Princess Diana's Honeymoon Letter Heads to Auction

Newly unearthed words from Princess Diana paint an unexpectedly sunny picture of her earliest days as Charles' wife. A letter the 20-year-old newlywed wrote to school friend Katherine Hanbury in September 1981, soon headed to auction at Gorringe's in the UK, describes her honeymoon as "blissful" and declares, "It's wonderful being married—I think it's safe to say that after two months." Diana also gushed about life at Balmoral in Scotland, saying she loved being outdoors and "hated" London, reports People, a stance that reportedly later flipped as tensions grew in the marriage.

The three-page "Honeymoon Letter," written while the couple were at Balmoral following a Mediterranean cruise on the Royal Yacht Britannia, is part of a small archive estimated to fetch $5,400 to $8,000 on July 7. The lot being offered by Hanbury includes four color photos of Diana at West Heath Girls' School (one with future actor Tilda Swinton) and a program from a 1997 Thanksgiving service after Diana's death, reports Vanity Fair. Gorringe's specialist Albert Radford says the material shows Diana "as a young woman suspended between love and history—hopeful, unguarded, and not yet entirely claimed by the institution that would come to define her."