The enigma continues to beguile

People’s Princess lives on in the collective heart of Britons

visiting leprosy hospitals in Indonesia. Reportedly, the Queen once chastised Diana: “Why can’t you do something more pleasant?”

What was even more unpardonable was the fact that Diana flouted tradition by exposing her children to a non-royal life, sending them to regular schools and taking them around town to meet with London’s homeless.

And she did all that, as she confessed in an interview in 1995, while she suffered from Bulimia and suicidal tendencies, becoming afflicted with the latter after she discovered that her husband was seeing his ex, Camilla Parker-Bowles, behind her back. (In an interview with Martin Bashir, Diana famously explained, a touch tartly: “There were three of us in the marriage, so it was getting crowded.”)

Earthiness and charm

Now the People’s Princess, or as the French morbidly took to calling her, Princesse Maudit, was now dead and popular anger was growing. Headlines in the tabloids screamed: ‘Show us you care’, ‘Where is our queen?’ and ‘Your people are suffering, Ma’am’.

And why, pray tell, wasn’t the Union Jack outside Buckingham Palace flying at half mast?

It took the Queen five days to reverse course and return to London.

In a recent poll in Britain, for example, only 22 per cent of Britons wanted him to succeed Queen Elizabeth II, who is now 91, preferring that the Crown go directly to Prince William, who appears to have inherited his mother’s activism, earthiness and charm.

And yes, in that other poll, the one conducted in 2002 to choose the 100 Greatest Britons, Diana was judged by the respondents to be greater than William Shakespeare! That tells us something about her place in the collective heart of the British people and the durable legacy she has left them with.