Diana knew so much about rejection — and that we all need a hug

YESTERDAY morning, Kensington High Street was packed with people walking silently towards Kensington Palace. There was an extraordinary atmosphere, as scarcely anyone spoke.

It was as though everyone was absorbed in their own tumultuous thoughts and private sense of loss.

There were family groups pushing babies in prams. There were men and women on their own as a single, mournful church bell tolled continuously. Many people carried bunches of flowers to leave at the palace gates.

They were driven by a yearning to show their love for a vibrant young woman, who had died at the peak of her beauty.

She forged passionate feelings in us all. I have both praised and criticised her. Last week, I wrote harsh things. Now that it’s too late, I am full of regret and shame and guilt.

But I thought the rest of her life lay ahead and there would be time to redress the balance when the time was right. Now, I will never have another chance.

She could be wise and she could be foolhardy, but I never met her without being utterly bowled over by her charm.

It was an effect she had on men, women and children. She made you feel that you were the one special person in the world that she wanted to see.

She had great presence, but she was totally lacking in pomposity, grandeur or smugness.

If people cried out to her she was unstinting in her support, strength and compassion. She understood about loneliness, isolation and dark, unknown terrors because she’d experienced them at first-hand.

She had been given many gifts, but was deprived of so much that she craved. She inspired adoration, which made her humble, not arrogant.

Diana wanted to serve. She helped to give despairing people a sense of their own worth, selfesteem and dignity. She valued human beings irrespective of their status. She had the world at her feet, but she felt most fulfilled when she was being of use to the vulnerable in society.

‘It is a good and an essential part of my life,’ she said. ‘A kind of destiny. Whoever is in distress can call me. I will come running, wherever they are.’

She spent much of her time in hospitals, with Aids patients and — sometimes in the early hours of the morning — with the homeless on the streets of London.

Diana would crouch on the ground as they lay in shop doorways and imbue them with her own strength and energy.

She had a unique ability to restore hope to those the harsh outside world had rejected. She didn’t do it in any pious, sanctimonious way, but with humility and, at times, laughter.

She was an icon for men and women suffering from Aids. Wherever she was pictured holding their hands, there were jokes and even a sense of fun in the midst of the tragedy. If she had been born into a different background, with a different education, she would surely have become a doctor or missionary.

SHE spoke often of the need within us all for hugs and physical contact. It was an impassioned plea from the depths of her soul because she knew what it was to yearn desperately for a pair of loving, reassuring arms around her.

There were many years as a child and as an adult when she felt unloved. She knew a lot about rejection and sadness, but that made her empathise with savage loneliness in other people.

Prince Charles is a very different man in middle age to the stilted, inhibited bridegroom who stood by her side on July 29, 1981, in St Paul’s Cathedral.

London was en fete that day. There was much rejoicing that the Prince was marrying a joyful, laughing, young beauty, who would bring happiness and children into his life. Diana was to break the royal rules of protocol, which said you must never show your feelings or act instinctively.

Their marriage failed, but I suspect Prince Charles is freer emotionally and more tactile with their sons than he would have been without her. She wanted desperately to be needed and to be valued. Last time I met her, she said that she hoped to found hospices around the world. I have seen her stroke the face of an old woman and heal her pain in a way that was beyond the medical profession. She gave so much of her inner self that, when she returned home, she was often utterly drained.

There are faults on both sides in any sad marriage, but her early years within the Royal Family made her feel isolated and discounted. She was engaged at 19, married at 20. Overnight, she felt caged, restricted and terrified.

She desperately craved reassurance, security and total love, and a husband who would hold her tightly and tell her she had nothing to fear.

Throughout all the bitter years, she never stopped loving Prince Charles. They both changed dramatically. She felt recently that, if they could have had another chance, they would have made their marriage work. It would have mattered to her deeply that he was on the plane as her body was flown back to London. When the BBC newsreader announced the news of her death, the National Anthem was played and it was a moving tribute.

One could think only of the unspoken words ‘God save our gracious Queen’ and what might have been.

Diana married in what seemed to be the certain knowledge that one day she would be enthroned as Queen. She would have inspired an unprecedented depth of love that could have secured the stability of the Royal Family for generations to come.

Of course, she had faults and weaknesses, like us all. Sadly, too often, in the early days of her marriage she was criticised for her emotional nature, while her powerful strengths were neither appreciated nor utilised.

THROUGHOUT their childhood, she gave her sons endless loving cuddles. She gave them the freedom to show their feelings. She didn’t believe in the stiff upper lip, and I hope that no one is today telling them to be brave.

I hope they are allowed to cry until they have no tears left. ‘No one can dictate my behaviour,’ the Princess said. ‘I work by instinct.’

She adored her children and one grieves for them and for her, because she will never see them grow into maturity. She will never stand laughing on the touchline as Prince Harry plays rugger at prep school.

She will never again rush down the hall at Kensington Palace as they arrive home from school to scoop them up in her arms.

She can no longer enchant us with her beauty or change the perception of the world about vital causes. She will not have a second opportunity to make a loving marriage or have a longedfor daughter.

In her tragically brief life, she did so much for other people, but personal happiness so often eluded her. It could all have been so different.

THIS paper has been adapted from the original Daily Mail edition of Monday, September 1, 1997, but all the material is authentic.