Decade Hasn't Quieted Diana Talk Britain Awash in What It All Means As Anniversary Nears

Aug 31, 06:42 AM

Current Headlines: By Sarah Lyall

Ten years have passed since Diana, Princess of Wales, died and Britain erupted in a febrile convulsion of grief and anger, but in some ways you would hardly know it.

The tabloids are still spinning breathless tales of conspiracy, cover-up and royal squabbling. "Document That Proves Diana Was Pregnant," read a recent headline in The Daily Express, nicknamed The Diana Express because of its enthusiasm for even the most tenuous news about the princess.

"Charles 'Hijacks' Diana Memorial," The Mail reported Sunday, in an article about fights over the guest list at the anniversary service, which is set for Friday. (Elton John and Prime Minister Gordon Brown: in. Paul Burrell, Diana's butler, who is now peddling products like tea sets and "Royal Butler" wine: out).

The royal family is still fretting and bickering, seemingly incapable of getting it right. After being attacked for deciding to attend Diana's service, Prince Charles's second wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, abruptly announced last weekend that she would stay away after all so as not to "divert attention from the purpose of the occasion."

("Who could blame Camilla for being worried sick at the prospect of being captured by TV cameras as she knelt in the Guards' Chapel to pay tribute to the young woman, untimely ripped from us, who long ago nicknamed her The Rottweiler?" Allison Pearson wrote in The Daily Mail.)

And people are still arguing, as they did in that odd, volatile time a decade ago, over Diana's significance, in life and in death.

Was she a naive innocent or a sophisticated schemer? Was Diana an extraordinary woman whose "lifetime of service touched the lives of millions," as Brown wrote over the weekend, or a "devious moron" desperate for attention, as the feminist author Germaine Greer recently described her?

Also, did her talent for drawing people into the dysfunctional minutiae of her life, and the un-British paroxysms of anguish that followed her death, change the psyche of a nation known for making repression a virtue?

And, it has been 10 years. Why do we even care?

Patrick Jephson, Diana's private secretary from 1990 to 1996, said that she still had the ability to capture and to polarize a crowd.

"Either you are a Diana fan or a Diana skeptic," he said in an interview. "People tend to see her in these rather monochrome shades, whereas in fact, of course, she was a complex figure. People tend to overlook that she was a serious person in a serious role doing a serious job in her life."

Diana's death, in a car accident in a Parisian tunnel, is hardly the raw wound it was 10 years ago. People are not walking through London openly sobbing, depositing vast seas of flowers at the royal palaces or calling for Queen Elizabeth to show her humanity by, say, collapsing with grief in public. Life is going on much the way it did before.

But as the country prepares to mark the anniversary of the princess' death, on Aug. 31, the woman the columnist Suzanne Moore calls "the ghost at every royal occasion" is hard to miss.

The royal memorial service is not open to the public, but shoppers at Harrods department store have been invited to remain silent for two minutes on Friday with Mohamed al-Fayed, the owner, whose son, Emad Mohamed, known as Dodi, died with Diana. Fayed has not been invited to the official service, probably because he has repeatedly declared the crash to be an establishment plot orchestrated by the British security services, led by Prince Philip, the queen's husband.

Newspapers and magazines are awash in commemorative sections and analyses of What It All Means. On television, a stream of films starring Diana look-alikes has revisited various well-trod aspects of Diana's life. An audio-visual exhibit at Kensington Palace, where she lived, is devoted to "Diana: A Princess Remembered."

Crowds are still taking in the sunshine (when there is any) and having picnics beside the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park. There, Diana is a topic, much like the weather, about which everyone is sure to have an opinion.

Jane Bowyer, 51, said there the other day that she was still angry that Camilla, or "the Duchess of Whatever She Calls Herself," had moved from pilloried royal mistress to acceptable public figure.

On the other hand, Peter Hall, 45, said, "Camilla glams up really well."

But what about Diana? Did she transform the British psyche?

Sarah Adlington, 37, said Diana might well have changed the monarchy for the better, because "she brought them down to earth."

Her husband, Peter, 35, said that while many nonroyal Britons were undoubtedly more openly emotional than they used to be, the new candor did not extend to him. "I'm a Yorkshireman," he said. "They don't come any less emotional than that."

Sitting near the fountain with her husband and another couple, Jan Gaskell, who said she was in her late 50s, complained that "a lot of people are making a lot of money out of Diana."

She added, "My personal opinion is that she should be left in peace."

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

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