Princess Diana said on Thursday she was saddened and disappointed that a confession she made about her battle against bulimia to patients suffering from eating disorders had been printed in a British newspaper.
Britain's self-styled "Queen of Hearts" revealed how she developed the disease through a desire to emulate her older sister who suffered from anorexia and how her illness was aggravated by the tensions of her royal lifestyle.But her comments to the patients at the 300 pound ($500) a day Priory Hospital in south London last week were meant to be private, and the princess was not pleased when they were splashed across the front page of The Mirror newspaper.
"It was a private visit. She was very disappointed that it appeared in the paper," her spokeswoman told Reuters. "Obviously it had to be made by someone present on that occasion."
The Mirror refused to say how it obtained the very private revelations, saying only that they came "through reliable sources."
The princess had hoped that by talking about her own experience with bulimia, in which patients binge on food and then force themselves to vomit, she could help others.
"I feel completely cleared, but it will always be in the back of my head," Diana said of the disease that blighted her life for nine years.
"I've beaten it. So can you."
The 35-year-old ex-wife of heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles said her admiration for her older sister Sarah led to her own poor health. Regular visits to the royal castles at Balmoral and Sandringham where she felt alone and miserable made it worse.
"I was so unhappy when I went back there that the bulimia just got rifer and rifer. It was a situation where nobody ever treated me kindly," she was quoted as saying.
