By Dora Davies-Evitt

Image may contain Clothing Apparel Human Person Shorts Water Sport Sports and Swimwear

Diana, Princess Of Wales is seen in St Tropez in the summer of 1997

Since her death in August 1997, the late Diana, Princess of Wales's last months have been described as some of her happiest. During the weeks before the tragic car accident that would kill them both, the princess took a blissful tour through the Mediterranean aboard a superyacht with her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed. At the time, a photograph of the pair kissing atop the vessel's sun deck made headlines around the world. Now, 25 years on, the multi-million-pound boat, which is loaded with memories of the princess's final summer, is up for sale.

The luxury vessel was bought by Mohamed Al-Fayed, former owner of Harrods and father of Fayed. Following the death of his son, Al-Fayed attempted to sell the yacht several times before it was finally purchased in 2014. Most recently the boat was owned by billionaire entrepreneur Bassim Haidar, who apparently has a ‘great affection for the ocean’. With reported plans to upgrade to a larger vessel, Haidar is parting with the 64m boat just a year after its purchase. The superyacht does not presently have an advertised price, although it was last sold for $10,000,000 (approximately £8,186,300).

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Currently named Bash , the vessel has previously been called Jonikal , then Sokar. According to House and Garden , the yacht was designed by naval architect Vincenzo Ruggiero in the 1980s and built by the superyacht building firm Codecasa before launching in 1990. Lined with wood panelling and coffered ceilings, the interiors are suggestive of the Arts and Crafts style of the fin de siècle. With features such as a jacuzzi, swim platform, a formal dining room, main saloon, a bar, and office space, the boat is far from lacking in luxury spaces.

Fayed and Diana first met at a polo match in Windsor in 1986, while the royal was still married to Prince Charles. A year following Diana's divorce, the couple enjoyed a fleeting and jet-set romance, spending time in the South of France and Sardinia before they flew to Paris in August 1997. It was during their visit to the French capital that the pair were both devastatingly killed in a traffic collision, following their brief stay at the Hôtel Ritz.

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Princess Diana is the double of Princess Charlotte in newly released picture

IMAGES

Diana's last days: Inside story of how Diana snuck away with Dodi Fayed
See Inside the Superyacht Princess Diana Shared With Dodi Fayed
Inside the Yacht Princess Diana Vacationed on With Dodi Fayed
Inside The Yacht Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed Toured the Mediterranean On
Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed leave hotel on night they died
Princess Diana was photographed with her beau, Dodi Fayed, on his

COMMENTS

See Photos of Princess Diana on Mohamed Al Fayed's Yacht in Saint
Here, some of the most memorable photos of Princess Diana with her sons and the Fayeds on the Jonikal in July 1997. Princess Diana on board the Jonikal yacht, where she first got to know Dodi ...
Inside the Yacht Princess Diana Vacationed on With Dodi Fayed
Inside the Superyacht Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed Spent Their Final Vacation On. A look at the vessel that saw the beloved royal's last vacation. The Crown's sixth season debuts this week on Netflix, chronicling the final weeks before Princess Diana's untimely death in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.
The Crown: The Sad, Strange Details of Princess Diana's Last Vacation
November 16, 2023. From API/Gamma Rapho/Getty Images. Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed are lounging on the sundeck of a reportedly £15 million yacht in The Crown 's season six episode "Two ...
Diana and Dodi Scene in 'The Crown' Is Inaccurate, Mario Brenna Says
After Diana and Dodi's death, al-Fayed sued Fraser, the British photographer, for taking photos of Diana and Dodi on a boat, saying it was an invasion of privacy. Brenna said he did not face any ...
'The Crown': The True Story of Diana and Dodi Fayed's Vacation
'The Crown' depicts Princess Diana's jaunts on Mohamed Al-Fayed's yacht, the Jonikal, where her romance with Dodi kicked off.
Inside The Yacht Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed Toured the
Then named the Jonikal (it has subsequently been called the Sokar, and the Bash), the yacht was owned by Dodi's father, former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed, when Diana traveled on it. Following ...
The true story behind Princess Diana's iconic yacht photo
It's ultimately unknown which photographer grabbed the photo of Diana on the side of the yacht, which was published on 24 August, a week before Diana died. The snap saw the Princess in her teal ...
See Inside the Superyacht Princess Diana Shared With Dodi Fayed
Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed sailed around the south of France during the summer after her divorce. ... Bash, as the yacht is currently named, was designed by navel architect Vincenzo Ruggiero ...
True Story Behind the Iconic Yacht Photo in 'The Crown'
The yacht was owned by business mogul Mohamed Al Fayed (Salim Dau), and at the time, Diana was in a whirlwind romance with his son, Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla); the pair began seeing each other in ...
The Crown: The Story Behind That Princess Diana Yacht Photo
By early August, after an emotionally turbulent few weeks, Diana was back on holiday with Dodi, this time on his yacht, known as Jonikal. But on 10 August, pictures of Diana and Dodi kissing in ...
The True Story Behind 'The Crown's Infamous Kiss Photograph
Mario Brenna's photograph of Diana and Dodi Fayed sharing an intimate moment on a yacht sparked a frenzy in the press and fueled a relentless pursuit for their pictures. The paparazzi's obsession ...
Yacht that Princess Diana spent last summer on with Dodi Al-Fayed sinks
A motor yacht used by Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed on their final summer holiday in the South of France before they died in a Paris car crash has sunk.
Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's Yacht Sank in the Mediterranean
The yacht where Princess Diana spent part of her last summer with Dodi Fayed has sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The boat, named Cujo, sank on July 29 after colliding with an ...
Diana's final hours: Dodi's yacht, a Ritz suite, a diamond ring and
The last day of Princess Diana's life began on the top deck of her lover's yacht, with croissants and fresh jams. Diana and her beau, Dodi Al Fayed, sipped their coffee marveling at the ...
Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed and the story behind my brother's boat
Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed on the French Riviera. Right, Diana on the Al Fayed yacht Jonikal in 1997. SIPA/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK. Petra Khashoggi. Tuesday August 15 2023, 12.01am, The Times.
Diana's last day: Dodi's yacht, a Ritz suite, a diamond ring and
The last day of Princess Diana's life began on the top deck of her lover's yacht, with croissants and fresh jams. Diana and her beau, Dodi Al Fayed, sipped their coffee marveling at the ...
Inside the £13m 208ft 'love boat' yacht where Princess Diana & Dodi
Dodi died aged 42 in a Paris car crash with Diana 26 years ago. The pair first met at a polo match in 1989, but they did not get together until Dodi invited the princess to stay at his father's 30 ...
Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's Yacht Sinks
The People's Princess's favorite yacht went under. Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were famously photographed on a yacht in summer 1997 with Prince William and Prince Harry —and now that ship has ...
The Crown Season 6 on Netflix: Diana's crash, Dodi's dad's yacht, and more
In Episode 2, an Italian paparazzo named Mario Brenna tells an interviewer that he got 250,000 pounds from the Sunday Mirror for the first pictures of Diana and Dodi kissing on the yacht deck. If ...
Meet 'Cujo,' the 80-Ft. Yacht Dodi Al-Fayed Used to Woo Princess Diana
The boat was eventually rescued by Dodi's cousin Moody Al-Fayed, who spent over $1 million bringing her back to life. Part of the work included uprating those massive diesels to deliver 1,650 hp ...
174 Princess Diana Yacht Stock Photos & High-Res Pictures
Browse 174 princess diana yacht photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more photos and images. Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, sitting on the diving board of Mohammed Al Fayed's private yacht "Jonikal" as a seagull flies overhead. ... Mohammed Al Fayed, père de l'homme d'affaires égyptien Dodi al Fayed et propriétaire ...
Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's Former Yacht Sinks Off the Coast of
Before their untimely deaths in the late summer of 1997, Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed spent a few brief paparazzi-festered weeks aboard Cujo, a 65-foot, military-style superyacht. As Robb Report ...
Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's South of France superyacht is ...
Now, 25 years on, the multi-million-pound boat, which is loaded with memories of the princess's final summer, is up for sale. The luxury vessel was bought by Mohamed Al-Fayed, former owner of Harrods and father of Fayed. Following the death of his son, Al-Fayed attempted to sell the yacht several times before it was finally purchased in 2014.