Most people in Britain woke up to the news. It happened in the dead of night, after all. I lived it as it happened. I was working a night shift at a Texaco petrol station in Ringwood, Hampshire. Night shifts were by and large very quiet affairs. Once the locals had been thrown out of the pubs, come in and bought their pasties, and gone home, then it would be very quiet. I worked alone. I’d see the occasional taxi driver. A lorry driver. A police car. But for the main, my chief companion would be silence on the forecourt, and the radio inside the shop.
Most nights, I’d just listen to the petrol station’s own tape system. It played the same songs over and over, but that was fine by me. But on the night the news happened, I’d plugged in my personal radio in and was tuned into BBC Radio 5 Live. Greg Rusedski was playing in the 1997 US Open and I wanted to listen to the match. He won on the night, and went on to get to the final, where he lost his one and only Grand Slam final appearance.
And at some stage, maybe during or maybe after the match, the news started to come through. There’d been an accident. But there weren’t any details. It was in Paris. Princess Diana. An accident in a tunnel in Paris. A bad accident. Drip, drip, drip came the news. The driver was dead, but Di was alive. Dodi was badly injured. Dodi was dead. Maybe Dodi was dead, maybe not.
The news continued to come as the minutes and hours passed. Drip, drip, drip. Dodi was definitely dead. Diana was alive but badly injured. Her bodyguard was alive. Drip, drip, drip between the regular programming turned into blanket coverage. Then the first report. Unofficial. Not confirmed. But it looked so likely to be true that it had to be reported. Diana had died.
Except she hadn’t died. Not till the Palace says so. No one dies until the Palace says so. The radio coverage turned into an inquest into what was keeping the Palace from confirming what everyone knew. I put some more stock on shelves, swept and mopped the floor and generally tidied up whilst waiting for the Palace to crack on and stick a note on the front gate.
It didn’t take too much longer. The radio cut to a somber presenter who confirmed she was dead. We could now be sure she was dead, because the Palace were saying so. The national anthem was played. And then the talking heads returned to the airwaves to gossip about Di and her death.
A lady came into the store and caught the end of a bit of chatter on the radio. She was the first customer since the death had been announced. She asked what had happened, so I told her. She gasped, her eyes welled up and she craned to listen to the radio. Then she left, crying. Actually crying. She hadn’t even been caught up in general hysteria. It was completely genuine and utterly horrifying. I could see where this was going to go. I turned the radio down so that only I could here it.
I have two motives for recounting this story. That night was 24 years ago today, and anniversaries are generally when we stop to tell a story. The second motive? This weekend our Historic House cards took us to Althorp House, the place she called home for a period of her childhood. She is now buried there, on an island in the middle of a small lake. You can’t see her grave, although a monument poked out through the undergrowth. There’s a small memorial on the edge of the lake with a bench for the peasantry to sit and to leave floral offerings.
Althorp House is rather drab, if truth be told. Click here for a few photos.
The Mexile 
One of my favorite lines in “Gosford Park” is when Lord Stockbridge turns to his wife, who is wailing over the death of Sir William McCordle, and says: “Oh, do stop sniveling. Anyone would think you were Italian.” I suppose I like the line because it so pithily (as only Julian Fellowes can) sums up what most Americans believe is the English aversion to emotion.
Well, all of us were soon to learn how wrong we were about the English personality when Princess Diana died 24 years ago. A nation that had stiffened its upper lip in defiance of Hitler’s blitz was reduced to a nation of trembling lips when a defrocked princess died in a terrible car accident. They were reduced to mass hysteria. As you point out, quite correctly, the feelings appeared to be absolutely genuine. And that was all the more jarring. It was as if all of the English overnight had been replaced with Sicilian professional mourners.
I had two American friends who were so disturbed by her death that they went into therapy. One of the residents of our Salvation Army shelter attempted to hang himself.
I never have quite understood it. While I watched that actor’s workshop conducted by Helen Mirren in “The Queen,” I constantly found myself on the side of the generation who did not quite understand what was going on. And it was not that I had pledged my troth to Jug-Eared Chuck.
I now think this was a glimpse of how the national fabric was coming apart. The conspiracy theories. Embodying a distant celebrity you have never even met with close personal relationships. The sense that none of life made sense any more. I would like to think it was nothing more than another version of the Evita Syndrome. But it has taken on a far darker personality in the guise of Antibrexit-Brexit, Trump-Biden, AMLO-Sane People, maskers-antivaxers.
I now have a better sense of what Mercutio meant with “a plague on both your houses.”
It is always sad when someone dies. But it will even be more sad if my read of her death has even a modicum of truth to it. The road to The People’s Princess may be the cul-de-sac for liberal democracy.
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It was all just so very unseemly. I blame the wailing and fainting on the gossip magazines, which spent 20 years priming their readership for just this moment – a collective nervous breakdown. It’s not what happened at Churchill’s big goodbye*. Probably. Was this the first sign of the big societal split? I’m still pointing the finger at the invention of the internet. But be assured, I maintained the proper levels of tear-free decorum throughout the whole sorry saga.
PS. It’s not entirely fair to suggest that the infamous British stiff upper lip must always be observed. Obviously, had Di been an adorable fluffy dog, or had a cup of tea been spilled, then the emotional outpouring would have been perfectly justified.
** as you know, all things of consequence should be held up against the glories of Churchill and the 2nd World War. Yesterday, our National-Fabric-Splitter-In-Chief Nigel Farage spent half his new TV show berating Biden for the amount of equipment that got left behind in Afghanistan on the basis that the British Army left Jerry not a single sausage after the Dunkirk evacuation. Everything was either brought back or destroyed.
This, of course, is utter nonsense. The British Army left behind thousands of pieces of artillery, ammunition, trucks and hundreds of thousands of litres of precious fuel, all of which was either turned on the Russians or ourselves. And then there’s the trifling matter of the 40,000 British troops who were left behind…
Farage, and Trump, have poisoned the well. Otherwise smart people have had their internal lights dimmed. I’m not quite sure there’s an easy path back to reality for most of them or for society as a whole. But I’ll say this – modern politics and all the conspiratorial baggage that comes with it makes a good case for a happy go lucky monarchy. Sure, you can’t vote them out. But if they get too much, there are more Parisian tunnels out there waiting…nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
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The lady was never much on my radar, a royal personality, that was about it. I remember thinking, when the personalities were revealed who were present at her death, that who you hang out with matters. In the years that have passed, the cock up with the current Queen, the press painting the old women as callow-that was a little interesting ; because I suspect it false. Reading accounts from her boys’ memories of her passing affected me more than when she died. The silver spoon people hurt the same as we commoners.
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I’m not a royalist. Not a republican. I am a status quoist. Unless something really needs to be changed, it’s generally best to leave it alone.
We’re assured that there are six degrees of separation between us all. Mostly, they are a mystery. But I know mine to Di. I used to work in a convenience store in East Horsely, opposite the UKs largest Ferrari dealership. I once spoke to a guy there who washed cars. He’d spoken to the manager, who knew the owner, who sold the dealership to Mohammed al Fayed for his son, Dodi…
Ferrari immediately cancelled the franchise. The al Fayed’s we’re and are universally hated by everyone. And always have been.
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I m Canadian so Diana was “my princess” too. I lived in Mexico but that did not diminish my interest in her. I followed all the press reports about her that began appearing as soon as Charles showed interest. I admired her and I pretended her stormy relationship with the Royal House sort-of mirrored my own struggles with the family I had married into. When she died, I got dressed in black and ceremoniously drove in my car to the British consular post in Merida. I felt like part of a funeral procession, even though my tiny part in the mourning ceremony would be the chance to sign a book of condolances. It surprised me to see so many Yucatecans paying their respects. They seemed to be as impacted by her death as I was. She was “the people’s princess” . Such a shame we did not get to see her take her place as one of England’s great queens. She certainly had that potential and a stellar opportunity was lost. RIP Princess Diana.
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I don’t think she ever visited Mexico. But she certainly had a sizeable impact on people around the world. After the big split, people in the U.K. split into three camps. Most sat in the ‘pro Di’ circle. A few sat in the ‘pro Charles’ circle. And the rest sat with me in the ‘non-plussed’ section.
But whichever camp one choose to sit it, there is no denying that she used her brand for some very worthy causes and earned her ‘People’s Princess’ moniker.
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