Diana would tell William and Harry: Don’t look back in anger

Prince William gives a heart-rending account of the agony of walking behind his mother’s coffin without crying, in an interview marking the 20th anniversary of her death.

it was ‘one of the hardest things i have ever done’ he says, adding that he refused to allow himself to dissolve into floods of tears in front of the thousands of people lining her funeral procession.

More than 32 million people around the world watched on TV with their hearts in their mouths as William and Harry, so young and so brave, tried to mask their grief.

Diana lived for her boys and yet here they were, facing the appalling reality of carrying on without her.

even today, William says he feels ‘very sad and angry that we were not old enough to be able to do more to protect her’.

He adds: ‘She was lonely, she was isolated, things within her own life got very difficult. i hold a lot of people to account that they did not do what they should have done, out of human decency.’

Anger, bitterness, regret — these are the emotions every child feels when they lose a parent. i know, i saw it in my brother Michael’s young children when he died of lung cancer after a short illness. Seared in my memory is the moment i held his sobbing son just hours after Michael’s death. ‘Why didn’t Dad tell me he was dying?’ asked the little boy, around the same age Harry was when Diana died. ‘i could have got a job and saved up to buy him a new lung.’

i understand William’s enduring sense of loss and, yes, his anger. But resentment and bitterness are surely the last things Diana would have wanted. She raised them with joy and laughter. These two fine young men are her legacy.

As such, i feel they should do their utmost to make this anniversary a celebration of her genuine greatness. Whether she was involved in pioneering work with Aids victims, the homeless, lepers or landmines, Diana was fearless.

While understanding the pain her boys still suffer, i just hope they move the spotlight away from the manner of her death and the grievances surrounding it, and instead rejoice in the life of their remarkable mother.

Diana would not want them to be maudlin or look back in anger.

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