Will Dianamania never die?

Great Britain

The cult of Diana lives on, said Peter Singer in the London Guardian. Ten years after Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in Paris, “tributes and retrospectives” fill the newspapers and clog the airwaves. On the anniversary, the royal family arranged a televised memorial service, complete with many of the original mourners, including Elton John (but not Camilla Parker-Bowles, the woman who stole Di’s husband). Just as at the funeral, thousands of people stood outside Westminster Abbey, listening to the elegies and depositing flowers. Most of them were middle-aged women, many decked out in copies of fashions Diana wore. If you talk to these grievers you’ll learn that many have “a ‘Diana room’ in their homes, filled with memorabilia of the princess.”

The real die-hards, though, were at Kensington Palace, said Ros Wynne-Jones in the London Mirror. There, less than a mile from the queen’s residence, is where Diana once lived. Weepy crowds camped out all night, “clutching candles,” so as to be on hand for the moment of silence at 4:00 a.m., the moment Diana was pronounced dead. “Women wept and wailed and ranted against Camilla,” calling her “that cow” and worse. One of them, 42-year-old Julie Myers, said that she comes to Kensington every year. “When she died I couldn’t get the time off work, and I’ve never forgiven myself,” Myers said. “To be honest, I’ll probably come for the rest of my life.”

Enough already, said Fergus Shanahan in the London Sun. We didn’t hold a 10th-anniversary service to mark the anniversary of the passing of Winston Churchill, a man who gave Britain leadership and hope, not tabloid tittle-tattle. Yet when it comes to Diana, the British have “a national urge for sobfests.” We feel we must “wallow in tears and sentiment,” gushing once again over the “people’s princess” and treating her loss as a blow to the country’s very soul. Let’s hope this 10-year commemoration will be the last.

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Don’t bet on it, said Richard Littlejohn in the London Daily Mail. Diana was first and foremost a media star, and her dying at age 36 may have assured her continued hold on us. The years are never kind to those whose fame is based on looks and youth. “She was already hurtling toward her Norma Desmond years when she met her end” in that Parisian tunnel. If Diana had lived, by now “the only paparazzi pictures still to get published would be those bitching about her cellulite as she was lowered into the Med from the yacht of some aging Eurotrash playboy.” But she died young, so that’s how she’ll remain in our minds. Every year, apparently, we will be transported into this “parallel universe of vicarious grief, emotional incontinence, and dangerous madness.”

London Times