Twenty years ago a lady, who to many still remains close to their hearts as the Princess but who to others is regarded as someone who almost destroyed the British monarchy, was killed as a result of a sequence of bizarre events in a car crash in the Alma (= soul) tunnel in Paris. (Since our own accident last May we have a double fear of tunnels – I should add)
I was present both at the celebration of a marriage that in 1982 raised the spirits of the country but in which, at the same time, the heir apparent was hard put to define what ‘love’ was. The birth of the two princes followed. The wife had done her duty as a producer of heirs to the royal lineage and in subsequent events was separated, divorced and even stripped of her title of Princess of Wales.
By the time Diana was dead the popularity ratings of the British royal family was at an all-time-low and (although constitutional rules forbade it) the Queen was reluctantly forced to raise the flag at half-mast over her London residence.
Of course, Diana did destroy much of the perception of the house of Windsor but it was a necessary clearing out of the dusty panoply of grey men, of arthritic protocol, of buttoned up upper lips and, to put it mildly, of generations of secretive hypocrisy.
The light of Diana shines through her two sons William and Harry who, despite the inexcusable trauma of having had to walk behind their mother’s coffin, are now able to talk about their experiences with a moving devotion to their mother’s love and memory.
(I remember at the time of the funeral the sight of little William and Harry and the comments of so many of the people lining the processional route murmuring, ‘poor little boys’.)
I am not a fervent royalist although I would not like it if the UK became a republic. I make no apologies for what I wrote on this day twenty years ago. Sentimental it might be but re-reading the poems now still captures for me the extraordinary outpouring of a nation’s grief, the fields of flowers, the Hindu Arathi candles placed on the Victoria monument, the dignified sadness of walking down a traffic-free moonlit Mall, a sense that someone who had done more in changing attitudes to British emotional sangfroid than she could ever have known, had gone but, at the same, had left something that would change public perception of royalty, and even society, for ever.
THE MORNING
Outside the Palace I stood with gladness
waiting for the open landau to pass;
good will touched people with a light caress
lacking difference of culture or class.
What is left of that day now? Betamax
video still plays back the scene
innocent of the mistakes and attacks,
the wedding album of what might have been.
I woke up early on that strange morning,
switched on the radio to hear faithless news.
Just once before felt I this sudden sting,
my mind was mute for who could I accuse?
The stark, unforgiving Sunday headlines:
Diana and Lover Dead and still the sun shines.
***
THE FUNERAL
You stayed at home for you could take no more
and I found your place in nation’s mourning:
silent crowds with flowers come to adore,
in clear blue sky and a sun-filled morning,
the passing of a princess that entranced
our lives and the country’s sudden-found heart;
a beautiful, rose-cheeked woman who chanced
to lace with love every downtrodden’s part.
The gun carriage moves toward the high arch
where we had our wedding photos taken;
the dignified tread of soldiers’ slow march
as world of each mourner is forsaken.
I, too, can take no more and, cut to bone,
burst into tears as I pick up the phone.
Diana followed the great line of female regal humanisers whose names include Mary, wife of William of Orange and Princess Alexandra, (similarly traduced by her husband king Edward VII). All of them broke through the heartlessness of a stilted monarchy to become truly the people’s princesses – and who has the cold-bloodedness to deny the fatal fantasy of these icons of British history and memory?
Vittorio Sgarbi, Italy’s maverick art critic is quite correct when in a recent interview he stated that his country, supposedly with one of the highest youth unemployment figures in Europe, has in fact over 200,000 job vacancies for them. What’s more these vacancies come with board and lodging included, free holidays, ample clothes allowance and a beautiful artistic building not just to live in but to carry out one’s work. All training is free of charge and is accomodated in wonderful ancient buildings with some of the world’s finest libraries.