diana und dodi kuss yacht

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.

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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.

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

The True Story of Princess Diana's Vacation on Mohamed Al Fayed's Yacht in Saint Tropez

The trip features in the final season of The Crown .

"Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven," Prince Harry shared about the vacation he and Prince William joined his mother for aboard the vessel in his memoir, Spare . 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 better.

Princess Diana was friendly with Mohamed Al Fayed, who had been in royal-adjacent circles for some time due to his ownership of Harrods department store.

Diana brought her two sons, Prince William (head down, center) and Prince Harry (right), on vacation with her.

"We'd been with Mummy weeks earlier when she first met him, in St. Tropez," Harry writes in Spare —the 'him' refers to Dodi. "We were having a grand time, just the three of us, staying at some old gent's villa."

At the time, Diana had recently broken up with British Pakistani heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan, who could not handle the media attention surrounding their relationship. Her friends later shared that they believed her fling with Dodi was to make Hasnat jealous.

Diana pictured with her bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, who would later be the sole survivor of the crash that killed Princess Diana and Dodi.

Princess Diana waved to Trevor ashore in Saint-Tropez.

The Princess looked happy to be spending time with her sons.

Harry writes, "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."

Paparazzi snapped Diana giving her youngest, Prince Harry, a big hug.

Diana, ever the style icon, had some great swimwear moments on this vacation, including this neon set.

She also rocked a leopard-print one piece.

Princess Diana was beginning to navigate her not-quite-royal, but definitely not normal, life post her divorce from Prince Charles .

At the time, Dodi was reportedly dating American model Kelly Fisher —and she said that she was actually on the yacht in Saint Tropez with the Fayeds and Princess Diana.

Princess Diana made sure the vacation was fun for her sons; here, she rode on a jet ski with Prince Harry.

"Best of all," Harry remembers in Spare, "there were jet skis. Whose were they? Don't know. But I vividly remember Willy and me riding them out to the deepest part of the channel, circling while waiting for the big ferries to come. We used their massive wakes as ramps to get airborne. I'm not sure how we weren't killed"

Wearing life jackets, the royal mother-son duo zoomed around in the water together.

Princess Diana smiled as she swam in the sea off the coast of France.

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma , a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram .

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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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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.

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.

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.

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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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

Article content

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.”

“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!

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

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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 rumours 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.”

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 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.

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.

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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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It had previously been named Jonikal.

Cujo was built in Italy in 1972 for businessman John von Neumann who told the Italian Baglietto shipyard that he wanted the world's fastest motor yacht.

She was fitted with two 18-cylinder engines giving her a top speed of 42 knots.

Van Neumann then sold the boat to the son of Saudi businessman and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and he sold her on to his cousin, al Fayed.

Cujo was frequently moored off St Tropez, a famous celebrity hangout on the French Riviera, with guests including Clint Eastwood, Tony Curtis and Bruce Willis.

Following the death of Diana and Al-Fayed in central Paris on 31 August 1997, Cujo fell into disrepair.

She was decommissioned in 1999, and spent years in storage, before being restored by new owners.

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The True Story Behind Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's "The Kiss" Pic

• Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

T he Crown's sixth season delves into the PR "war" between Prince Charles and Princess Diana —specifically Charles' somewhat eye-roll inducing insecurity that Diana's spotlight overshadowed his own.

In the second episode of the season, titled "Two Photographs," we see Charles at Balmoral Castle when photos of "The Kiss" between Diana and Dodi Fayed drop—prompting him to hit back with some staged pics of himself, Prince William, and Prince Harry . But how true to reality was this battle of press pictures? Let's dig into the facts.

The True Story of "The Kiss"

Per a 2008 article in Vanity Fair , "The Kiss" (a paparazzi shot of Diana and Dodi kissing on vacation) was released in the Sunday Mirror on August 10, 1997. And the outlet paid a ton of money to publish this particular invasion of privacy. According to a fact check from The Telegraph , photographer Mario Brenna made £250,000 selling the pictures to The Mirror , not to mention $5 million selling the rights worldwide.

The Crown was pretty faithful in recreating the pics, even making a mock-up a copy of The Mirror for the episode:

But the show also implies that Dodi's dad tipped off Brenna, which The Telegraph says is less accurate. According to the outlet, "some have said" Brenna happened to be in Sardinia at the time the photos were taken and got lucky, while author Tina Brown speculates that Diana herself tipped him off.

The True Story of That Balmoral Photo-Opp

The Crown depicts Charles' Balmoral photoshoot as a direct response to "The Kiss," and honestly the timing is definitely side-eye inducing considering this shoot took place on August 12, 1997—just two days after The Mirror dropped its issue.

Here is the real photo of Charles, Wills, and Harry:

Versus what we saw on The Crown :

Meanwhile, the whole side-plot involving photographer Duncan Muir seems to be fictionalized, as the Telegraph reports these photos were actually taken by a group of press pool photographers. It's also unknown if they were a direct response to "The Kiss."

Anyway, now seems like a good time to mention that last season , The Crown started adding mentions of the show being fiction under its trailers, specifically using the language, "Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatization tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign."

Oh, and speaking of kisses...just gonna leave you with this:

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See Inside the Superyacht Princess Diana Shared With Dodi Fayed

By Katherine McLaughlin

Since her untimely death in August of 1997, Princess Diana’s last summer spent with Dodi Al-Fayed has been described in various ways: a passionate love affair, a fake publicity stunt, a temporary fling, a rouse to infuriate another suiter, or the beginning of a lifelong commitment. Although the stories change, the setting remains: a summer tour through the Mediterranean aboard a multi-million dollar superyacht. Later this year, nearly 25 years to the day, the 208-foot vessel will launch for sale again. 

The yacht is full of glossy and dark wood paneling. 

Originally named Jonikal , then Sokar , and most recently Bash , the luxury vessel was first owned by Mohamed Al-Fayed, former owner of Harrods and father of Dodi Al-Fayed. During the fateful summer, Al-Fayed hosted Princess Di and her two sons aboard the Jonikal . After the couple’s tragic death, Mohamed Al-Fayed attempted to sell the yacht numerous times before it was finally bought in 2014. It was most recently purchased by Bassim Haidar in June of 2021, who is selling it just over a year later as he reportedly has plans to upgrade to a larger vessel. “She is in the yard being refitted, and will be launched for sale in September,” said John Wood, director at Seawood Yachts. 

Coffered ceilings add a dramatic, yet timeless feel. 

Bash , as the yacht is currently named, was designed by navel architect Vincenzo Ruggiero in the 1980s and built by the superyacht building firm Codecasa before launching in 1990. The vessel can hold up to 18 people across nine staterooms in addition to rooms for 26 crew members. Among many notable features, Bash includes a jacuzzi, swim platform, sun deck, a formal dining room, main saloon, a bar, and office space. Full of dark wood paneling and coffered ceilings, the interiors are reminiscent of the Arts and Crafts style of the early 1900s. 

The vessel includes nine staterooms in addition to plenty of space for the crew. 

Powered by Wärtsilä engines, the yacht has a cruising speed of 15 knots and top speeds of 20 knots. Even though an exact price hasn’t been advertised just yet, the last time the boat was sold, it was listed for $10,000,000. 

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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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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.

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.

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Superyacht made famous by Princess Diana is now at the bottom of the Med

One of the luxury yachts that Princess Diana was snapped on with Dodi Fayed sadly sank in 2023, the other recently sold for over $16 million.

The Crown season 6 part 1 shows Princess Diana on a luxury yacht holiday in the Mediterranean with Dodi Fayed. While one of the two yachts used by the couple on the holiday is currently being valued at a whopping $16.8 million, the other sadly sank earlier in 2023.

Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s luxury yacht sank in 2023

In the Summer of 1997, only a few weeks before the tragic car crash in Paris, Princess Diana vacationed with her two children, Princes William and Harry , alongside Dodi Fayed and his family in the Mediterranean.

One of the luxury yachts was called the Cujo and this was the vessel that Prince Harry and Prince William were seen on amidst a media frenzy in season 6 of Netflix’s The Crown. Unfortunately, it only recently sank beneath the waves.

According to a report from local police , on July 29 of this year some 18 miles off Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, the vessel struck an unknown object and began to sink.

・ REMEMBRANCE : Princess Diana’s funeral in pictures: 17 heartbreaking images from procession and ceremony

“The skipper of the Cujo issued a Mayday, his ship was sinking due to a leak,” said an officer involved in the successful rescue of its seven-person crew.

“Rescue boats were sent from Antibes and, after making sure everyone was safe, gendarmes detected a significant water leak at the level of the starboard front hull. Her owner had activated the pumps and kept the engines running, but this didn’t stop the boat sinking.”

The Cujo plunged to depths of around 8,200ft (around 2,500m) and now rests at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

Interestingly, prior to the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed, the boat had reportedly hosted various celebrities including Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis.

After the car collision in Paris, the Cujo fell into disrepair and only returned to the seas a few years ago after being purchased for $160,000 by luxury vehicle dealer Simon Kidston.

・ SUPERSTAR : Meet The Crown’s Diana actress Elizabeth Debicki who fans will recognise from huge Hollywood movies

What happened to the other luxury yacht, the Jonikal?

Out of the two luxury yachts that Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed vacationed on that 1997 Summer, arguably the more famous was the Jonikal – the vessel where the infamous ‘kiss’ and ‘diving board’ photos were snapped.

The Jonikal was as close to the definition of a superyacht as you could get in the 1990s, 208ft of class with nine staterooms that could accommodate up to 18 people (in addition to a crew of 26). The vessel was fitted with a Jacuzzi, bar, dining room, office spaces, sun deck, and swim platform.

Following the death of Princess Diana and son Dodi Fayed, the yacht’s owner Mohamed Al Fayed commissioned a redesign of the interior and attempted to sell the boat on a number of occasions.

In 2014, Al Fayed parted ways with the infamous yacht to an unknown buyer, before being purchased by Intercomm and GMT founder Bassim Haidar.

After a small fire broke out on the deck, another redesign was commissioned to the tune of $9.7 million – it now features a high-tech gymnasium, massage room, and a salon as well as a new name, Bash.

Earlier this year, Robb Report cl a imed that the Bash was available for charter for around $278,000 per week and in June 2023, Haidar listed the vessel for a whopping $16.8 million.

・ WOW : Princess Diana’s funeral attendees were a who’s-who of famous faces

The Crown season 6 Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix, Part 2 premieres in December 2023.

・ OUCH : Dodi Fayed’s model ex-girlfriend said billionaire ditched her for Princess Diana in “callous” dating blunder

The post Superyacht made famous by Princess Diana is now at the bottom of the Med appeared first on HITC .

The Super-Yacht Featured in The Crown Is Available to Book

You and 11 guests can charter the “ titania ,” which was used for filming iconic scenes featuring dodi and diana in the hit netflix show..

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Make your Crown vacation fantasies a reality by booking the super-yacht featured in the hit Netflix show.

Courtesy of Burgess

Those watching the sixth and final season of Netflix’s The Crown are familiar with scenes featuring the late Princess Diana (played by Elizabeth Debicki this season) and her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed (played by Khalid Abdalla) onboard the Al-Fayed family’s extremely luxurious yacht.

If it’s got you dreaming of sitting on the end of a diving board above the Mediterranean Sea in a turquoise bathing suit, well, we have good news for you: You can charter the yacht for a cool $615,000 per week during the off-season.

There may have been some tense moments between Diana and Dodi on the yacht, but that doesn’t take away from its splendor.

The 239-foot super-yacht featured in the show this season is called Titania and it’s listed for charter with luxury boat charter company Burgess , which refers to itself as the “go-to yacht brokerage for television and film.” According to Burgess, Titania was used as a stand-in for Mohamed Al-Fayed’s Codecasa super-yacht Bash (then named Jonikal ). The yacht famously hosted the princess, her two sons William and Harry (played by Rufus Kampa and Fflyn Edwards), and her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed on a trip to St. Tropez in 1997, a week before she and Dodi died in Paris. Their time on the yacht, and some of the iconic paparazzi photos of it, are recreated in part one of season six.

While some of the decor was designed to align more with the 1990s time frame of the show, the Titania super-yacht still exudes the same opulence.

“When it came to scenes of Diana and Dodi on the yacht, they did indeed film those moments on a boat on the Mediterranean,” writes Lucy Ford in an article for Netflix’s companion website for fans, Tudum. She quotes Debicki as saying, “It was a very big, fancy boat. It was enormous and kind of outrageous and exactly what the story needed. That was pretty extraordinary, to be on a big boat like that with bedrooms the size of people’s apartments. We never really took that for granted.”

Production designer Martin Childs told Tudum, “The whole schedule was based around the availability of the biggest yacht.”

The Titania , which is that biggest yacht, was built by luxury yacht company Lürssen in 2006 and has undergone two major makeovers since then. It was originally designed by naval architect Espen Øino, and boasts a light and airy interior with dark wood trim and blue and white textiles, as well as plenty of large windows and outdoor space. The yacht has seven cabins, including two owner’s suites, and sleeps up to 12 guests. Each cabin has a spacious en suite marble bathroom.

And while the Titania is a contemporary vessel, with modern furnishings and finishes, according to Tudum, the team had to “’90s-ify” the yacht’s interiors for filming. This involved adding “bulky lamps, varnished teak wood, and particular shades of turquoise and cream,” reports Ford. “The yacht obviously exists as a contemporary yacht,” Alison Harvey, the Crown’s head set decorator told Tudum. “We just had to bring in more ’90s fabric and more ’90s-flavor pictures and paintings and make it a little less on point in terms of proper super-yacht decor today.”

Among the many showstoppers onboard the Titania is a pool with a swim-up bar with ocean views.

The Titania includes a sea-level beach club, a pool and Jacuzzi with a swim-up bar, a sauna, a state-of-the-art fitness center with a personal trainer, a massage room with an onboard masseuse, a beauty salon with a beautician, and a sky lounge with a drop-down cinema. A 21-person crew attends to guests’ every need.

Also included in the weekly charter, which ranges from $615,000 to $715,000 per week, are two boat tenders, two Jet Skis, two sailing dinghies, two Seabobs, two stand-up paddleboards, two kayaks, an e-Foil, surfboards, snorkeling and diving gear, water skis, and inflatable aquatic slides and jumping pads.

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The Crown: Five insights into the yachts featured in series six

On 16 November, the first volume of series six of The Crown was released on Netflix. Not only has it stirred up controversy regarding its depiction of recent historical events, but the series has also sparked the public's interest in the infamous yachts associated with the royal family's timeline.

The final instalment of The Crown features two ladies and two yachts, all of which are indelibly linked to Dodi Al-Fayed. It captures the simmering romance between Princess Diana and Dodi – a film producer and son of billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed – as well as Dodi's fiancée, Kelly Fisher. In the drama, the Princess of Wales is whisked away to the former Harrods owner's villa (and superyacht) in the south of France, where she enjoys a summer on the continent with sons Prince William and Prince Harry in 1997.

The series shows the group on what was Mohamed Al-Fayed's yacht, the 63.8-metre Codecasa which was known as Jonikal (later Bash, now Isabell Princess of the Seas ) . Understandably, with the People's Princess aboard, the yacht was heavily photographed by the paparazzi – leading to the creation of that iconic Princess Diana yacht photo. The camera also pans to a smaller yacht we can assume is the 20-metre Baglietto Cujo , a yacht the Al-Fayed's spent a lot of time on and which sadly sank earlier this year.

Wondering what happened to Jonikal ? If the series was filmed on the original boat? Where the set location was? BOAT answers all your yacht-related questions surrounding the latest series.

That Princess Diana yacht picture

There are many iconic images of Princess Diana – not least the shot of her in the "revenge dress" – but up there are the images of her sporting a range of low-backed swimsuits from her summer in St. Tropez. Perhaps the most memorable is Princess Diana sitting on the diving board of Jonikal. The series recreates the moment her photo was captured, legs swaying above the oscillating sea, toes pointed ballerina-esque. It also draws on her plea to the paparazzi to give her boys some privacy as she meets them mid-sea on her tender, stealing the show in her leopard-print swimsuit.

The whereabouts of Jonikal today

The yacht carries great significance knowing Dodi and Princess Diana were pictured there just weeks before their fatal car accident. It belonged to Dodi's father and, during the series, Princess Diana and Dodi are portrayed sharing intimate moments on board: her, looking up from the piano she is playing, doe-eyed; him, opening up about his engagement and the struggles with his father. There is also the scene where they have an ice cube fight between decks; the scene where Dodi's siblings and Princess Diana's children jump off the diving board; where the pair share what would've been an intimate kiss, had the photographer on his motor yacht not snapped it.

It was successful telecoms entrepreneur Bassim Haidar who later bought the yacht in 2021. The fact that it’s the former Jonikal is a source of pride for Haidar, who told BOAT : "I really loved Lady Diana. Whenever anyone comes on board I always show them where the famous picture was taken." The yacht was sold in August this year.

The yacht the series was filmed on, Titania 

The Crown was not filmed on Isabell Princess of the Seas (ex- Jonikal ), but rather on the 72-metre Lurssen superyacht Titania . The yacht, which was delivered in 2006, is owned by British businessman John Caudwell. Back in 2021, Caudwell commented on the news via his social media accounts, stating that he "cannot confirm or deny any filming secrets" but hinted that viewers should "keep your eyes peeled towards the end of season five and start of season six."

The refit in 2012 amped up her charter facilities – adding a second owner’s cabin on the upper deck, a gym on the sundeck and an extension to the stern to accommodate a beach club (which can be spotted in the series) with a full water park that floats off the stern.

The other yacht (and the other woman)

Jonikal is not the only yacht to have featured in The Crown series six, filmed in Mallorca. At one point, the camera also pans to another yacht the Al-Fayed's spent a lot of time on, the 20-metre Cujo. The drama shows Dodi's fiancée at the time, Fisher, getting escorted by tender past the yacht Dodi and Princess Diana are on ( Jonikal ), and instead shuttled away to what Fisher refers to as "the smaller yacht". 

In August this year, the real-life Cujo sunk around 35 kilometres off the coast of Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France.

Other yachts featured in the series

Christina O had 122-metre shoes to fill in season five, playing Alexander – the converted cruise ship where Princess Diana and Charles celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary . Delivered in 1965 by German shipyard Lubecker Flender Werke , the superyacht hosted the royals and their sons princes William and Harry a year before the couple separated.

A replica of the Royal Yacht Britannia also starred in the fifth Netflix series. Britannia was used as Queen Elizabeth II’s royal yacht from 1954 to 1997, hosting up to 250 guests at a time while being operated by 21 officers and 250 crew from the Royal Navy. It was decommissioned as a cost-cutting measure by the UK government in 1997.

The second part of The Crown will premiere on Netflix from 14 December.

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A complete timeline of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's summer romance

Photos of Diana and Dodi on a memorial in Harrods.Sion Touhig/Sygma via Getty Images

• Princess Diana was dating film producer Dodi Fayed before they were killed in a car crash in 1997.
• The couple met in 1986 but they wouldn't start dating until more than a decade later.

Princess Diana spent her final summer in a brief whirlwind romance with Dodi Fayed .

Fayed was a film producer and son of Mohamed Al-Fayed, a wealthy entrepreneur and former owner of the London department store Harrods.

Following the princess' divorce from Prince Charles the year prior, Diana vacationed with Dodi in St. Tropez and Paris in July and August of 1997. They were photographed kissing on Mohamed's luxury yacht, revealing their relationship to the public.

The couple were killed in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997. Here's a complete timeline of their fleeting relationship.

Princess Diana reportedly met Dodi at a polo match in 1986, when she was still married to the then-titled Prince Charles.

Diana and Dodi were first introduced at a polo match in Windsor in 1986, according to Dodi's obituary published by The Independent in September 1997. Dodi and his family were playing against Diana's then-husband, Prince Charles — who she had been married to since 1981 — the publication's Tom Vallance reported.

That same year, Dodi married the model Suzanne Gregard, according to the obituary. They were married for eight months and Gregard was granted more than £2 million, or around $2.4 million, in the divorce settlement, the outlet added.

Diana and Dodi's relationship didn't become romantic until more than a decade later after Diana and Charles' divorce, according to The Independent.

Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996.

As Business Insider previously reported , the couple's separation was announced by then-Prime Minister John Major in 1992 following rumors that Charles had an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, which he admitted in a TV documentary interview in 1994.

Speaking to filmmaker Jonathan Dimbleby , Charles said he was "faithful and honorable" to Diana until their marriage "became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried."

In August 1996, the divorce was finalized and Diana was awarded a $22.5 million lump settlement in addition to an annual payment of $600,000 toward the maintenance of her offices, according to the princess' obituary in The New York Times.

Speaking to filmmaker Jonathan Dimbleby , Charles said he was faithful and honorable to Diana until their marriage became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried.

Dodi met model Kelly Fisher in July 1996 and the pair were reportedly engaged when he met Diana.

Dodi met the British model Kelly Fisher in Paris in July 1996, The Los Angeles Times reported in 1997 . Speaking to the world's media at a press conference in August 1997, Fisher's lawyer, Gloria Allred, alleged that Dodi had asked Fisher's parents for their blessing to marry her, and they were due to wed the following year, according to the publication.

Allred said that Fisher was still engaged to Dodi when he started dating Diana. Dodi never publicly commented on Fisher's allegations.

"We would like the princess, who has suffered greatly in the past, to know of Ms. Fisher's experiences with Mr. Fayed so that she can make an informed decision regarding her future and that of her children," Allred said during the press conference, according to The Los Angeles Times.

We would like the princess, who has suffered greatly in the past, to know of Ms. Fisher's experiences with Mr. Fayed so that she can make an informed decision regarding her future and that of her children, Allred said during the press conference, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Diana and Dodi made several public appearances together in the summer of 1997.

Following Diana's divorce, she was tied to a number of high-profile men, including Hasnat Ahmad Khan and Bryan Adams, BI previously reported.

According to Dodi's obituary in The Independent, Diana and Dodi's relationship began after the princess and her children, Prince William and Prince Harry, joined the Fayed family for a vacation in St. Tropez in July 1997.

Diana and Dodi were seen on the luxury yacht owned by his father, Mohamed, with Diana's children, and a second time on their own, according to a 2017 report by The Guardian's Caroline Davies . During the second outing, the couple were pictured kissing by the paparazzi, and news of their apparent relationship became public, the outlet reported.

Fisher filed a lawsuit against Dodi a couple of weeks before his death in August 1997.

In August, Fisher's lawyer, Gloria Allred, announced the model's intention to sue Dodi for breach of contract after photos of Diana and Dodi were made public, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The publication reported that the lawsuit alleged Dodi had offered Fisher $500,000 to relocate to Paris and to slow down with her modeling work, in addition to promising her a new family home in Malibu's Paradise Cove.

Diana and Dodi were killed in a car crash on August 31, 1997.

Following their vacation in St. Tropez, Diana's children returned to the UK to spend the remainder of the summer with Charles. Meanwhile, Diana and Dodi visited Paris.

According to The Guardian and a 1997 BBC News report , the couple were staying at the Ritz Hotel, which was owned by Dodi's father at the time. After leaving the hotel, the couple were pursued by paparazzi and were killed after the car they were traveling in crashed into a tunnel.

The driver of the car, Henri Paul, was also killed. According to BBC News, blood tests proved that he had consumed a "large amount of alcohol" and drugs before the crash.

Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was the only survivor, BBC News reported.

The driver of the car, Henri Paul, was also killed. According to BBC News, blood tests proved that he had consumed a large amount of alcohol and drugs before the crash.

Diana and Dodi were mourned around the world.

Following the announcement of the couple's deaths, tens of thousands of flowers were laid by the public at Diana's Kensington Palace residence, The Guardian reported.

The couple was honored with a statue at Harrods, a luxury department store in London that was owned by Dodi's father Mohamed at the time.

Mohamed sold the store to Qatar Holdings in May 2010, according to his obituary published by Sky News in September 2023. And speaking to the Daily Mail in April 2018, Mohamed said the statue had been relocated to his home in Surrey.

"It is a blessing and a comfort to have the statue of Dodi and Princess Diana in the privacy of our family home after having shared it with the public for so many years in Harrods," Mohamed told the publication.

Mohamed died on September 1, 2023, which was one day after the 26th anniversary of his son's death, according to the Sky News obituary. He was 94.

It is a blessing and a comfort to have the statue of Dodi and Princess Diana in the privacy of our family home after having shared it with the public for so many years in Harrods, Mohamed told the publication.

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Halb versunken: die Yacht Cujo Bild: Gendarmerie des Alpes-Maritimes/Facebook

2500 Meter in die Tiefe : Dianas „Liebes-Yacht“ im Mittelmeer gesunken

• Von Peter-Philipp Schmitt
• - Aktualisiert am 04.08.2023 - 16:38

Im August 1997 sorgte die Yacht Cujo für Schlagzeilen, weil auf ihr Diana und Dodi Al-Fayed ihren Urlaub verbrachten. Nun ist das Schiff im Mittelmeer gesunken.

G leich zwei Yachten standen im Sommer 1997 im Mittelpunkt des Interesses der Weltöffentlichkeit: die Jonikal und die Cujo. Auf der ersten, gut 60 Meter langen Yacht entstanden die Bilder, die Diana beim Sonnenbaden und Küssen ihres neuen Freundes Dodi Al-Fayed zeigten. Auf der zweiten, etwas kleineren verbrachten die Prinzessin und der ägyptische Geschäftsmann ihre letzten Urlaubstage im August 1997, kurz bevor sie nach Paris flogen, wo sie am 31. des Monats mit dem Auto tödlich verunglückten.

• Folgen Ich folge

Beide Yachten gehörten damals der Familie Al-Fayed, beide wurden später verkauft und gerieten nahezu in Vergessenheit. Auch die Gendarmen der Marine, die am Samstag einem Notruf auf hoher See etwa 35 Kilometer vor der Küste von Beaulieu/Mer folgten, wussten zunächst nicht, welches Schiff da vor ihren Augen unterging. Die sieben Personen an Bord konnten gerettet werden, wie die Gendarmerie des Alpes-Mari­times mitteilte. Die 19 Meter lange Yacht, die offenbar bei einem Zusammenstoß mit einem bisher unbekannten Objekt leckgeschlagen war, liegt nun auf dem Meeresgrund in 2500 Meter Tiefe. An Bord, in den Tanks, sollen noch 7000 Liter Diesel sein.

Clint Eastwood und Bruce Willis als Gäste

Die Cujo hatte der amerikanische Rennfahrer John von Neumann 1972 bei der italienischen Werft Baglietto in Auftrag gegeben. Er wollte mit ihr die schnellste Yacht der Welt besitzen, wie es heißt. Die Yacht schaffte immerhin 42 Knoten (knapp 80 Kilometer in der Stunde). Von Neumann verkaufte sie in den Achtzigerjahren an den Sohn des Waffenhändlers Adnan Khashoggi, der sie einige Jahre später wiederum an Dodi Al-Fayed veräußerte. Er baute sie für eine Million Pfund nach seinen Wünschen um. Gäste an Bord der Cujo, die ihren Heimathafen in den Neunzigern in Saint-Tropez hatte, waren unter anderen die Hollywood-Schauspieler Clint Eastwood , Tony Curtis und Bruce Willis.

Nach Al-Fayeds Unfalltod lag seine Yacht lange ungenutzt im Hafen, bis sie vor drei Jahren von dem britischen Oldtimerhändler Simon Kidston bei einer Auktion für nur 138.000 Pfund (damals etwa 160.000 Euro) ersteigert wurde. Aktueller Besitzer war laut Kidston allerdings ein junger, namentlich nicht genannter Italiener, der sich die Motoryacht kürzlich zu seinem 30.  Geburtstag gekauft haben soll. Er war auch an Bord, als sie nun unterging.

Quelle: F.A.Z.

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Yacht Cujo von Diana und Dodi Al-Fayed gesunken

2500 Meter in die Tiefe

Dianas „Liebes-Yacht“ im Mittelmeer gesunken

Ein Fehler ist aufgetreten. Bitte überprüfen Sie Ihre Eingaben.

Vielen Dank Der Beitrag wurde erfolgreich versandt.

A complete timeline of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's summer romance

• Princess Diana was dating film producer Dodi Fayed before they were killed in a car crash in 1997.
• The couple met in 1986 but they wouldn't start dating until more than a decade later.
• Their relationship was fleeting with a tragic end.

Princess Diana spent her final summer in a brief whirlwind romance with Dodi Fayed .

Fayed was a film producer and son of Mohamed Al-Fayed, a wealthy entrepreneur and former owner of the London department store Harrods.

Following the princess' divorce from Prince Charles the year prior, Diana vacationed with Dodi in St. Tropez and Paris in July and August of 1997. They were photographed kissing on Mohamed's luxury yacht, a major news moment which was recreated in the latest season of "The Crown."

The couple were killed in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997. Here's a complete timeline of their fleeting relationship.

Princess Diana reportedly met Dodi at a polo match in 1986, when she was still married to the then-titled Prince Charles.

Diana and Dodi were first introduced at a polo match in Windsor in 1986, according to Dodi's obituary published by The Independent in September 1997. Dodi and his family were playing against Diana's then-husband, Prince Charles — who she had been married to since 1981 — the publication's Tom Vallance reported.

That same year, Dodi married the model Suzanne Gregard, according to the obituary. They were married for eight months and Gregard was granted more than £2 million, or around $2.4 million, in the divorce settlement, the outlet added.

Diana and Dodi's relationship didn't become romantic until more than a decade later after Diana and Charles' divorce, according to The Independent.

Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996.

As Business Insider previously reported , the couple's separation was announced by then-Prime Minister John Major in 1992 following rumors that Charles had an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, which he admitted in a TV documentary interview in 1994.

Speaking to filmmaker Jonathan Dimbleby , Charles said he was "faithful and honorable" to Diana until their marriage "became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried." 

In August 1996, the divorce was finalized and Diana was awarded a $22.5 million lump settlement in addition to an annual payment of $600,000 toward the maintenance of her offices, according to the princess' obituary in The New York Times.

Dodi met model Kelly Fisher in July 1996 and the pair were reportedly engaged when he met Diana.

Dodi met the British model Kelly Fisher in Paris in July 1996, The Los Angeles Times reported in 1997 . Speaking to the world's media at a press conference in August 1997, Fisher's lawyer, Gloria Allred, alleged that Dodi had asked Fisher's parents for their blessing to marry her, and they were due to wed the following year, according to the publication.

Allred said that Fisher was still engaged to Dodi when he started dating Diana. Dodi never publicly commented on Fisher's allegations.

"We would like the princess, who has suffered greatly in the past, to know of Ms. Fisher's experiences with Mr. Fayed so that she can make an informed decision regarding her future and that of her children," Allred said during the press conference, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Diana and Dodi made several public appearances together in the summer of 1997.

Following Diana's divorce, she was tied to a number of high-profile men, including Hasnat Ahmad Khan and Bryan Adams, BI previously reported.

According to Dodi's obituary in The Independent, Diana and Dodi's relationship began after the princess and her children, Prince William and Prince Harry, joined the Fayed family for a vacation in St. Tropez in July 1997.

Diana and Dodi were seen on the luxury yacht owned by his father, Mohamed, with Diana's children, and a second time on their own, according to a 2017 report by The Guardian's Caroline Davies . During the second outing, the couple were pictured kissing by the paparazzi, and news of their apparent relationship became public, the outlet reported.

Fisher filed a lawsuit against Dodi a couple of weeks before his death in August 1997.

In August, Fisher's lawyer, Gloria Allred, announced the model's intention to sue Dodi for breach of contract after photos of Diana and Dodi were made public, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The publication reported that the lawsuit alleged Dodi had offered Fisher $500,000 to relocate to Paris and to slow down with her modeling work, in addition to promising her a new family home in Malibu's Paradise Cove.

Diana and Dodi were killed in a car crash on August 31, 1997.

Following their vacation in St. Tropez, Diana's children returned to the UK to spend the remainder of the summer with Charles. Meanwhile, Diana and Dodi visited Paris.

According to The Guardian and a 1997 BBC News report , the couple were staying at the Ritz Hotel, which was owned by Dodi's father at the time. After leaving the hotel, the couple were pursued by paparazzi and were killed after the car they were traveling in crashed into a tunnel.

The driver of the car, Henri Paul, was also killed. According to BBC News, blood tests proved that he had consumed a "large amount of alcohol" and drugs before the crash.

Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was the only survivor, BBC News reported.

Diana and Dodi were mourned around the world.

Following the announcement of the couple's deaths, tens of thousands of flowers were laid by the public at Diana's Kensington Palace residence, The Guardian reported.

The couple was honored with a statue at Harrods, a luxury department store in London that was owned by Dodi's father Mohamed at the time.

Mohamed sold the store to Qatar Holdings in May 2010, according to his obituary published by Sky News in September 2023. And speaking to the Daily Mail in April 2018, Mohamed said the statue had been relocated to his home in Surrey.

"It is a blessing and a comfort to have the statue of Dodi and Princess Diana in the privacy of our family home after having shared it with the public for so many years in Harrods," Mohamed told the publication.

Mohamed died on September 1, 2023, which was one day after the 26th anniversary of his son's death, according to the Sky News obituary. He was 94.

• Main content

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

By Dora Davies-Evitt

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). 

By Harriet Johnston

By Isaac Zamet

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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By Evie Delaney

By Ollie Macnaughton