Wills and Harry: We’ll do tribute to Diana our way

PRINCES William and Harry have ruled out a concert or other major event to mark the 20th anniversary of the death of their mother, Princess Diana.

They are determined that they will lead any tributes and it will not be a ‘Royal Family’ occasion. They have not yet made up their minds whether to hold a memorial service.

The brothers want to use public interest in the anniversary to highlight their late mother’s work in areas such as fighting HIV/Aids, and how they plan to continue her legacy.

This means there will be no repeat of the fundraising concert they held at Wembley for the tenth anniversary of the tragedy.

One royal source said: ‘The princes have made clear that this will not be a “Royal Family” event. They are very much in charge of everything as her sons and everyone, including their father, agrees that this is as it should be.’

The fact there is unlikely to be a keynote event may come as a relief to Prince Charles’s household, which found itself in a difficult position ten years ago.

Initially, the Duchess of Cornwall was announced to be among senior members of the Royal Family attending a public memorial service, having married Charles two years previously. Diana once famously described Camilla as the ‘third person’ in her marriage, and after a public outcry at her inclusion, the Duchess of Cornwall withdrew from the event at the 11th hour.

While much has changed since then, the suggestion that there will be no major event to which members of the Royal Family are invited will no doubt help to avoid awkward questions.

Diana died in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997, at the age of 36, just two years older than Wil- liam is now. She would have turned 56 on July 1 next year.

Concrete plans are not being drawn up until the New Year but her sons, who both now live at her former home, Kensington Palace, have made clear there will be no large public event.

While both understand the historical significance of the anniversary, and the fact that many around the world are keen to mark the occasion, it is a much more personal landmark for them. Friends say they both still feel intense sadness that their mother has been longer out of their lives than in them, and that she has missed seeing the birth of her first grandchildren.

Harry, 32, recently spoke of the effect the tragedy had on his life. In a documentary about the HIV/Aids charity he set up in his mother’s memory, Sentebale, he admitted: ‘I never really dealt with what had happened. It was a lot of buried emotion.’

The princes want the anniversary to be a celebration of Diana’s work and a way to help the charities she was involved with, such as the youth homelessness organisation Centrepoint of which William is now patron. ‘There will be nothing on the scale of the memorial concert they held,’ the source said.

‘That was a stepping out moment for them as public figures in their own right. Now they want to help people in what they are doing rather than create demand themselves.

‘There is a whole generation now that were very young when she died and may not know about what she managed to achieve in such a short life.’

Diana’s final resting place at her family’s Althorp Estate, Northamptonshire, is also getting a major overhaul as part of a redesign overseen by her brother Earl Spencer’s third wife.

‘It was a lot of buried emotion’