Diana, Princess of Wales

In August 1997, Diana Princess of Wales was the fatal victim of a highspeed car crash in a Parisian subterranean tunnel where she perished with her lover, Dodi Fayed, heir to the Harrods’ fortune. The outpouring of national grief as her funeral was beamed around the world to the accompaniment of Elton John’s Candle in the Wind was immense, and the British readily identified with her Tony Blair’s New Labour inspired sobriquet, ‘the people’s princess.’ Diana was buried on an island in a lake forming part of her brother’s Althorp estate. On July 1, 1998, the home was opened for two months to 2500 visitors a day who had paid £9.50 a head for the privilege, a considerable increase on the previous year, which had a total of just 5000 persons (Gillan, 1998). ‘Dianaville,’ as it came to be known, was said to be the English Graceland (Nicolson, 1998b). In June 1998, a special concert was arranged at Althorp as a tribute to Diana, and featured such artistes as Cliff Richard, Lesley Garrett, and Chris de Burgh.

Fans queued for 10 hours in the rain for the 15,000 tickets on offer at £40 each (Milner, 1998). Today, Althorp, seat of the Spencer family for nearly 5 centuries and 20 generations, is described as having a warm and welcoming feel of a home with an unbroken link, a ‘house with a soul.’ There is now a permanent exhibition located in six of the rooms that are dedicated to the life and work of Diana. Relics include her bridal gown, her childhood letters and school reports, and 28 designer outfits (complete with accessories and shoes) that cover the period from the 1980s to her last public engagement (Althorp House, 2003).

However, and in addition to visits to Diana’s last resting place, it is now possible to take a ‘Diana Memorial Tour.’ One organised by the London Tourist Board takes in St. Paul’s Cathedral (where she was married) and provides lunch at the Orangery in Kensington Palace. It then proceeds to St. James’s Palace, an Earls’ Court gym (where she exercised), and her Coleherne flat (an eighteenth birthday present from her parents in 1979). Afterwards, it includes a Pimlico nursery (where she worked), Vacani’s School of Dancing (where she had lessons), the Kensington Odeon Cinema, and two South Kensington shops (owned by her designer friend, Catherine Walker). Finally, the tour traces the route of the funeral cortège from Kensington Palace, via Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace, to Westminster Abbey (Leventhal, 1998).

Alternatively, pilgrims can undertake ‘The Diana Walk,’ a seven-mile trek marked by 90 plaques at a cost of $1.9 million. According to Lucy Moss (2000), it is best to start at the seventeenth-century Kensington Palace, Lady Di’s residence from the time of her marriage (1981) to her death (1997), and meander through the state apartments. The gardens are where she used to roller blade and jog incognito. South of the palace are the black and gold Crowther gates where thousands of mourners left flowers, messages, and toys (and some still do), and through which her funeral procession began on September 6, 1997. North of the palace is the $2.5 million Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Playground with a Peter Pan theme and pirate ship for children. East of Kensington Gardens is Hyde Park. Thereafter, pilgrims can wander to Green Park, the Mall, Buckingham Palace, St. James’s Park, St. James’s Palace (home to Charles after the 1992 separation), and Clarence House (home of the late Queen Mother, and the place where Diana spent her wedding eve). Whether devotees of Diana go to Althorp or follow in her footsteps, there is a deep reverence associated with her name. Indeed her death in 1997 completely eclipsed that of the far more saintly Mother Teresa of Calcutta occurring a few days later. The Tate Liverpool’s ‘Heaven: An Exhibition that will Break Your Heart’ (December 1999–February 2000) to mark the transition into the new millennium even had a statue of Diana dressed as the Virgin Mary in which she was clearly treated as a religious figure (Petre, 1999).6 Here nostalgia conveniently overlooks her serial affairs and instead treats her as all but canonised.