From the <i>Independent</i> archive: How did we feel 10 years ago? Dispatches on the death of a princess

While there are those who argue that we all went mad for a week in September, that the death of a rather silly, self-obsessed women was blown out of all proportion, that her passing meant no more or less than the death of any other individual, that nothing has really changed, the event that will keep 1997 in our memories for years to come was, of course, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

No one could have predicted the reaction: the Ballardian nature of her demise, the huge display of public grief, the sense of national reassessment that was in the atmosphere, the spectacle of a Labour leader trying to drag the monarchy into the 20th century. Instead, we look on in amazement as we behaved as if we were living in another country. And we were. It was just that no one realised that this new country was ours, that it has been for some time and what felt like new territory for some was already home for many others.

Much of what was expressed was expressed in the first person. That was what was admired about Diana. She validated personal experience; she re- wrote the script to suit herself. Even though she was a star, somehow not of this world, what you heard repeated was that she was a real person, she spoke from the heart, she was authentic.

Her modernity, in contrast to the rest of the royals, embodied a cultural shift, a fresh way of doing things, that doesn't fit into neat political categories. She understood instinctively that the personal was political, for she lived a life in which she was expected to suppress her personal feeling because of public duty.

The scenes of mourning that filled our papers and screens were unlike anything we had seen before, yet of course there were dissenters, who thought it was all too much fuss about nothing. While I am prepared to accept that their feelings were perfectly genuine, they do not seem to accept that the feelings of those at Kensington Palace or in the Mall were equally genuine.

It was easier to dismiss this collective grief as hysteria, as fuelled by the media, as essentially empty. Some of this was to do with the equation of any kind of massing together of people as innately fascist. This fear of crowds was instilled during the darkest of the Thatcher years. Where some saw a floral revolution, Ian Jac k reports the phrase "floral fascism" in "Those who Felt Differently" , in Granta.

Yet in looking back at the remarks of so many intellectuals, I am struck by their triteness in comparison with the self-awareness and thoughtfulness of the "ordinary people" I spoke to at the time. One by one, from Gore Vidal downwards, these great men told us the crowds were not really grieving for Diana but for themselves, as if we didn't know that, as if grief did not always contain this element, as if it is not possible to feel a connection with someone you didn't know. No one said this when we cried for the poor bairns of Dunblane.

In contrast, members of the public told me that they were grieving for what had happened to this country in the last 18 years, that when someone dies you re-evaluate your own life, and that's what they felt we should all be doing as a nation. They told me that it was rare to witness real goodness in a public figure, that they were surprised about how they felt and, most memorably, I can still hear a Rasta guy saying: "She's like a magnet, man. Even though she's dead she's still a magnet – pulling people towards her."

Though I saw tears being shed and shed my own, people were not overwhelmed by their feelings but quietly in control of them. We had not suddenly become American or European. We had simply recognised that Britishness need not be stuck in the 19th century.

Since her death, some have railed against the new "emotional correctness", where feelings must be shown at all times. Like political correctness, it is a term used by those who prefer the repressive status quo. Diana's death meant that just for a while we saw ourselves not as we were told we were, not as we used to be, but as we are now. The event that defined the year as really one in which, in an unprecedented way, we were seeking to define ourselves.

The Independent, 26 December 1997

An icon forever frozen at the height of her beauty

By David Aaronovitch

Things will never be the same again; for her family, for the people of this country, for the press. The profound outpouring of emotion over Diana's death will continue. Tears are being shed by those who have never cared much about the Royal Family, by those who would much prefer a republic, by those who dismissed her as trivial, self-obsessed and generally silly when she was alive. The effect that this uneducated woman has had on our national psyche is only just beginning to be gauged.

Icons do not die. Diana's afterlife is only just starting. Forever frozen at the height of her beauty, Diana, like Marilyn, another troubled goddess, will not age. She will continue to glow, forever young, forever vital, in the hearts of those she touched. For the pop princess, the people's princess, the media princess, understood the power of touch, the language of intimacy, of a hug, a gesture that was always more eloquent than mere words. The most looked-at woman in the world grasped early on the impact of visual communication. She was a child of her time. The manner of her death brings with it a dark and terrible symbolism. She died because of the world's appetite to carry on looking at her, to see her in her most intimate moments whether she wanted it or not.

This tragedy, like something out of a J G Ballard novel, is a thoroughly modern one...

The Independent, 6 September 1997

Her story is not over yet for the monarchy

By Polly Toynbee

Where does the tragedy of Diana, Princess of Wales' death leave the monarchy? Constitutional experts were quick yesterday to say that it would make no difference, that it was an irrelevance. "Of no constitutional consequence whatever," said Lord Blake, echoed by others. Technically, of course they are right. Constitutionally, she was nothing.

But Princess Diana's life as a royal changed everything for the monarchy. She made the personal political for them. The drama surrounding every twist and turn of her story, from her engagement to her divorce and her last romance, made the emotional a constitutional question. The Charles and Diana saga is the main explanation for the astonishing fall in the popularity of the monarchy. Why else did a recent Mori poll find that 55 per cent of the people now think the country would be better off or at least no worse off as a republic?

Her story is not over yet for the monarchy. Diana dead may threaten their stability and tranquillity as strongly, if not more so than the divorced Diana they could not silence... Diana the Difficult was a problem the palace could tackle but Saint Diana is something the palace can never contend with. There can be no more palace briefings and malevolent whisperings against her now.

If her palace enemies hoped that as she got older she would have presented the world with an increasingly absurd and pathetic spectacle in her search for self-knowledge and love, both personal and public, then their hopes have been dashed. She will stay forever young and forever genuinely tragic. And they, her abusers and traducers, will go down in the Cult of Goddess Diana as the villains. Instead, her star will shine ever more brightly in the beyond... Her faults, absurdities, confusions will all be forgotten in the overwhelmingly horrible calamity of her death. At last, she will be a pitiable "queen of the people's hearts" – that much-satirised phrase gaining poignancy with every passing year.

How can Prince Charles contend with that? Far worse, what if his sons blame him?

The Independent, 1 September 1997