King’s Lynn Once England’s fourth largest town, King’s Lynn lies directly up the A10 from London. Its history is displayed in a vast market place, 15th-century guildhall and churches, old gaol house and quay. The station (with a direct service from London Liverpool Street) is the arrival point for guests to Sandringham House, who could expect to find a uniformed chauffeur waiting for them on the platform. It was also the start and finish of the unhappy journeys that Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother, spoke of at her funeral: “…the big sister who mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school and endured those long train journeys between our parents’ homes with me at weekends”. A nanny would accompany the two youngest Spencer children on the slow journey that stopped frequently at tiny hamlets and junctions. At King’s Lynn they were met by their mother and sometimes their stepfather, Peter Stand Kidd.

King’s Lynn is also the site of Diana’s first school, a private day school where Diana’s kindness to animals and children in the classes below her was recalled by her headmistress Jean Lowe. The town was a place to come for shopping expeditions, for lunches and treats. It was to the Duke’s Head in Tuesday Market Place that Diana and Charles were take by their father for a spectacularly unsuccessful ‘getting to know you’ lunch with Raine xxx, who was to become their stepmother.