The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Diana speaks still through her sons
As you may have read in last Thursday’s Courier, 20 years and two days ago, I found myself sitting on a hugely uncomfortable plastic chair atop some rough and ready but, thankfully extremely secure, scaffolding. I was rubbing shoulders quite literally with my neighbours on either side and staring down into the faces of the royal family.
I had been sent to London to cover the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey – in the oft-used and more-than-slightly ironically phrased expression of the time “a unique funeral for a unique person”.
As a feature writer, there to give flavour and colour as well as report accurately on unfolding events, the only approach was to give a personal view. I have to say that the only piece of sage, practical advice I was offered before setting off was: “Remember not to park in the short-stay car park at Edinburgh Airport”. To give myself a little more credit than my then “line manager” (a term that I don’t think had even been invented in these parts at that time) obviously did, I fear you would not have to be a high flyer in contention for the Pulitzer Prize to work that one out for yourself…
As a journalist, it was a huge challenge. As a private observer, it was fascinating. Whether you are a royalist or not, it was a major moment in the history of a nation that has always had a very particular and passionate relationship with its hereditary, constitutional heads of state. Whether you saw her as a debunker of the fairy princess myth who brought the monarchy kicking and screaming into the modern world or a manipulative self-publicist, Diana changed British public life in a way few could have foreseen.
Whether those changes have been for the better or not is another argument altogether. Of course, few of us knew the real person behind the persona shown to the world but, in a foretaste of what was to come in the era of celebrity culture and soul-baring, we knew quite a lot about her. Many liked what they knew; many didn’t. But perhaps now we all know a little too much about too many people. The pendulum has swung a long way past reticence and reserve in private or public.
The Queen may never have given an interview in her life – in spite of loosening her metaphorical stays a little to appear with the almost equally mythical James Bond in the celebrations for the 2012 London Olympics – but the days when the royals were seen and not heard are long gone. Like it or not, far from threatening the institution from which she either broke free or was ejected, as you choose to view it, today Diana speaks through her sons more eloquently than those attempting to write her out of history or quietly consign her to a passing footnote could ever have imagined.
Deference in a still class-ridden country is far from dead but it perhaps takes a different form these days. The Prince of Wales has achieved much that is admirable in many areas and – in spite of those who don’t seem to understand that the nature of a hereditary institution is that you take whomever comes next in line, even if you’re not that convinced by them – will undoubtedly eventually succeed his mother. Personally, he has very largely got what he wanted, although he may have to accept that his wife may not be able to use the title of Queen.
Of course, the public may have to accept that she will. But they don’t have to like it. And, rather like his former wife, many don’t feel they have to keep quiet about not liking it, either.
This story has never really gone away. Every significant or not-so-significant date, anniversary and royal-related event has been, if not overshadowed, then definitely dogged by the ghost of a woman whose influence many thought – or hoped – was laid to rest with her flower-strewn coffin on an island in her family estate.
Our world is very different today, although the monarchy in Britain has hung on and even prospered. In the person of the longest-serving monarch, who enjoys huge personal popularity, and a new generation of personable 30-somethings and cute babies, the concept and reality of it has never seemed in safer hands. But whose hands?
Fifteen years ago, in 2002, after the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and the deaths of both Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother, I wrote: “My own view would be that although events and the memory of much-admired or controversial figures inevitably fade through time, as is natural, it would be a grave mistake to think that people forget completely. Today’s monarchy has been forged as much by the influence of Diana Spencer as that of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.”
In 2017, I would hazard a guess that tomorrow’s monarchy, whether that of Charles III, William V or even George VII, will find that the same thing remains, for good or ill, just as true.