Last week marked 27 years since Princess Diana’s tragic passing on August 31, 1997—but many close to the late Princess of Wales are doing their very best to keep her memory alive. Her former hairstylist, Richard Dalton, who was in the royal’s employ for a decade, is one of them; alongside Renae Plant, the curator of The Princess Diana Museum, he just published a book titled It’s All About the Hair—My Decade With Diana, and it’s full of stories and special moments he shared with the beloved princess. “As a loyal subject to the royal family, I never shared anything publicly until now to protect her,” Richard told People. “I am 76 years old, [the] same age as [King] Charles, and I wanted to document my real story. [It’s] not a hairdresser’s job to kiss and tell. Now I feel comfortable—27 years have passed, and nothing in my book is detrimental to Diana’s character. Just wonderful memories.”
One of those memories involves a debrief he and Diana had over her wedding-day hairstyle, which she admitted wasn’t her favorite. When Richard—who calls her big-day look a “disaster” in his book—spoke candidly with Diana about the choice (which involved her signature side-swept bangs and cropped length), she agreed with him. “Diana did express to me that she wished she could do the wedding over again to ‘get the hair right,’” Richard explained to the outlet, noting that he was not the person responsible for the style (though he managed her looks leading up to the wedding, Kevin Shanley handled this one). Per Richard, this was the only wedding regret Diana ever shared with him: “However, she never mentioned any other regrets while I did her hair,” he confirmed.
Richard went on to style Diana’s hair—and was responsible for some of her most iconic looks—for the next decade and saw the princess at every phase of her marriage to King Charles III. “Some days she would be happy, some days quiet, some days talkative and some days sad,” Dalton wrote in his book. “I experienced all of these with Diana.” When he left her employ in 1991, just one year before she and Charles divorced, the princess was at one of her lowest points. “[She] was going through a really rough stage of her life with Charles and wanted a fresh staff and could tell I wanted my life back,” Richard told People. “She said, ‘I think [you want] your freedom back’—and it was mutual. I didn’t realize how much pressure I was under until I left.”
His co-author Renae sees Richard’s memoir—complete with happy and tough anecdotes—as an important preservation of history. “Once these people pass away, their memories are gone forever,” she says, pointing to Richard and Diana’s special relationship. “We know hairdressers are like best friends and get to hear it all.”