Writers Recall Princess Di's Shocking Death

Prince Charles, William (right) and Harry view floral tributes to the Princess of Wales at Kensington Palace after her death in 1997.

Photo Credit: Rebecca Naden/PA

August 31, just a few days from now, will mark the 20-year anniversary when Diana, Princess of Wales, was tragically killed in a car crash.

She was 36.

Diana’s romantic companion, Dodi Fayed, the son of Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, along with Henri Paul, also died in the crash when their Mercedes S-280 vehicle crashed into a pillar after racing through the Pont de l'Alma tunnel that lies next to the River Seine in Paris on August 31, 1997.

Mr. Paul, her driver, was trying to escape a mad flock of paparazzi chasing them in cars after they left the Ritz Hotel (owned by the Al-Fayed family) where they were dining that evening.

Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, though badly injured, was the only survivor of the crash.

The princess reportedly went into cardiac arrest at about 2:10 a.m. and was pronounced dead at 4 a.m. at Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. 

Diana’s sons, Prince William, then 15, and Prince Harry, then 12, were staying at Balmoral (in Scotland) with the Queen and other members of the royal family when the tragic accident took place.

Soon after her death, British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed the nation from outside St Mary Magdalene Church in Trimdon, saying, "She [Diana] was the people’s princess and that’s how she will stay, how she will remain in our hearts and in our memories forever."

Approximately, three million people swarmed the streets of London for her funeral at Westminster Abbey on September 6, 1997. The service was attended by 2,000 people, 32.10 million people watched the service in the UK and an estimated 2.5 billion people watched it worldwide.

Her brother, Charles Spencer (9^th Earl Spencer), delivered a tender, wistful eulogy, describing Diana as "a very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic."

After the ceremony, Diana was laid to rest at the Spencer family home, at the Althorp Estate in northern England.

The final verdict of the inquest, 11 years later (2008), found that at the time of the deadly crash, Mr. Paul, the driver, was guilty of “gross negligence,’’ having been drunk and on anti-depressants when he lost control of the Mercedes.

Paparazzi photographers, the jury decided, who pursued Diana, Princess of Wales across Paris were also guilty for her "unlawful killing."

The investigation additionally noted that Princess Diana and Dodi may survived if they had worn seat belts.

To gain a better appreciation of just how frantic the world was on that fatal night, I asked some writers and journalists where they were and how they responded to the shocking news that the young princess was killed.

• "On the evening of Saturday August 30, I returned to my home in Washington, D.C. after taking my daughter to Princeton University, where she was beginning her freshman year. I was feeling somewhat melancholy, so I went to bed early and didn't tune in the TV or listen to the radio. When I awoke early on the 31st, I turned on my computer and saw the headline that Diana, Princess of Wales had died. I initially thought it was a hoax, but learned the truth when I flipped on the TV, which I watched obsessively like everybody else.

On Tuesday, the president of Times Books at Random House called to ask if I would consider writing a biography of Diana. I said I didn't know, but that all hell was breaking loose on the streets of London and I needed to get there as soon as possible. I arrived on Friday at the gate of Kensington Palace about a half hour after Princes Charles, William, and Harry returned from Scotland. I spoke to many inconsolable people wandering through the city's parks, as well as my English friends who knew Charles and Diana. Everyone was equally stunned about the car crash and bewildered by the public outpouring of emotion.

A friend at NBC got me into the network's headquarters in a bank building across the street from Westminster Abbey, where I observed the funeral from a window ledge on the third floor. It was a cloudless and warm day, and a surreal sight: the parks filled with people as far as the eye could see, and huge crowds lining Whitehall. Since all traffic had been diverted from the center of London, and no airplanes were overhead, there was an almost eerie silence.

As the funeral cortège turned into Parliament Square, the first sound was the clip clop of the six horses pulling the coffin borne on a gun carriage. Then the line of five men and boys hove into view--Charles, William, and Harry, the Earl Spencer, and the Duke of Edinburgh--followed by some 500 representatives of Diana's charities. It was unspeakably sad and riveting: an indelible moment.”

--Sally Bedell Smith, author of "Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life," "Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch," and "Diana in Search of Herself: Portrait of a Troubled Princess"

• "I was in Washington DC, feeling bemused at the extraordinary attention being given to this sad death of an unhappily-married young woman and the outlandish reaction it provoked. It made me think that after two decades as a foreign correspondent I no longer understood my own country, and that I had greatly under-estimated the emotional power of the tabloid media."

--Martin Walker, who spent 25 years as a journalist with Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, including tours of duty as bureau chief in Moscow and the US, as European Editor and Assistant Editor. Mr. Walker, author of the popular Bruno detective series set in the Périgord region of France is a member of A.T. Kearney's Global Business Policy Council.

• "I was then the London bureau chief of The New York Times, and specifically I was in bed in my London flat and was awoken by the Foreign Desk of The New York Times around 2 a.m. or so to be told that there had been a crash in Paris involving the Princess and that I should start writing the obituary in case she were to die. We ended up printing a 750- word obit in the Aug. 31 paper accompanying the coverage from Paris, and I was to expand it to 2300 words for the paper of Sept. 1 (“Diana: Shy Girl Who Became ‘Queen of People’s Hearts’ “ ) and to write a London-datelined story for the Sept. 1 paper headlined “Charles Accompanies Diana Back Home to a Grieving Britain” . In the ten days following I wrote thousands and thousands of words about the aftermath in Britain, about what the event told us about what had become of Britain and its feelings about the royal family, and of course the funeral and burial.”

--Warren Hoge, who worked for more than three decades at The New York Times in a variety of capacities, including London Bureau Chief, is now Senior Adviser for External Relations at the International Peace Institute.

• "I was in London, with a six-month old baby! And we kind of mobilized as a bureau, dividing up all the coverage. Warren Hoge, the bureau chief, did the main news stories for the next bit of time and I did a lot of the features and state of the nation stories. And of course a big part of the story was how the media responded in the UK, and the symbiotic relationship between the public and the press just then - each fueling the other. "

--Sarah Lyall, New York Times writer at large, based in New York. Lyall was London correspondent for the Times for 18 years.

• "I was on holiday on a Hebridean Island, my then wife (who was a newspaper editor) had to bugger off back to London, leaving me with the kids, and I remember not being in the least surprised or shocked, as I believe Diana had a self-destructive streak as well as a destructive streak. I sided with Prince Charles throughout."

--Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford, and the Center for European Studies, Harvard, has written 14 books, including, "Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World"

• "Death was on my mind in the summer of 1997 as my beloved father had died earlier in the year and, on the Sunday morning when Diana’s death was announced, I was at a car boot sale trying to clear out some of the accumulated objects which no one in the family wanted to see again.

But I was also excited as my biography of Mother Teresa, who had become a controversial figure by then, was due for publication at the end of the week. After four years work I was enjoying the blissful hiatus when the book is not only written but printed and before any reviewers have had a chance to criticize. In addition, The Times had bought three days of serialization, which my agent assured me would be a fantastic boost.

The links between Diana and Mother Teresa, forged over several years, became much stronger in death. Mother Teresa’s comments that she had been very close to Diana, made immediately after her death, were given good play. Apparently, Diana had hoped to send Prince William to volunteer at a Missionaries of Charity home in Calcutta. Other reports claimed that Diana was thinking of converting to Catholicism and was buried with a rosary that Mother Teresa had given her. Pictures of the tall and elegant Princess in a white suit greeting the diminutive nun were splashed all over the papers - again.

It was a crazy week which showed me how fickle newspapers can be in their loyalties. But the editors were mourning not only Diana herself but the gift she had given them of selling thousands more copies if a picture of her graced their front pages.''

--Anne Sebba is an award-winning British biographer, writer, lecturer, journalist, and author of a number of books, including “Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother,” and “Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died under the Nazi Occupation.”

***

BREAKING NEWS! First BBC News Flash  

•  

  AP Urgent Bulletin announcing Diana had been seriously injured in a car crash moved at 20:11:06 (8:11 p.m. and six seconds) EST on Saturday, Aug. 30, 1997.

BC-France-Diana-Crash

URGENT

Princess of Wales injured in car crash: report

¶   PARIS (AP) _ Diana, Princess of Wales, was seriously injured in a car crash in Paris early Sunday, and one person was killed in the accident, French radio reported.

¶   The crash occurred in a tunnel along the Seine river at the Pont de l'Alma bridge, while paparazzi on motorcycles were following along her car, France Info radio.

¶   (cb)

• This AP News Alert moved at 23:44:06 p.m. (11:44 p.m. and six seconds) EST on Sat. Aug. 30, 1997

^BC-APNewsAlert<

¶   Press Association says Princess Diana has died, according to unnamed British sources

• New York Times: Diana, Princess of Wales, 36, Dies in a crash in Paris

***

Newspapers Reflect on Princess Diana’s Life and Legacy

• “There, in a dark, concrete underpass, lie the tangled remains of a Mercedes limousine. That so glamorous a life should be ended in such a mundane place is the greatest of ironies. Yet it was here, beneath the streets of Paris, that a light to millions around the world was extinguished. Diana, Princess of Wales, was just 36.”

--Jack Gee and John Coles, The Express, September 1, 1997

• "The death of Princess Diana, at age 36 in a Paris car crash early today, brought a sudden, brutal end to a life torn with contradictions...The death of Diana, arguably the most photographed woman in the world, casts still another pall on the future of a British crown that one day may grace the head of her eldest son, Prince William, or even his younger brother, Prince Harry.''

--Eric Malnic and Carla Hall, Los Angeles Times, August 31, 1997

• "In life, Princess Diana gave up the chance to be a queen. In death, she may help prop up the wobbly throne of the dysfunctional British royals."

-Richard Johnson, New York Post, September 1, 1997.

• "Later, in the middle of a soft evening, families walked in silence, with the only sound that of a baby's cry, onto the parched unlit lawns in front of Kensington Palace, where Di and her prince lived when they took their first steps in what was supposed to be a fairy tale...I sat on a bench in the darkness and a woman next to me said, softly, "We shouldn't be here. None of us should be here. She should be here."

--Jimmy Breslin, Newsday, September 2, 1997

• "In the wake of Princess Diana's death, a nation famous for its stiff upper lip has gone weepy.  The celebrated English reserve, symbolized this week by the silent and withdrawn royal family, has been washed away by a tidal wave of tears and flowers from the tens of thousands of ordinary people mourning the loss of their princess."

--Dan Balz, Washington Post, September 4, 1997

• "To be deified, then devoured: That is the fate awaiting the famous in an era that has substituted celebrities for heroes, and that is the fate met by a young kindergarten teacher who would become known to the world as Princess Diana...Diana seemed the exception to one iron rule of celebrity, which is that the public will applaud your fall from the pedestal as lustily as they cheered your climb. Through her divorce from Prince Charles and her battles with Britain's royal family, the public remained solidly on her side. "

--Don Aucoin, Boston Globe, September 1, 1997

• "It is unbearably sad to imagine Diana, bloody and mangled and gesticulating, being descended upon in a tunnel by omnivorous paparazzi. But it is also sad to see the image of Diana, sparkling and shy and smiling being served up in death through as many news cycles as the omnivorous market will bear...God rest her soul, because the journalists won't. Big-name journalists leaped on the tragedy, immortalizing their own five minutes, or five hours, with the fallen goddess."

--Maureen Dowd, New York Times, September 3, 1997

• "She [Princess Diana] was neither the complete saint painted by her hagiographers, nor the scheming witch portrayed by her stuffier enemies. But she had elements of both in her nature, and we all responded to both...Yet by her peculiar genius for affecting multitudes, she demonstrated, in the best moments of her life, what a royal family could be. And those moments were very good indeed."

--A.N. Wilson, The Evening Standard, September 1, 1997

• "She had been, I think, the most remarkable member of the Royal Family since Queen Victoria. She was sad, she needed to be helped, she was entertaining, she was loveable; but she was certainly not an ineffective figure in our national history. At the time of her death, she was still maturing, and gaining in her understanding of the world; that we have lost for good, and it is a great deal."

--William Rees-Mogg, The Times (London, England) September 1, 1997

• "Diana will be deified in death, the fairy-tale princess always denied the happy ending of the storybooks. Whatever her faults and those will now be overlooked, no-one would deny that her short life was suffused with as much sadness as glamour. It matters not whether, in her marriage to the heir to the throne, she was victim or, in part at least, villain. She was in Tony Blair's words, the people's princess."

--Philip Stephens, The Financial Times, September 1, 1997

• "It would be heartwarming to believe that her death will change things. But I suspect the best we can hope for is that she can now be remembered, in the way she longed to be, as the princess who became queen of all our hearts in a fairy story which has no ending."

--Christopher Hudson, The Evening Standard, September 1, 1997

• "She was our greatest royal personality since Queen Victoria. She could have been the most valuable. Properly helped and guided, Diana's extraordinary combination of gifts could have transformed the relationship between royalty and the public, deepening and strengthening it and making it almost invulnerable...Her death, far from being meaningless, was full of meaning even symbolic. She was a martyr to a combination of evils: the coldness of royalty, the prurience of the public in demanding even the most intimate secrets of her heart, and the cruelty of the media in supplying them."

--Paul Johnson, Daily Mail, September 1, 1997

• "As Diana metamorphosed from innocent nursery nurse to revered princess and mother, to wronged, vengeful woman and, more recently, to confident campaigner, the one constant was her determination to be seen as Queen of the people hearts, her image as both a victim and as a benefactor of love."

--Jojo Moyes, The Independent, September 1, 1997

• "The monarchy itself was too snooty, too dim, too stiff and unattractive to survive the scrutiny in the satellite age. What saved it as a source of interest and discourse was Diana who-in life-became a combination film star and faith healer, the magic mix of flesh and spirit."

--David Aaronovitch, The Independent

***

Biographical Sketch of Diana, Princess of Wales

• Born: Diana Frances Spencer, July 1, 1961 in Park House, Sandringham, Norfolk.
• Her Spencer forbearers had been sheep farmers in Warwickshire, who settled in Althrop, Northamptonshire in 1506.
• The Princess's father had been an officer of the British royal household to King George VI and to the present Queen.
• Both her grandmothers, the Countess Spencer, and Ruth Lady Fermoy, were close members of the court of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, including four Spencer great-aunts.
• Diana's paternal ancestors were representative of the Whig oligarchy of the 18th century.
• Diana also descended through several lines through the Stuart Kings: Charles II and James II.
• Other paternal forebears, include: the Great Duke of Marlborough, Sir Robert Walpole, the Marquess of Anglesey, and the Earl of Lucan.
• Father: Edward John Viscount Althorp, the only son of the 7th Earl Spencer.
• Mother: Frances Ruth Burke Roche, the youngest daughter of the 4th Baron Fermoy. 

• Siblings: Three: Sarah, Jane, and Charles. Her infant brother, John, died shortly after his birth one year before Diana was born.
• Diana was seven years-old when her parents divorced.
• After her father inherited the title of Earl Spencer in 1975, Diana became known as Lady Diana Spencer.
• Education: Riddlesworth Hall in Norfolk, West Heath (Boarding School) in Kent; a finishing school--the Institut Alpin Videmanette at Rougemont in Switzerland (six weeks).
• Employment: Nanny, babysitter, skivvy (household tasks), student teacher at Miss Vacani's dance studios; teacher assistant at the Young England Kindergarten in Pimlico.
• Marriage: Charles. Prince of Wales, and Diana married on July 29, 1981 at London's St Paul's Cathedral, three weeks after her 20th birthday.
• Children: Prince William Arthur Phillip Louis, born: June 21, 1982 and Prince Henry Charles Albert David, born: September 15, 1984.
• Divorced: August 28, 1996. Diana kept the title of Diana, Princess of Wales. She lost Her Royal Highness title.
• Death: August 31, 1997, after suffering fatal injuries in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris.
• Buried: Althorp Estate – a stately home in the town of Northampton, U.K., located about 70 miles from London.
• Charities Diana supported included: Barnardo's, The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, Centerpoint English National Ballet, RADA, the Royal Academy of Music, the Leprosy Mission, the National AIDS Trust, the Royal Marsden Hospital, Help the Aged, National Meningitis Trust.

Source:  The Times (London England), The Independent

NOTE: A special thank you to all those editors, news researchers, and archivists, who dug up clippings and PDF'S from 1997, including Rick Mastroianni (Newseum), Lisa Tuite (Boston Globe), Laura Harris (New York Post), Dorothy Levin (Newsday), Lauren Easton (Associated Press), Colin Crawford (Los Angeles Times), Eddy Palanzo (Washington Post), Rogan Dixon (The Independent and London Evening Standard), Rose Wild (The Times, London, England), Charles Garside (Daily Mail), and Wendy Parsons (Daily Star).

-Bill Lucey

August 29, 2017

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