ANGELA MOLLARD
In the days following the death of Princess Diana I truly believed the world had gone mad. Working in a newspaper office 500m from Kensington Palace, I’d periodically pop out to the high street to witness the endless flow of mourners carrying bunches of supermarket flowers to add to the pile.
Having been a journalist for nearly a decade, I knew news. But this was something else. It was as if the world had popped its emotional seal and the concept of a Princess and mother dying in a dingy Paris tunnel beside her playboy boyfriend at the hands of a drunken driver was too improbable to comprehend.
It was the same inside our newspaper office. For a business so practised at producing words, suddenly we had none. What would we say? How would we say it? What would this strange grieving world want to read?
Twenty years later, as the Princess’s life and death is remembered across the globe — notably in an ITV documentary due to screen tomorrow — Diana’s legacy is both clear and profound. In death she has strengthened the family she struggled to be part of; in life her openness about her vulnerabilities triggered a new candour that’s transformed how we talk about difficulties today.
To be blunt, Diana’s death and the response to it has saved the Royal Family. To live in Britain through the 1990s was to have a frontrow seat at the greatest soap opera ever staged. The characters were as sharply drawn as anything we have seen on screen: a cold monarch, her hapless husband, a prince who spoke to plants, his glamorous and unhinged wife who found comfort in an assortment of men and faith healers, the “other” woman — so reviled she was pelted with bread rolls at her local supermarket — and two young sons being raised among this madness to one day take the throne themselves.
When Diana died it was as if a director had called “cut” mid-episode. The Royal Family regrouped. They took advice, most famously from Prime Minister Tony Blair’s press secretary Alistair Campbell, a former journalist. At his suggestion, Diana was dubbed “the People’s Princess”, a brilliant piece of branding which legitimised the public grief.
If Diana was alive we would not have the Royal Family we have now. Whether you champion their existence or regard them as an antediluvian relic, the Windsors of the early 21st century have regained their dignity and solidity. Diana’s unhappy love life has defined the relationships her two sons have chosen for themselves. William spent eight years with Kate Middleton before marrying her. He even called a break part way through.
In Germany this week with their children, they look like Team Wales right down to their matching blue strip. They may be “less magical”, as some baronet claimed this week, but together they look warm and comfortable and as if they have each other’s backs. Prince Harry, now 32, is clearly following the template; he’ll marry when he’s sure.
Tomorrow the pair will speak about their memories of their mother in the documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. William will apparently reveal the last conversation he had with his mother while both boys guide viewers through the personal family photo album. It’s not something they need to do, but it’s in keeping with their new approach to both media and the public. If the Princes have a mission statement it might look like this: “Share a little. Celebrate Mum. Make it mean something.”
It’s a far cry from the days of backstabbing and leaks from courtiers, which I witnessed working on Fleet Street. The Royals have hired the best communicators in the business, but they’re also prepared to go rogue. Witness Harry warning the press not to harass his girlfriend Meghan Markle and his revelation none of the royals actually want the throne.
If Diana has prompted the Royal Family to rebuild, she’s also responsible for our newfound willingness to talk about our struggles. Her sons and daughter-in-law have campaigned for mental health but, more broadly, the Diana diorama — though often overwrought — showed it was OK to be selfdoubting and troubled and ever-questioning about love. She was complex and flawed. At times she lacked emotional self control and was prone to bouts of victimhood. But she broke the Stepford mould that women should pop Valium and just get on with it. Diana ushered in confessional journalism, Bridget Jones, Oprah and Carrie Bradshaw-style self-analysis and, in so doing, empowered a new openness around subjects as diverse as eating disorders, mental health, post-natal depression and domestic violence.
Yet there is one message Diana left which our “me-focused” generation might heed: selfdetermination. In the years before her death she shed her victim status for activism. Her nononsense, heartfelt dedication to something other than herself — leprosy, landmines, AIDS — was ultimately her saviour. She showed that service to something more important than ourselves brings happiness.