WEEK THE WORLD WEPT
It was first raised by an American breakfast TV show — and soon the question was sweeping the restive crowds at Buckingham Palace ...
THEY were the seven days that shook the world, from the death of Princess Diana to her funeral at Westminster Abbey. In this poignant series to mark the 20th anniversary,
JONATHAN MAYO reconstructs those momentous events as they happened though the eyes of Royal Family members, politicians, the Princess’s family, and a heartbroken public . . .
Monday, September 1, 12.15am, Paris time/ 11.15am, UK
Jill and Ernie Rees- Jones are walking down the Champs-Élysées in Paris to get some air. Their son Trevor, the Princess’s bodyguard and sole survivor of the crash that killed her, is lying unconscious in the nearby Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. There is huge media and public interest in Trevor’s recovery, as his memories may unlock the cause of the crash.
Suddenly a car races towards them, and Ernie pushes Jill out of its way just in time. He kicks the car as it passes and yells at the driver. But Jill can see the funny side: if she’d been hit, she could’ve ended up in a bed next to Trevor.
Princess Diana’s English oak and leadlined coffin arrives at St James’s Palace in a hearse belonging to the royal undertakers leverton & Sons. it is carried into the 16th-century Chapel Royal and placed on a catafalque surrounded by four tall candles in front of the altar and then covered in a white cloth.
in 1588, Elizabeth i prayed in the chapel when England was threatened by the Spanish Armada, and in 1840 Queen Victoria married Prince Albert here.
8am
Diana’s butler Paul Burrell has returned from Paris to work at Kensington Palace. looking at his desk diary he can see that today a tailor should have been arriving to fit William and Harry out with new suits. Burrell starts to remove the parcel tape that yesterday morning he’d placed across the doors of Diana’s apartments to keep them sealed and safe.
One of Diana’s maids, lillie Piccio, is making up the Princess’s bed for the last time. She carefully puts Diana’s lipstick, eyeshadow and mascara into the make-up bag on top of her dressing table.
At his office in Harrods, Mohamed Al Fayed’s spokesman Michael Cole is telling reporters that the crash was caused by ‘a Gallic kamikaze faction’ who were ‘disgusting creeps’. The driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul, was ‘a sober, model employee, who after a recent medical check to re- qualify for his pilot’s licence was clearly fit to drive the car’.
German newspaper Bild has a picture of the wrecked car on its front page, and Dodi and Diana can be seen inside. no British paper is using these pictures.
10am UK time/ 11am Paris
in THE 19th- century Chinese Drawing Room in Buckingham Palace, the first meeting to decide the arrangements for the funeral is convening. They have only five days to get everything in place.
Prominent are the staff of the Earl of Airlie, the lord Chancellor, who is responsible for pageantry and ceremonial, but others include Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s Press secretary, Prince Charles’s spokesman Mark Bolland, the Queen’s Press spokesman Dickie Arbiter, and representatives from the church and police.
The Queen’s deputy private secretary Robin Janvrin and Prince Charles’s private secretary Stephen lamport are in Balmoral, linked via a speakerphone in the middle of the table. They discuss who to invite to the funeral. The Spencer family and the Royal Family have their own lists; the Princess’s staff has names based on her Christmas card list.
A sign has been placed outside St James’s Palace saying ‘The Book of Condolence Queue’ which was last used for Winston Churchill’s death in 1965. There are only half a dozen people waiting.
The prosecutor’s office in Paris releases results of the autopsy on Henri Paul. it says he died instantly and that tests on blood, urine and fluid from Paul’s eyes have revealed he had a blood/alcohol level more than three times the legal driving limit in France.
10.15am
Outside Buckingham Palace, photographer Kent Gavin is being jabbed in the ribs. ‘You killed her!’ a woman says to him. Gavin says nothing and walks away. Then some girls join in. ‘You’re all to blame!’ they shout. He leaves as quickly as he can.
11am
MERCEDES Benz has announced that the launch of its new S-Class car, the type used in the crash, has been postponed. ‘it would not be appropriate,’ a spokesman says. All horseracing on Saturday, the day of the funeral, has been cancelled and the national lottery draw will take place on Sunday.
There have been calls on the government to scrap the Millennium Dome in Greenwich and instead build a children’s hospital in memory of Diana. Hello! magazine is pulping thou- sands of copies of this week’s edition, which speculated that Diana and Dodi might marry.
Midday UK time/ 1pm Paris
in THE City of london there is a minute’s silence. All the exchange floors are quiet. Then lloyd’s of london rings the lutine Bell, the traditional herald of bad news.
At a Red Cross landmine conference in Oslo, 400 delegates also hold a minute’s silence. in January, Diana had transformed attitudes to landmines by making a highly publicised visit to Angola where she met victims and walked through a minefield.
in the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, Myriah Daniels, the holistic healer from California who was on holiday with Dodi and Diana, has her hands on Trevor Rees- Jones’ head. She had arrived at the ReesJoneses’ apartment offering help. Watching Myriah pray are his mum Jill, stepfather Ernie — and Trevor’s estranged wife Sue from whom Trevor is in the process of getting a divorce.
Trevor doesn’t respond to Myriah, but when Sue edges closer and speaks to him he moves. Jill is overjoyed but also concerned — what if Trevor wakes up and has forgotten his marriage is over?
1pm
AT Buckingham Palace the first funeral planning meeting ends. They have decided that it should be a break from tradition — her coffin will be carried on a gun carriage rather than in a hearse, and a big proportion of the congregation in Westminster Abbey should be made up of representatives of the charities Diana supported. Some questions remain unresolved, such as who should walk behind the coffin.
The tradition is that royal males with a military connection walk behind the gun carriage. Fears were expressed that the public feeling against Prince Charles was so strong that things could turn
nasty if he chose to walk as part of his ex-wife’s funeral cortege.
The Queen has ordered all radios and televisions to be removed from Balmoral so William and Harry aren’t upset by the coverage of their mother’s death. The television in the Queen’s private sitting room remains, however. Some of the staff are following the events in London via radios concealed in cupboards and televisions tucked behind sofas.
2pm UK Time/ 3pm Paris
A Witness to the Paris crash, a tourist from normandy named Francois Levistre, gives a statement to police. He was driving through the Tunnel when in his mirror he saw a car surrounded by motorbikes. ‘As i was about to start to climb out of the tunnel, i could distinctly see one motorbike cut across the front of the car. There was a large white flash. i did not notice a bang. i saw the car zigzagging.
‘i carried on driving until i was outside the tunnel, where i stopped to collect my thoughts. i realised that something serious had happened, and that the car had had an accident. i thought it might have been an assassination attempt or a gangland hit.’
Singer George Michael, who was a friend of Diana, releases a statement: ‘i truly believe that some souls are too special, too beautiful to be kept from heaven.’
4pm
Word has spread about the books of condolence at St James’s Palace. The queue now stretches halfway up the Mall. Some people who have brought flowers to place by Diana’s coffin walk away when told that they will only be able to sign a book of condolence. others have brought sleeping bags in case they have to stay the night.
Those at the front of the queue have to walk through a metal detector to join a shorter queue in the palace’s 100ft Lower Corridor. There is some surprise that the book is in fact five separate ringbinders of black- edged paper. Some mourners sit at the desks and write half a page, others just ‘God Bless.’ one seven-year- old boy writes: ‘i think you were a good princess’. royal Correspondent Jennie Bond has begged her bosses to be let out of the studio to report on the mood on the streets. Her taxi pulls up alongside the queue outside St James’s Palace and Jennie walks up to a bearded middle-aged man. ‘Hello, how long have you been waiting?’ He bursts into tears. outside the main door at Mohamed Al Fayed’s Harrods store is a book of condolence, with a doorman standing guard. There are flowers on the pavement close by. one card reads: ‘Thank you Dodi for making our princess happy again.’
5pm
Charles Spencer is in the church of St Mary the Virgin, Great Brington, near his Althorp seat, inspecting the Spencer chapel. Beneath it is the vault where every member of his family has been buried since 1522.
Diana told her family she wanted to be buried, and it’s expected her body will be interred at St Mary’s on Saturday in a private ceremony after the Abbey service.
With the earl is the rev David MacPherson who is concerned his church will become a shrine in the coming months: the visitors’ book is already full of messages. He feels St Mary’s won’t be able to cope with the attention — it hasn’t a car park or even a toilet.
‘i suspect we will become a place of pilgrimage and, frankly, i wonder if it will ever end,’ he’d told a journalist earlier in the day.
10pm
Trevor rees-Jones’s estranged wife Sue is on a flight home to London at Jill rees- Jones’s suggestion. The doctors had advised the family that Trevor has to be brought back ‘to the real world’. if Sue remained in the hospital when Trevor regained consciousness and had forgotten their impending divorce, he may become distressed and confused.
11pm
Scores of people are arriving at Kensington Palace with torches, candles, sleeping bags and food, ready for an all-night vigil.
The flowers are now 20ft back from the gates. in among the bouquets are teddy bears, photographs of Diana cut out of magazines, and Queen of Hearts playing cards. Someone has left a 1995 bottle of Burgundy.
outside St James’s Palace the wait to sign the book of condolence is now seven hours.
Tuesday, September 2, 9am
Harrods unveils a window dedicated to the memories of Diana and Dodi. Black and white pictures of the couple are on wooden stands in a window full of black silk, white lilies and ivy.
10am
ALL the official buildings in London have a Union flag at halfmast. There is no flag on Buckingham Palace. inside the palace, the daily meeting in the Chinese Drawing room to discuss the funeral is beginning. it is suggested that the crowd should start the funeral behind barriers and then as the coffin passes they join in behind the cortege.
representatives from the Metropolitan Police squash this idea; the size of the crowds in the past 24 hours outside the royal palaces suggest as many as a million people may be in London on Saturday. An idea that large
screens are set up along the route so people can watch the television footage is given a warm welcome. The BBC already has screens in Hyde Park for Proms in the Park.
Camilla Parker Bowles is in her house in Wiltshire. She and Prince Charles have been talking on the phone many times each day.
Camilla has cancelled all engagements for this week. She knows she must keep a low profile as in recent months the British public’s reaction to her relationship with Prince Charles has been mostly hostile.
Since Diana’s death, Camilla has received hate mail and death threats. Outside her house, two policemen are standing guard.
11am, UK time/ Midday, Paris
AT BuCkingHAm Palace the discussion about the funeral arrangements has moved on to the role of the Royal Family. An aide from the Spencer family makes suggestions about William and Harry’s role.
Suddenly there is a loud voice on the speakerphone from Balmoral. it is an angry Prince Philip. ‘Stop telling us what to do with these boys! They’ve lost their mother! You’re talking about them as if they are commodities! Have you got any idea what they are going through?’
no one in Buckingham Palace had realised the Prince had been listening to their discussions.
Within minutes of the crash, Paris deputy public prosecutor maud Coujard had arrived at the scene and ordered a crimi- nal investigation. now at the Palais de Justice in Paris, six photographers and a dispatch rider arrested in the Alma tunnel stand in front of the examining magistrate, Hervé Stéphan.
The court hears that they are to be charged for failing to render assistance to persons in danger (under what is known as a ‘good Samaritan’ law) which is an imprisonable offence in France. The men face a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Their lawyers declare that they are being made scapegoats: ‘Our defence is that there is no offence. it is only the exceptional nature of the victims that explains this show trial.’
At the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital Trevor Rees- Jones is still unconscious. His mother is talking gently to her son: ‘There’s been an accident. You’re in Paris. You’re in a hospital. You’re going to be all right.’
The doctors want to operate on Trevor’s face but the swelling is too great and a chest infection has given him a high temperature. They have asked Jill and Ernie for photographs of Trevor before the accident to help them reconstruct his face.
Family and friends back home in Shropshire are hurriedly searching for good pictures to send to Paris.
Midday
The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr george Carey is talking on the phone to Charles Spencer. The archbishop had been alarmed when told that the earl would be giving the address at the funeral; he believes only the clergy should speak on such an occasion.
Dr Carey suggests he speaks about ‘the Christian message of hope and life evermore in god’. Charles Spencer listens politely and says nothing. The archbishop has a feeling that Diana’s brother already knows exactly what he wants to say.
A sign goes up on the gates of Westminster Abbey: ‘The Abbey is closed to visitors to permit preparations for the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.’
inside, scaffolders and television outside broadcast crews rig camera platforms and lighting gantries.
The Abbey choristers have been urgently recalled from their summer holidays. Some are having to fly back from as far away as Canada and Brazil.
1pm
THE Royal Family last appeared in public two days ago when they went to church near Balmoral. APART from brief statements from her Press officers there has been little response from the Queen and there are growing calls for the family to return to London.
The family has focused their attention on the welfare of William and Harry. Princess Anne has been taking them for walks and rides on the estate with her children Peter and Zara; Prince Charles has dug out old photo albums to share memories with his sons, and the boys’ former nanny, Tiggy LeggeBourke, is on her way to Balmoral to help comfort them.
Royal biographer Anthony Holden ( whose phrase ‘ the People’s Princess’ was borrowed yesterday by the Prime minister) is standing in front of Buckingham Palace being interviewed live for a u.S. television breakfast show.
He is explaining why there is no flag at half-mast on top of Buckingham Palace because the Royal Standard only flies when the Queen is in residence and she is in Balmoral.
Holden declares he is unconvinced it’s the right thing to do and the people around him agree, and start to urge him to speak out on their behalf. in his ear, he hears the u.S. producer say: ‘This is great, do it! Do it!’ AT Kensington PALACE the flowers are waist- high and extend 30ft from the gates. The number of books of condolence at St James’s Palace has increased to 11; the queue is five abreast in places.
5pm UK time/ 6pm Paris
In Paris, five of the paparazzi arrested after the crash are released on bail without security, but photographers Romuald Rat and Christian martinez, who had argued with each other at the scene, are released on bail of 100,000 francs (£10,000) and told to surrender their cameras.
At the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, Trevor Rees- Jones is now stable enough to undergo facial surgery in two days’ time. Perhaps soon he will be able to shed some light on what happened in the Alma Tunnel in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Additional reporting: NIGEL BUNYAN