Diana rarely spoke about this painful double disownment, until invited to take part in a new documentary, The Sex Change Spitfire Ace, which has healed decades-old hurts. "It has been a rollercoaster ride. But a truly cathartic experience to learn who my father was, to lay the ghosts of the past, and to understand why [he] could not fulfil the role of a father."
There were no goodbyes and no explanations; he simply disappeared one day. Robert had begun cross-dressing during the marriage, but what initially seemed like a lark soon caused serious problems. Diana's paternal grandfather, Major-General Sir Ernest Cowell, paid the divorce settlement and for the sisters to go to boarding school while their mother swiftly remarried. "[Mum's] second husband, Harry, was the nicest and kindest of men, but for a long time I kept my distance from him as I knew my real father would return one day."
Diana was shielded from her father's new identity, until she discovered it in a newspaper when she was 13. "Then Mum told me everything, and I realised he was never coming back. As an adult, I found out that Roberta was living in Richmond, and twice wrote to make contact, but never had a reply. I did not even know she had died until my son saw a brief notice in a motoring magazine in 2013. I couldn't stop crying for this person I had never known and who never wanted to have anything to do with me."
Roberta, always known as Betty, was a close friend of mine for 25 years, until we finally lost touch. When I moved to Richmond in 1970, I was told about this strange person who looked like Marilyn Monroe from the neck up and a garage mechanic from the neck down. Some time later, I was with my son Tom, then 2 or 3, in the local Post Office, when I saw somebody who had to be her. Up piped Tom: "Mummy, is that a man or a lady?" Unfazed, Betty invited me for a glass of wine in her dilapidated room round the corner, decorated with number plates, flying helmets, steering wheels and old car batteries. She had a bottle of Hirondelle waiting, and a packet of Black Russian cigarettes. Amusing, insightful, captivating, generous and warmhearted Betty began spending Christmases with us and before long, made all her documents available to me, so I could write a book.
She was not, as she had made out, wrongly assigned at birth, but had undergone an orchiectomy to remove both testicles by a medical student, Michael Dillon, who himself had the world's first sex change operation from female to male after beginning life as Laura.Betty never mentioned that she had daughters of about my own age. Out of her witty one-liners, so many stand out. I once remarked that her garden was a disgrace, chock-full of brambles and nettles. "I know," she said, "but then I'm not horticultural. Haughty, yes, cultural, yes, horticultural, no."
Diana says: "I finally feel I ... have learnt what an intelligent, brave, sensitive and humorous person Roberta was. I wanted to get to know Betty so much. I'm sure that if I had, I would have liked her."
