When Diana put her foot down (or tried to). She would NOT continue to live in Highgrove House, which Charles had chosen with the help of…Camilla!

It could all have been so different. Maybe!

Just a few months after her marriage to Charles, Princess Diana put her foot down. She would NOT continue to live at Highgrove House – she wanted their family home to be a place the couple had chosen together.

And certainly NOT in Royal Gloucestershire. The further away, the better actually.

Princess of Wales leans against the sundial at Highgrove House. Camilla had not only contributed to the choice of the house, but also to its furnishings

Diana is pictured at Highgrove with her lady-in-waiting, Anne Beckwith-Smith

Princess Diana’s old family home, the beautiful Althorp House in Northamptonshire. This would have been considerably more spacious than Highgrove

Bolehyde Manor in Allington, Wiltshire, where Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles lived when they married. It is not far from Highgrove

Why? Her reasons were almost too many to count: Highgrove, the home of former minister Maurice Macmillan, had been suggested to Charles by Camilla as the perfect country house to get away from it all.

Camilla had helped him, while he was romancing Diana, to decorate the place.

And conveniently enough, it was a discreet 30-minute drive from her home Bolehyde Manor in Wiltshire. It was her house, not Diana’s.

According to her family, the princess wanted to take Charles away from his one true love – and she tried to distance him from the temptation.

Through her sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale, who lived nearby, she heard that Belton House in Lincolnshire – the palatial former home of the 6th Lord Brownlow – was vacant and would be put up for sale.

Brownlow had close royal ties: he was a Lord-in-Waiting for King Edward VIII and was the man who led the Duchess of Windsor out of Britain when Edward abdicated.

His house, Belton, had been in the family since the 17th century. King William III had slept there.

Just the right place for Diana to raise her children – as she had become accustomed to the 15,000 acres surrounding her family home Althorp, rather than the meager 348 acres that Charles had around Highgrove.

Belton covered almost 5,000 acres and the house was filled with Old Masters, exquisite silverware, fine antique furniture and countless rooms.

The library, with 6,000 books, overlooked extensive formal gardens. Ideal!

Highgrove was no problem – and Diana wanted to get away anyway.

She encouraged Charles to view the site, and in early 1982 the couple drove there to view the mansion.

Along the way she argued that Belton was a comfortable drive from the royal estate at Sandringham, very close to her sister Sarah, and far more imposing than the frumpy little Highgrove with just nine bedrooms.

So determined was she that her children would grow up in Belton that, according to Lord Brownlow’s cousin Peter Hoos, the couple visited the house three times.

Diana’s favorite location – Belton House, a Grade II listed mansion near Grantham, Lincolnshire

Described as a jewel of Carolan architecture, Belton had almost 5,000 hectares of land. The countless rooms were filled with Old Masters, exquisite silverware and antique furniture

The Prince and Princess of Wales with Prince Harry outside Highgrove

Diana wanted to move, but Charles couldn’t be convinced – and eventually put his foot down to stay in Highgrove

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales with their sons William and Harry

Princess Diana left Highgrove with William and Harry in the back in 1992

But Charles could not be convinced and eventually put his foot down to stay in Highgrove.

There Camilla’s shadow hung over the house – as far as Diana was concerned – and Highgrove proved an unhappy home indeed for the royal couple.

Who knows, if Diana could have put just a few hundred miles between her husband and his mistress, she might (but only maybe) have been able to hold him.