Remembering Princess Diana

With August 31 marking the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, Britain has had extensive print and television tributes to the beloved Princess of Wales. Hilary Mantel wrote a piece for The Guardian in which she was far more charitable than has been her record with writings on royals. Netflix re-issued The Story of Diana, a popular series that showcased the two phases of her life, as a young woman still finding her feet in Buckingham Palace, and later as a global celebrity battling a failing marriage.

But it is the BBC’s new documentary Seven Days that truly brings out the scale of love and admiration for her, not just in Britain but around the world. The title relates to the week after her death in a Paris underpass as her car sped along to avoid the swarm of paparazzi hoping to get a glimpse of her with Dodi al-Fayed, the scion of the al-Fayed clan, whom Diana was reported to have been involved with at the time.

The film takes a chronological approach, from the moment of the accident to the day of the funeral, and in so doing, looks at the different angles, controversies, and memories associated with the Princess. As news of her death trickled in, an anti-media sentiment began to take hold among the British public, which saw Diana’s demise as a direct outcome of the bloodlust of photographers determined to capture every detail of her life.

As crowds began gathering outside Buckingham Palace, the mood quickly turned nasty towards the reporters covering the tragedy. The documentary shows snippets from news bulletins of the time when camera persons were abused and asked to leave the site. The harshest criticism was reserved for tabloids such as The Sun, which were in the business of paying freelance photographers handsomely for any coverage of Diana.

But as the days passed, the mood shifted, and so did the target. The royal family was holidaying at the Balmoral Castle in Scotland and as the numbers outside Buckingham Palace soared, questions began to be asked about the complete silence at their end. Before her death, Diana had started opening up in interviews about her inability to take to the royal lifestyle. Combined with her failed marriage to Prince Charles, this admission was interpreted by a sympathetic public as a sign of the royals’ ruthlessness towards her.

There was also the question of protocol. The Queen’s advisors urged her to make a statement and to agree to fly the flag at Buckingham Palace at half-mast. In the initial days, the Queen was reported to have been against both ideas, since there was no precedent for them. But as public anger surged, she relented, cutting short her holiday and returning to London to deliver a speech in Diana’s honour.

Tony Blair, the prime minister of the time, may have played some role in forcing the Queen’s hand. The 2006 film The Queen fictionalises the sequence of events following Diana’s death, showcasing a Blair keen to get the Queen to see how she risks the very foundations of the British monarchy by being bull-headed on the matter of respecting Diana’s memory.

Seven Days indicates the film may have been closer to the truth than is believed. Mr Blair appears often here and his testimony, more soothing now with the benefit of hindsight, nevertheless focuses on the dangers the monarchy exposed itself to had it not acceded to the public mood.

While Seven Days offers the viewer a look into the backroom goings-on that accompanied Diana’s funeral preparations, the documentary is at its most effective in bringing out the sheer scale of feeling that marked the event. Both Princes William and Harry look back on a harrowing time when, in spite of their personal grief, they were expected to perform royal duty such as walking behind their mother’s funeral carriage. Friends and acquaintances recount their impressions of a woman whose private magnetism segued into her public persona.

Finally, Seven Days is about the people, those common men and women who lined Buckingham Palace for days, bringing flowers, cards, and their grief to a spot they zealously guarded as if they were protecting Diana from all that she could not escape in life. Men and women cried copiously, marking what some sociologists have since called a break in British attitudes to not just the monarchy but to the country’s reserved image of itself.
 

The documentary ends with Diana’s funeral, televised for millions around the world. Elton John sang and Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother, delivered a scathing speech that left no one in doubt about his feelings for the royal family. But to the thousands stationed outside Westminster Abbey, the moment brought catharsis after a week of anger and frustration. The people’s princess was now gone and the world would never be the same again, but those left behind could finally make peace with her demise and gingerly move on.

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