I felt Diana was walking beside us at her funeral reveals William
PRINCE William has revealed how he felt his mother’s presence beside him as he walked behind her coffin on the day of her funeral.
Speaking about the experience for the first time in a new BBC documentary to mark the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, William, who was 15 at the time, also described that historic walk as one of the ‘hardest things’ he has had to do.
And it was only the feeling that his mother was there with them, he says, that pushed him on.
‘ It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, that walk. It felt she was almost walking along beside us to get us through it,’ he said.
His brother, Prince Harry, who was just 12 when he lost his mother, remembers being comforted by weeping members of the public in the days after she died. ‘People’s hands were wet because of the tears they had just wiped away,’ he says.
Diana, 7 Days, which will be broadcast on BBC1 on August 27, is the second documentary that Diana’s sons have co-operated with this summer to highlight her life, death and legacy. It will feature candid interviews with her family, members of the royal household and former prime minister Tony Blair about the days following her death in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997.
The film will examine what it was about the late princess that provoked such a public outpouring of grief and how the week after her death shaped the country’s relationship with the monarchy. The documentary, directed by award-winning film-maker Henry Singer, responsible for Baby P: The Untold Story and The Betrayed Girls, about the Rochdale child grooming scandal, will also look at how Britain has changed in the two decades since Diana’s death.
William, who is patron of the charity Child Bereavement UK, has always been reluctant to speak about his mother publicly, admitting that he still found the issue too raw. But in recent months he has developed a new openness as he tries to lead by example in encouraging others to speak up about their mental health. He and his wife and brother have set up the Heads Together campaign to highlight awareness of the issue.
Harry, who has admitted that he eventually sought professional help for his grief, recently opened up about the experience of having to walk behind his mother’s coffin on its way to Westminster Abbey, saying neither he nor his brother should ever have been put through it.
He told US magazine Newsweek: ‘My mother had just died, and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television. I don’t think any child should be asked to do that, under any circumstances.’
His uncle Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother, has claimed an unnamed Buckingham Palace courtier said the princes wanted to accompany their mother’s coffin. He told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I was lied to and told that they wanted to do it, which of course they didn’t. It was the worst part of the day, walking behind my sister’s body with two boys who were obviously massively grieving their mother.’
‘It was the worst part of the day’