Skipper

I promise this is the first and the last time my blog will feature Princess Diana; my post is more of a relieved valedictory comment. I heard about her death-yes, like most, I can remember precisely- when I woke up in the small hours on the night concerned and heard Henry Kissinger's rumbling basso profundo on the radio, talking fondly of someone in the past tense. I was shocked, of course, but not as much as by the unbelievable public reaction waiting to burst forth. Since then I have become heartily sick of Diana features, pictures, the perennial Express headlines.

I heard a little of the service, thought the music wonderful and Harry's speech surprisingly confident, unroyal and touching; I have rather thought the older brother to be the more resourceful and interesting, but I see I was wrong. Polly Toynbee writes perceptively today of the event. To those who still believe the conspiracy theory- much loved by Dodi's father and believed, it seems, still by a quarter of us- that it was the 'Royal Family wot done it', she points out that they would have been so much more able to control her alive rather than dead:

How much more easily the monarchy could have handled her were she now a jaded New York Jackie O, fading slightly at the edges, losing her cachet with a string of ever less appropriate suitors, shopping and bitching in toe-curling interviews, forever betrayed by "friends" and therapists. True or not, how easily Buckingham Palace could have made her seem that way, demolishing her with acid briefings, leaking her expense accounts with rumours of unruliness and belittling of the good she did.

Those who called for large screens outside the church for the public to watch, were confounded: only a few hardcore Dianistas turned up to pay obeisance and the Bishop of London urged, (surprisingly, without any pleading note) 'Let it end here'. Ten years is long enough to mourn anyone, let alone this damaged, manipulative uniquely luminous young woman.