TEN YEARS! It seems incomprehensible...
An icon for a generation was tragically killed a decade ago, and yet she is hardly ever off the front pages (particularly if you look at The Express every Monday!).
They say everyone can remember where they were the exact time they found out the awful news about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. And yes, I know exactly where I was... Waiting for a ferry early in the morning from Roscoff in Brittany to Plymouth, there was a hastily scribbled A4 sheet of paper pinned to the information booth - "Lady Di dead".
Not understanding the full implication of this, we went back to the car and my boyf at the time translated the local radio reports from French into English. It was true! Our Royal Princess, fashion icon and "friend" was indeed gone for ever - and ironically died in a car crash in the capital of this very country.
The journey home was peculiar. I felt the news had not yet sunk in - not just for me, but also for the hundreds of passengers on board, many of whom were obviously just learning the dreadful news from looking at the widescreen TVs in the breakfast lounge. The gradual stunned silence that fell over what would normally be a chaotic crowd of returning Brits and French back-packers was eerie.
It may be crass to say that Diana herself in any way changed our world, but her death certainly made the biggest emotional impact I have ever known upon the public in Britain and across the globe. International media had made her THE face of a generation, and in death Diana eclipsed any megastar status she could ever have dreamed about.
Many people can make accusations about a "conspiracy" surrounding her accidental death, or about "the real Diana", but in many many ways she continues to live on (in pictures) as the young, beautiful woman we want to remember - an ethereal spectre of a most unusual era in British history.
Read more on the BBC
[Oh, and if anyone has never seen The Queen with Helen Mirren, the definitive recollection of this bizarre time ten years ago - you really should!]
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