Diana,
10 years on: full coverage
Despite the appeals of her nearest and dearest, the world will not leave Diana
alone. At yesterday’s memorial service marking the tenth anniversary of the
death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Prince Harry and the Rt Rev Richard
Chartres, in their different ways, appealed for a line to be drawn under her
memory.
It will not, sadly, end there. Next month the full inquest into the Princess’s
death in a car crash in Paris will get under way before a jury at the High
Court, and it is likely to be a long-drawn-out affair.
Mohamed Al Fayed, who lost his son, Dodi, in the same crash but who was not
invited to the service at the Guards’ Chapel, near Buckingham Palace,
remains convinced that the couple were murdered in a plot master-minded by
the Duke of Edinburgh and carried out by British security officers.
Conspiracy theories involving the mother of a future king and Supreme Governor
of the Church of England, and her Muslim boyfriend, have a magnetic
attraction, and the inquest is likely to attract media coverage across the
world as it drags on, possibly for several months.
Both Lord Justice Scott Baker, the third coroner appointed to oversee the
inquest, and his predecessor, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, have sounded
warnings of the distress that the inquest could cause the Princes.
Yesterday’s service was an altogether brighter affair, driven along by tuneful
and popular hymns, including Be Thou My Vision, Guide Me O Thou Great
Redeemer and Holst’s I Vow to Thee My Country, all favourites of the
Princess. Sir Elton John, who memorably sang his own hit, Candle in the Wind,
at the Princess’s funeral, did not move his lips much, but fellow pop singer
Sir Cliff Richard seemed to know all the words and sang along with gusto.
Three past and present prime ministers and their wives sat together: Gordon
Brown, Tony Blair and Sir John Major all knew the Princess, and the latter
played an important if discreet role behind the scenes looking after the
interests of her sons immediately after her death.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, who had travelled overnight on the Royal
Train from their Balmoral holiday retreat – and flew back again as soon
as the service was over – were cheered by the ever-growing crowd as
they arrived. Yet the crowd, although numbering several thousand along the
pavement of Birdcage Walk, was small compared with the crowds that daily
gather nearby to watch the Changing the Guard at the height of the tourist
season.
Across the street they could see a poignant connection to the Princess’s
funeral of which most were not aware; the two Welsh Guardsmen standing
stiffly to attention on either side of the chapel entrance were among the
pallbearers who carried the Princess’s coffin into Westminster Abbey –
the only two still serving in the regiment.
Other celebrities whose lives had in some way crossed with the Princess’s were
there in profusion; Sir David Frost, Lord Attenborough, Sir Richard Branson
and Mario Testino.
And there were the missing. The Duchess of Cornwall, having finally bitten the
bullet and withdrawn from an event she never wanted to attend, spent the day
with her family at her home in Wiltshire. Mr Al Fayed was represented by his
daughter, Camilla, although he remembered the anniversary with two minutes
of silence at his flagship store, Harrods.
There was a mildly showbiz feel about the event, but recognised faces were
outnumbered by the anonymous – the quiet representatives of a whole
range of charities and other good works with which the Princess was
associated.
Earlier in his address, Dr Chartres had dwelt on the Princess’s public works,
especially with Aids and landmine victims, and recalled her shaking the hand
of a patient in Britain’s first Aids ward at the Middlesex Hospital in
London.
“Those familiar with the field have no doubt that the Princess played a
significant part in overcoming a harmful and even cruel taboo in a gesture
that was not choreographed but sprang from a deep identification with those
who were vulnerable,” he said. “She had a similar impact in the USA, and an
editorial in The New York Times in 1989 admitted ruefully that it had taken
a foreign and even royal dignitary to draw attention to a major public
health concern in the US.”
Dr Chartres quoted the late Lord Deedes, the former Editor of The Daily
Telegraph, who accompanied the Princess on several of her overseas missions
to landmine victims: “She was one who sought above all to help vulnerable
people in society and who did it so well. She was good at this because she
herself was vulnerable. She knew the feeling. She did not set out to be a
saint.”
The Rev Patrick Irwin, chaplain to the Household Cavalry, brought the service
to a close with a prayer that had been written for the occasion by Dr Rowan
Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
“God our Father, we remember before thee Diana, Princess of Wales, and offer
thee our gratitude for all the memories of her that we treasure still. Her
vulnerability, and her willingness to reach out to the excluded and
forgotten, touched us all; her generosity gave hope and joy to many. May she
rest in peace where sorrow and pain are banished.”
Princes William and Harry hope that yesterday’s service will draw a line under
commemorations of their mother, and that the public memory of her will fade
to a warm glow.
But before that, they will have to endure an inquest, and all the inevitable
unpleasantness that it will once again stir up.
"Remember her in this way"
William and I can separate life into two parts. There were those years when we
were blessed with the physical presence beside us of both our mother and
father.
And then there are the ten years since our mother’s death. When she was alive
we completely took for granted her unrivalled love of life, laughter, fun
and folly. She was our guardian, friend and protector.
She never once allowed her unfaltering love for us to go unspoken or
undemonstrated.
She will always be remembered for her amazing public work. But behind the
media glare, to us, just two loving children, she was quite simply the best
mother in the world.
We would say that wouldn’t we. But we miss her. She kissed us last thing at
night.
Her beaming smile greeted us from school. She laughed hysterically and
uncontrollably when sharing something silly she might have said or done that
day. She encouraged us when we were nervous or unsure.
She – like our father – was determined to provide us with a stable and secure
childhood.
To lose a parent so suddenly at such a young age – as others have experienced
– is indescribably shocking and sad. It was an event which changed our lives
forever, as it must have done for everyone who lost someone that night.
But what is far more important to us now, and into the future, is that we
remember our mother as she would have wished to be remembered – as she was:
fun-loving, generous, down-to-earth, entirely genuine.
We both think of her every day. We speak about her and laugh together at all
the memories.
Put simply, she made us, and so many other people, happy. May this be the way
that she is remembered.
Prince Harry
"Time to let her rest in peace"
The mystery is this – the more you go beyond yourself, the more you will
become your true self; the more you lose yourself in loving and serving
others, the more you will find yourself; the more you keep company with
those who suffer, the more you will be healed. This is the knowledge which
passes all understanding.
This is certain and has been proved experimentally in the life of all the
saints.
It’s easy to lose the real person in the image, to insist that all is
darkness or all is light. Still, ten years after her tragic death, there are
regular reports of “fury” at this or that incident, and the Princess’s
memory is used for scoring points.
Let it end here.
Let this service mark the point at which we let her rest in peace and dwell on
her memory with thanksgiving and compassion.
Let us also, echoing the words of Prince Harry, look to the future and pray,
in the words of St Paul, for all those who serve our country as members of
the Royal Family and most especially for the sons who were so precious to
her: “I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power
with all the saints to grasp what is the breadth and length and depth and
height of the love of Christ and to know this love which surpasses knowledge
that you might be filled with the fullness of God.
The Rt Rev Richard Chartres
