Who is Rosa Monckton MBE? A close friend who earned Diana’s unending thanks – and one of a tight circle supporting the princess before her death

Of the many friendships that Princess Diana cultivated, one of the most personal – and still closely associated with her today – was the friendship shared with the businesswoman and charity campaigner Rosa Monckton.

The wife of journalist Dominic Lawson, Rosa had met Diana in 1991 through Lúcia Flecha de Lima, the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to London. 

As Rosa explained in a 2017 interview with The Times, there was an almost immediate bond.

‘The reason our friendship was so strong was because she was so needy at that time,’ she said.

‘It was straight into, “I’m so unhappy, I don’t know what to do.” 

‘We met in the [Brazilian] residence the first time, then we went to lunch at Harry’s Bar. Then literally she rang me the next day and said, “Can I come round? I want to continue the conversation.” ‘ 

In time, Diana agreed to be Godmother to Rosa’s daughter Domenica, who was born with Down’s syndrome, and played her part conscientiously.

Even before that, she had shown touching kindness to her friend.

Some years before Domenica’s birth, Diana supported Rosa when she gave birth to a stillborn child, offering her the chance to bury her daughter in the gardens at Kensington Palace.

Talking to Melissa Doyle on Channel 7 current affairs program Sunday Night in 2017, Rosa said: ‘What an extraordinary thing to do.

‘We had a very, very moving ceremony and she gave me a key to the garden. She said ‘You come in whenever you want, policemen at the gate will know’. I still have the key.’

The Honourable Rosa Monckton, who turned 70 this week, has an aristocratic background and influential connections of her own. As an adviser to Edward VIII, her grandfather, Walter Monckton had drafted the 1936 abdication speech.

In her business career, she has been Managing Director of Tiffany & Co in London and Chief Executive of Asprey & Garrard.

She has thrown herself into charitable work and is a patron of groups including Together for Short Lives, the Acorn Children’s Hospice and Team Domenica, a group working to support young people with learning problems in teh workplace. 

In 2017, Rosa was awarded an MBE for her services to young people with learning disabilities.

Writing for the Daily Mail, she revealed that she blamed the notorious Martin Bashir interview for her friend’s downward spiral. 

‘The deceit, the manipulation, the cold-eyed reeling-in of someone so emotionally fragile shocked me profoundly, while at the same time explaining to me the switch in Diana’s behaviour,’ she said.

Reflecting on the impact of the interview back in 1995, Ms Monkton told ITV News she noticed a change in her friend Princess Diana at the time Mr Bashir was dealing with her.

‘She was jumpy, she was edgy, she thought she was being followed. I mean really, extraordinarily different.

‘Everybody knew something was wrong but none of us could put a finger on it.’

Ms Monkton said had she known Diana was planning on giving the interview, she would have advised her friend not to do so.

Diana’s letters give a flavour of how close the friendship was. ‘You have listened to the anguish and heard the tears,’ said one, ‘but have led me through the minefield to safety beyond.’

But not only was she one of her closest friends, she was one of the last to see Diana alive. 

Less than two weeks before the fatal car crash in Paris, the two mothers had enjoyed a holiday together where they sailed around Greece in a small boat as they carefully dodged the paparazzi.

In the years since her passing, 70-year-old, who was the CEO of Asprey & Garrard until 2002, has often spoken about the kind of grandmother Diana would have been.

Back in July 2013 when William and Kate became parents to Prince George, Rosa wrote a piece for the Daily Mail saying Diana would have ‘relished the role’.

‘She would have been the most magnificent grandmother,’ she wrote.

If Diana and Rosa were particularly close, we take a look at the others in the her inner circle…

George Michael

Wham! Star George Michael first met Diana at the World Aids Day Concert of Hope at London’s Wembley Arena in 1993, where it was said the Princess of Wales quickly warmed to the singer, admitting that she found him ‘gorgeous.’

To which George replied: ‘Thank you, ma’am—you’re pretty smashing yourself.’

George would become a trusted confidant to whom Diana turned under the strain of her divorce with Prince Charles.

And the feeling was certainly mutual, for in David and Mel Nolan’s biography of the singer, George Michael: Freedom: The Ultimate Tribute 1963-2016, Michael was quoted stating that he and Diana ‘clicked in a way that was a little bit intangible’.

When Diana passed away, the singer was said to have been inconsolable. 

‘Diana was the only person that I knew who made me feel like an ordinary person. That’s what I thought was so amazing about her.’

Though the pair had only met around ‘a dozen times’, Michael admired the Princess and considered her to be one of his nearest and dearest.

Jemima Goldsmith

Diana became friends with producer Jemima Goldsmith in 1996 after the Princess visited a cancer hospital in Pakistan, which was founded by her then husband, Imran Khan.

‘Of course, the whole country fell in love with her, but that’s where I sort of really fell in love with her as well because she was such a special person,’ she said during a red carpet interview.

The daughter of billionaire Sir James Goldsmith maintained a close friendship with Diana after they had bonded over their shared passion for philanthropic endeavors.

Diana visited Jemima twice while she was living in Pakistan, notably in the summer of 1997, when the Princess of Wales had conversations with her about moving to Asia to live with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.

Speaking about Diana’s final summer before her death, former national newspaper editor Eve Pollard said in a 2021 Channel 5 documentary: ‘She had long conversations with Jemima Khan, who had married Imran Khan and Diana was wondering if it was something she could do.’

And even after Diana’s death, the filmmaker never remained quiet about the Princess and the way the late princess was treated.

During an appearance on ‘Lorraine’ earlier this year, she claimed that Diana’s marriage to King Charles was an arranged marriage. ‘Pretty much… in that it was an appropriate match chosen by the parents and a sort of committee of family members,’ she declared.

She was also a contributor to the fifth season of the historical drama series The Crown, which would depict Diana’s final years, however, she asked for her contributions to be removed as she felt the ‘storyline would not necessarily be told as respectfully or compassionately’ as she had hoped.

Anne Bolton 

Before she joined the Royal Family, Lady Diana Spencer shared her London apartment at Coleherne Court with flatmates Carolyn Bartholomew, Virginia Pitman, and Anne Bolton.

The three women were among Diana’s closest friends and she once claimed that living with them was the happiest time of her life.

While she was a couple of years older than Diana, she reportedly struck up a friendship with Anne when the pair met on a ski trip. Coincidently, they discovered that Anne worked with Diana’s elder sister Sarah.

In an interview back in 1981, Anne mentioned that she remained close friends with Diana, who would often pop into her office for a chat.

During the same interview, she also shone a light on the extent to which the paparazzi would hound Diana. She said, ‘We used to sit at night peering out from behind the curtains, wondering when the last car would leave. In the morning there might be another 30 down there, waiting for us to go to work.’

She went on to marry Noel Hill, the son of King Charles’ polo coach and lived a relatively private life thereon. 

By 2000, she owned a cattle ranch in Queensland, which is where Prince Harry worked during his gap year in Australia, according to the BBC.

Carolyn Bartholomew

Another of Diana’s treasured flat mates was Caroline Bartholomew, who was at the time studying singing and piano at the Royal College of Music and met Diana while at West Heath school in Kent.

An accomplished sportswoman as well as a musician, it was reported that her multiple rosettes were too many to fit in the flat.

Caroline married William Bartholomew in September 1982 and Princess Diana was present in a beautiful pink ensemble.

During a 2017 auction ‘intimate letters’ that Diana sent to Carolyn fetched more than £93,000.

Caroline is one of Prince Harry’s godmothers and attended his 2018 wedding to Meghan Markle.

Virginia Pitman 

Like Anne, Diana’s third flatmate Virginia Pitman was also a few years older than the princess and had an array of jobs before she moved into the flat – including having worked on the silver counter at Asprey and training as an elite chef at Cordon Bleu.

According to Tatler, she was also a keen traveller and once ‘hitch-hiked across Europe to North Africa from her home in Wensleydale, Yorkshire’.

In the late 1980s she embarked on a career in interior design and in 1991, went on to marry Henry Clarke, a banker – Diana was one of the guests at the wedding.

She most recently appeared in the news when Princess Diana’s memory was honoured in 2021 with an English Heritage blue plaque on the Earl’s Court flat she lived in with Pitman before her wedding to the Prince of Wales in 1981.

The plaque notes her ‘devotion to charity work’ and marked out the late royal’s first home – gifted to her as a coming-of-age present by her parents – for tourists in the city.

Her former flatmate revealed as the plaque was unveiled that she and Diana ‘had actually driven around London talking about blue plaques, so I knew that she would have really liked it’.

She added: ‘I just thought it’s so nice to be able to come and celebrate the good times – I know that she was happy here.’

Elton John 

Princess Diana’s friendship with Elton John is known to many and was well documented over the years.

The princess met the singer at Prince Andrew’s 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle in 1981 and hit it off instantly after Diana asked Sir Elton if he would like to dance to the Charleston with her.

Afterwards, Diana wrote the star a letter recalling how nice it was that they met and they quickly became friends. The pair bonded over their shared trauma, with John explaining they both suffered from eating disorders and would exchange letters detailing their struggles.

Writing of his encounters with Diana his memoir, Me, Sir Elton wrote: ‘She was blessed with an incredible social ease, an ability to talk to anybody, to make herself seem ordinary.’

But while the pair were close, they also had a falling out after photos of Diana and other royals were used in charity book ‘Rock and Royalty,’ penned by their mutual friend Gianni Versace in honor of Sir Elton’s AIDS foundation.

While Diana was a lifelong supporter of the LGBT community, she declined to support the book as she feared a backlash from the late Queen Elizabeth. Thankfully, the friends reconciled in the aftermath of Versace’s death.

The star performed at Diana’s funeral at Westminster Abbey in 1997 after she was tragically killed in a car crash. He paid tribute to his friend with a rendition of his song, Candle in the Wind, which featured reworked lyrics by his writing partner, Bernie Taupin.

It included the lines: ‘You called out to our country, and you whispered to those in pain.’

To this day, Sir Elton remains close to Diana’s sons, Princes William and Harry, and even performed at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding reception and hosted the couple at his French Riviera holiday home.

Sarah Ferguson

Another friend of Diana’s was Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, having met when they were children and were close for years before they both joined the royal family.

But before they were ever sisters-in-law, the pair were fourth cousins through ancestor Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who was born a Spencer, and their mothers were also best friends.

The two of them would have weekly lunches together and Sarah was invited to Diana’s royal wedding to Prince Charles. 

Soon after, Diana turned matchmaker, introducing Sarah to her future husband Prince Andrew.

Their bond was as complicated as it was close, however.

The Duchess found herself constantly compared to the late Princess of Wales and became insecure in her presence.

The pair reportedly fell out after Fergie included unkind stories about Diana in her first memoir, despite the princess explicitly asking her not to. Sadly they were unable to repair the damage before Diana’s death.

James Colthurst 

Dr James Colthurst was among Princess Diana’s closest friends, having met her on a skiing trip in Val Claret, France, when she was 17 years old.

Diana twisted her ankle, and James, who was a medical student at the time looked after her.

He would play a critical role in the writing of Andrew Morton’s book, Diana: Her True Story, bringing Morton’s questions to the princess and delivering tapes she recorded for the author.

She often confided in Colthurst about her unhappy marriage and would sometimes call him up to ten times a day.

Speaking about the loss of his friend in an interview with NBC News, he said found  comfort in the lasting positive impact Diana had on the world.

‘There was a kind of aura around her… She just entertained and warmed people up,’ he said. 

‘And I don’t think that was directly imposed by the role she was in. I think that’s the extraordinary lady she was.’

Julia Samuel 

In 1987, Princess Diana met a grief therapist named Julia Samuel at a formal dinner. A lifelong friendship began.

‘We started laughing together. There was something about her and something about me that just worked,’ Julia recalled previously speaking with the Daily Mail. ‘It was a lovely thing.’

Julia lived down the road from Kensington Palace and Diana would sometimes pick up Julia’s children from school – ‘although I never picked up hers,’ Julia says with a smile.

Like many girlfriends, they lunched, did gym workouts and went to the cinema together. Diana invited Julia into the Royal Box at Wimbledon and backstage at Elton John concerts.

In return, Julia provided Diana with a sense of normality.

‘She loved it when she could do the ordinary stuff like washing up or emptying the dishwasher.

‘She was brilliant at moving between these two worlds and whether she was meeting President Reagan or having supper in my kitchen, she was always herself.’

As well as the fun – ‘and she was really good at having fun’ – the two women had many serious conversations.

Julia would listen to Diana on her return from overseas tours ‘talking about Aids, or landmines – and all the causes she really believed in’ and Diana would listen to Julia as she talked about her work at St Mary’s, which she began in 1992.

Along with Jenni Thomas, a former nursery nurse who was running a similar service in Buckinghamshire, Julia created what is now Child Bereavement UK. Jenni, as founder and chief executive, ran the charity, and with Diana’s help Julia was able to ensure it got off to a dazzling start.

The princess coached Julia for her inaugural speech, went shopping with her for a suitable outfit (‘I still have it – a navy blue long jacket and skirt; I got a lot more attention in the shop than I would have done had I been on my own’) and attended the launch, with a television and press pack in tow.

Three years after that launch, Diana died.

Julia was away, staying with friends the night she was killed.

Samuel has stayed close to Prince William and Prince Harry since their mother’s death in 1997. She is godmother to Prince William’s eldest son, Prince George, who is second in line to the British throne.

Today, she is a well-known psychotherapist, and has written several books on the subject, including This Too Shall Pass and Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving.