LA
Times article 9/1/97
LONDON--Princess Diana, perhaps the world's
best-loved woman, came home to Britain on Sunday in a casket from a lovers' holiday,
welcomed by a nation grieving the loss of its "people's princess."
From across Britain, across France where she died and across the world came tears and
tributes Sunday for the tall, willowy blond who touched the hearts of millions but never
found lasting happiness herself.
With the pain came anger at the international press corps, particularly the freelance
photographers who hounded Diana and were pursuing her car when it crashed in Paris early
Sunday morning, killing the princess; her companion, Harrods heir Dodi Fayed; and their
driver. A British bodyguard survived with serious injuries.
"Bastards!" a middle-aged mourner screamed at photographers outside Buckingham
Palace on Sunday morning. But commentators sensed guilt too, as people wondered if a
nation's obsession with Diana also had contributed to her untimely death at age 36.
"I always believed the press would kill her in the end. But not even I could imagine
that they would take such a direct hand in her death as seems to be the case,"
Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, said in a statement he read to reporters in South
Africa, where he lives.
French police were questioning seven photographers who were chasing the car carrying Diana
and Fayed, scion of Egyptian billionaire Mohammed Fayed, when it crashed in a tunnel near
the River Seine in Paris.
Amid the tumult, the princess' body was returned in eerie silence to a Royal Air Force
base outside London. Not a public word was spoken as an honor guard unloaded the casket
draped in the red-and-gold royal standard and slowly marched it to a waiting hearse in the
late afternoon sunshine.
Prince Charles, Diana's former husband and Britain's heir to the throne, stood at
attention alongside Prime Minister Tony Blair as mute symbols of a country grappling to
accept Diana's passing.
Earlier, Charles had flown to Paris to collect the body. Charles, accompanied by Diana's
two sisters, went to the hospital with French President Jacques Chirac to thank doctors
there for their efforts in trying to save the princess.
In Scotland, locals and tourists silently lined narrow lanes outside Balmoral Castle,
where Queen Elizabeth II consoled her grandsons, Prince William and Prince Harry. Diana
was to have returned to London on Sunday to be with her sons during the last few days of
their summer vacation.
Instead, the boys attended services at a small country church with their father, along
with the black-clad queen and her husband, Prince Philip.
Officials at Buckingham Palace conferred with government ministers Sunday to arrange the
princess' funeral later this week. Details will be announced today, the palace said. To be
answered is whether Diana, not technically a member of the royal family since her divorce,
should nevertheless receive a state funeral. It was a decision that rested with the royal
family Sunday night.
Fayed was buried in the southern English town of Woking on Sunday evening, police said. A
police spokesman said: "The service is being conducted now at a cemetery in Woking.
The family have insisted that it is private, and we are respecting their wishes."
Dazed Mourners Outside Palaces
Outside Buckingham Palace, thousands milled in shock, some with flowers picked from
neighboring parks. Long lines of mourners, many seeming dazed, filed past Diana's home,
Kensington Palace, trailing tears, flowers and anguish.
"Diana, you are the queen of our hearts," read one card, echoing the princess
herself, who once said that was her greatest ambition.
On Sunday, traditional British reserve cracked. Comfort-seeking strangers embraced in
Diana's honor. Buckingham Palace opened a condolence page on its Web site:
http://www.royal.gov.uk
No corner of the kingdom was untouched, from the heart of England to the hills of Wales
and the highlands of Scotland. Flags flew at half-staff. The BBC scrapped its scheduled
programming, offering hymns and news in its stead.
A hastily arranged service at St. Paul's Cathedral, where Charles and Diana married in
1981, drew 2,000 mourners from all faiths. At Harrods, London's famous department store,
the company's green-and-gold flag, usually flanked by the flags of world nations, waved
alone at half-staff in a gentle breeze on a sad and bewildering Sunday for Britain.
"I feel like everyone else in this country today. I am utterly devastated," said
Blair, the prime minister, fighting back tears. "She was the people's princess, and
that is how she will remain in our hearts and our memories forever."
'We Could Not Revive Her'
Diana reportedly never regained consciousness after the crash, which came as she and Fayed
were apparently en route to one of the Fayed family's apartments after dining at the Hotel
Ritz, which is owned by the family.
Despite extensive surgery, "we could not revive her," said Dr. Bruno Riou,
anesthesiologist at La Pitie-Salpetriere hospital.
He said Diana had quickly gone into cardiac arrest and that doctors had tried to save her
for at least two hours with internal and external cardiac massage.
Buckingham Palace said Charles informed William and Harry of their mother's death before
dawn Sunday at Balmoral, where the royal family traditionally spends the summer holidays.
The queen and Charles were "deeply shocked and distressed by this terrible
news," a Buckingham Palace statement said.
The duchess of York, the former Sarah Ferguson and Diana's former sister-in-law, said
Sunday she had lost someone she has always considered a sister and a best friend.
"There are no words strong enough to describe the pain in her heart," a
statement said.
Diana had repeatedly railed against the photographers who dogged her steps, telling the
French newspaper Le Monde in an interview printed last week that she would have left
Britain to escape them except for her sons.
Declining to Buy Photos of Crash
The sensationalist British tabloid News of the World, a steady market for the paparazzi,
said it had declined to buy pictures of the crash.
"Last night, a French photographer tried to sell pictures of Diana lying in the car
for 200,000 pounds [about $325,000]. The News of the World refused," the paper
averred.
Diana had been circumspect about any relations with men since her divorce from Charles
last year but apparently believed that the affection that had developed between her and
Fayed over the summer was too good to hide.
The couple vacationed together on yachts and at well-exposed Mediterranean resorts three
times in the past five weeks, triggering speculation that they would announce their
engagement.
Freelance photographers and their reporter cousins never let up on the pair. "A Story
of Love," trumpeted the magazine of the Sunday Mirror being distributed around
Britain even as the princess lay dying.
"After her cheerless marriage, what better than a hotblooded Mediterranean man?"
the newspaper asked in the article accompanying grainy long-distance shots of Diana and
Fayed embracing. News of her death did not reach Britain until near dawn on Sunday, but
most British newspapers published late editions. "Diana Is Dead," said the
Sunday Mail in its black-bordered front page.
As calls sounded Sunday for stronger privacy laws in Britain, Diana's brother said what
many people were thinking.
"It would appear that every proprietor and editor of every publication that has paid
for intrusive and exploitative photographs of her, encouraging greedy and ruthless
individuals to risk everything in pursuit of Diana's image, has blood on their
hands," Spencer said from Cape Town, South Africa, where he lives partly to avoid the
probing lenses of paparazzi.
In a television interview in 1995, Diana complained that "I never know where a lens
is going to be. On a normal day I'll be followed by four cars. On a normal day I'll come
back to my car and find six freelance photographers jumping around me."
'Performance' for the Photographers
As much as she hated the intrusion, Diana also was expert at using the press and paparazzi
to her own advantage, the Daily Mirror newspaper's veteran royal watcher, James Whitaker,
told the BBC. Again and again in recent weeks, Diana allowed herself to be photographed at
length in the south of France with Fayed.
"She walked on the beach, she stood talking to people, she got on a jet ski, she got
on a motorboat. Why shouldn't she do this? I'm not saying she shouldn't. But that was
definitely a virtuoso performance for us to get photographs and a story," Whitaker
said.
The result of one unannounced photo opportunity, as Diana must have known, was front-page
coverage in the next day's newspapers--not coincidentally the same day Charles threw a
birthday party for his mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Still, it was in her self-assigned official roles as spokeswoman and lobbyist for the
sick, the dying and the poverty-stricken that Diana was most familiar and most at home.
"She was a wonderful and warm human being, although her own life was often touched by
tragedy. She touched the lives of so many others in Britain and throughout the world with
joy and comfort," said British leader Blair.
Describing himself as "profoundly saddened," President Clinton offered his
condolences to the British people in a brief message repeatedly shown here on television
Sunday.
"Hillary and I knew Princess Diana, and we were very fond of her. We are profoundly
saddened by this tragic event. Our thoughts and prayers tonight are with her family,
friends and especially her children," Clinton said.
Chirac, the French president, characterized Diana as a "young woman of our times,
warm, full of life and generosity. Her tragic death will be deeply felt because she was a
familiar figure to everyone."
Diana's work--and her appeal--cut across continents and social classes. In Calcutta on
Sunday, Mother Teresa said she and the nuns of her Missionaries of Charity religious order
were praying for Britain's dead princess.
By Robert Woodward
Reuter
LONDON (Sept. 4) - Queen Elizabeth II, under unprecedented attack for perceived aloofness
over Princess Diana's death, will address the nation Friday as Buckingham Palace scrambles
to stem the flood of anger both in the media and from ordinary Britons.
The Palace announced Thursday that it was breaking with protocol and allowing the British
flag to fly at half-staff on its roof on the day of Diana's funeral Saturday.
In a rare response to criticism a Palace statement said the royal family had been hurt by
the attacks, and it portrayed the Queen as a grandmother trying to console Diana's two
young sons in the tranquility of their country home.
Critics had attacked the royal family for staying in Scotland rather than sending a
representative down to London to publicly acknowledge the popular response to Diana's
death.
Diana had been shunned by the royal family since her divorce from heir-to-the-throne
Prince Charles last year when her title of royal highness was taken away and she was
removed from the list of royals mentioned in daily Anglican prayers.
One of the most frequent rebukes was that while flags were flying at half-staff throughout
the country, the staff atop the palace, the Queen's London home, was bare, even though
protocol dictates that only the royal standard may fly there and never at half-staff. '
This is a mark of respect for the princess on the day of her funeral,'' a palace
spokeswoman told journalists, announcing the breach with protocol.
The Queen is to return to London from her Scottish estate of Balmoral 18 hours earlier
than planned to make a televised broadcast to the nation about Diana's tragic death at 36
in a high-speed car crash in Paris Sunday.
The broadcast was expected to take place at around 1 P.M. EDT Friday. Newspapers have
united in attacking the Queen's refusal to dispense with court protocol and publicly
express the grief which her courtiers say she and the royal family are feeling.
''Your people are suffering. Speak to us Ma'am,'' The Mirror said on its front page
Thursday.
''I think it is time to forget protocol and follow your heart,'' said one man in the
central English city of Nottingham summing up a general feeling in the country.
Columnists have warned the Queen and Charles to imitate the popular touch that won Diana
the adoration of the nation or risk the demise of the monarchy.
In another indication of the Palace adjusting to the public mood, officials said Elton
John, one of Diana's favorite artists, would sing at the funeral at Westminster Abbey
Saturday.
While the entire royal family will be present in the abbey, they will not play a part in
the one-hour service.
John, comforted by Diana at the recent funeral of Italian designer Gianni Versace, will
sing ''Candle In the Wind,'' his 1970s tribute to Marilyn Monroe about a life snuffed out
in its prime.
The song will now be changed to reflect Diana's death. Instead of ''Goodbye Norma Jean''
he will sing ''Goodbye England's rose, may you ever grow in our hearts.''
''You were the grace that placed itself where lives were torn apart. You called out to our
country and you whispered to those in pain. Now you bel ong to heaven and the stars spell
out your name,'' the lyrics go.
Buckingham Palace very rarely responds to criticism and it therefore came as a surprise
when Geoffrey Crawford, the Queen's press secretary, read out a statement Thursday
rejecting the accusations.
''The royal family have been hurt by suggestions that they are indifferent to the
country's sorrow at the tragic death of the Princess of Wales,'' he told the BBC.
But the statement did not make any direct mention of any grief felt by the Queen or the
royal family, many of whom resented what they saw as the damage done to their prestige by
Diana during her protracted split from Charles.
''The Princess was a much-loved national figure, but she was also a mother whose sons miss
her deeply. Prince William and Prince Harry themselves want to be with their father and
grandparents at this time in the quiet haven of Balmoral,'' Crawford said.
''As their grandmother, the Queen is helping the princes to come to terms with their loss,
as they prepare themselves for the public ordeal of mourning their mother with the nation
on Saturday,'' he said.
The lack of a flag flying at half-mast had been taken as a sign of the royal family's
indifference. Protocol decrees that the royal standard marking the presence of the
sovereign is the only flag that can fly over the palace.
It can never be at half-staff because it symbolizes the institution of the monarchy.
Officials said the standard will now be lowered from the moment the queen leaves for
Diana's funeral and Britain's union jack flag raised at half-staff.
The union jack will remain at half-staff until 7 P.M. EDT.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and Diana's two sisters, who accompanied her coffin back from
France with Charles Sunday, will deliver readings during the funeral service.
Diana's brother Earl Spencer will make a personal tribute to the ''people's princess.''
Thousands of people, young and old, have carpeted the ground outside Kensington Palace --
Diana's home -- with flowers. Sporting events have been called off Saturday and shops will
stay closed during the funeral.
Police expect several million people to line the route of the funeral parade in London
Saturday.
The princess was killed with her millionaire companion Dodi Al Fayed early last Sunday
when their Mercedes limousine crashed at high speed in a Paris road tunnel. Police said
the driver's blood alcohol level was well over the legal limit.
Six photographers and a motorcyclist have been placed under official investigation for
manslaughter over allegations that they had pursued the limousine, possibly playing a role
in its crash, and hindered emergency services at the scene.
They angrily deny blame for her death.
The inquiry widened Thursday with French police questioning three more photographers in
their hunt for ''paparazzi'' who fled the accident scene before police nabbed their seven
colleagues.
Judicial sources told Reuters three freelance photographers, aware they were targets of a
stepped-up search, turned themselves in to police early in the afternoon.
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