We should honour her place in history

THE flowers started arriving outside Kensington Palace at 5.30 am. First was a bunch of lilies wrapped in newspaper. Then nightclubbers who had heard the news from a DJ came with red roses. Some scribbled notes – but most had no words. Diana, Princess of Wales, was dead. The outpouring of grief was cataclysmic and the reverberations have continued down the decades.

Yet Diana has too often been dismissed. Too much emphasis has been placed on her beauty, her lack of a formal education, her divorce and tragic death. She has been belittled as publicity- seeking and ‘too emotional’. There is only now an official monument being created – so far there has just been a water feature in Hyde Park – and women rarely get statues.

There has been no official commemoration. At times it feels as if the Establishment has again closed in upon itself.

Yet the changes she brought about are permanent and I believe she should be remembered as one of the most important women of the 20th Century. For although Diana’s exposure of the workings of the Palace often showed the Monarchy in a damaging light, she also helped to save it – and transform it for the better.

Just remember the Royals before Diana, a time when the women engaged with ‘safe’ causes – children and animals – and did so at a distance. The Queen and Queen Mother would stand politely at the end of a hospital patient’s bed. Princess Anne might shake hands.

But for Diana, duty lay not in following protocol, but through openly expressing compassion. She courageously spoke out about more private emotions, too – her unhappy marriage and battles with post-natal depression and bulimia. In breaking these taboos she made it more acceptable for others to do the same.

Picture a world in which Charles had not married Diana. How would we view the Monarchy today, with a revered but nonagenarian head of state and an heir who seems happier in the walled garden of Highgrove than in sympathising with his future subjects? Isolated, out of touch – it is not hard to imagine a Monarchy in trouble.

It feels as if it is only now that the Royal Family has finally got the message. Princes William and Harry have notably followed their mother, both in working for stigmatised causes and for expressing their feelings openly.

Diana was a woman whose courage and honesty not only challenged the Establishment, but helped change Britain for ever.

And in the process, she has helped to save the Monarchy from itself.