Fred Prouser/Reuters
Martin Bashir said in a 2020 email that he had been the subject of racist prejudice at the time of his blockbuster Panorama interview with Princess Diana by critics who were “irritated” that a “non-white” person “should have the temerity to enter a royal palace and conduct an interview.”
Bashir wrote the email, which has just been released as part of a Freedom of Information order imposed on the BBC, 25 years after the interview, in response to the gathering pace of an investigation into the underhanded methods he used to secure it.
The results of the investigation were published in 2021 in a damning report that found that Bashir faked bank statements and showed them to Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother, in order to gain access to the princess, and then used other fake documents and invented stories to fuel her paranoia.