Where were you when Princess Diana died?
If you’re a woman over the age of 30, that’s a question that will immediately transport you back to a moment in time when there was only one news story, only one image on every screen, on every magazine and every newspaper. It was a personal tragedy for a few, and a tragic, historic landmark for millions more.
It was 20 years ago. August 31, 1997.
Mia Freedman writes:
I was lying in bed feeling intensely uncomfortable. It was a Sunday morning in August 1997 and I was heavily, heavily pregnant. Just a couple of weeks from my due date. The kind of pregnant where you can no longer sleep and you have to get up to go to the toilet throughout the night.
I was drinking a cup of tea, in bed, reading the newspapers because the Internet was not yet a thing. The TV was on in the background. And then……. breaking news. Princess Diana had been in a car crash with her boyfriend Dodi Fayed. The paparazzi had been chasing them. In Paris.
This didn’t seem so remarkable. Diana had been in the news constantly during that European summer – our winter. She’d been photographed kissing Dodi and sitting coyly on a diving board that came off the back of his giant boat as they holidayed in the Mediterranean. It was enchanting and I gobbled up every image. We all did. Every bit of press coverage. It would be easy to airbrush that now with what we know about the role the paparazzi played in her death. So easy to pretend I wasn’t complicit in the economy which ultimately led to her death. But we were all complicit in a way. Not in her death, of course, but in the industry that was fuelled by our insatiable appetite for photos of Diana.
Magazines and newspapers sold millions of copies from these photos and that’s because we bought them.
Still, a car crash? It was probably nothing serious. How could it be? She had body guards. She was famous. My generation, Gen X had not yet experienced the sudden death of one of our icons. Our parents could tell you where they were when JFK was shot. Or when Grace Kelly died. Until the day Diana died, we were naive to the fact that celebrity did not make you immune from tragedy.
The news trickled out slowly. Diana had injured her leg. Dodi had died. This information was shocking. How would she recover from this heartbreak? How unfair was this, losing her boyfriend after she’d lost her husband to Camilla?
I called my mother. She was watching the TV too. I felt a knot in my stomach, the kind you get when you’re watching rolling news coverage and it’s not yet clear if events are still unfolding or the worst is over.
It wasn’t. With a stammering voice the presenter told us that word had come that Diana had died.
20 years later, it’s hard to articulate the shock. My husband and I sat on the bed in front of the TV with our mouths open. I had my hand over my mouth in the way I’ve since read women do when they’re confronted by shocking or distressing news. As if to muffle a scream.
My friend Bec Sparrow – who I wouldn’t meet for 15 years – remembers that on the day Diana died, she was driving home to her parents’ house when she heard the news……
Eventually, the rage dissipated. There really were some lessons about drink driving and seat belts. It wasn’t simply the fault of the photographers who had been chasing her. And 20 years later, that industry remains a thriving one.
In some sense it took many years until we were able to embrace Charles and Camilla as a couple without feeling defensive and protective of Diana. Her ghost felt very present at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton… .I cried again for her when I watched them marry.
I don’t think there will ever be a woman so iconic for my generation. I often wonder what she would be like now. She’d definitely be on Instagram. Would she have her own reality show? Would she have married Dodi? Divorced him? Had more children?
For a long long time I missed her as though she’d been a person in my life. I missed looking at photos of her. Reading about her. Following her life. Cheering for her. Watching interviews and hearing her laugh. Seeing her mother those boys she clearly loved to the moon. Poring over her outfits and her changing hairstyles. Taking note of how she grew older.
Vale Diana. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. Your death was cruel and unfair and should never have happened.
We miss you.
Where were you when you heard the news about Diana? Share your memories below in comments…..
Top Comments
After living in the UK for two years, my now husband and I were spending a few months backpacking through Europe. We has just left Prague in our ancient Volvo and were flicking through the radio for an english speaking channel when we came across the BBC. At first we thought she must have received an award, but once we realised what had happened, we were so shocked we had to pull over, we couldn't drive for about 30 minutes were were so numb.
We were in a camp ground in Vienna for the funeral, there was about 50 people from many nationalities crowded around the TV, sobbing, no-one could really understand what the other was saying, we were all strangers, holding on to each other for comfort, it was surreal and I'll never forget it. Ive never considered myself a Royalist, but I can't explain how emotional I was that day.
The following week we were in Paris and that was another level of emotion, seeing all of the flowers on top of the tunnel left me speechless.
I was living in London at the time. Waking on that Sunday to every tv channel covering the devastating news. By then they had announced she had sadly died. I went to the corner store and the overnight newspapers had released the story that she was injured but ok. The afternoon's released newspapers had the true story. Reading the hope in the morning papers knowing the outcome was truly devastating. The following week, I stood with others (some who had slept out overnight) and watched her funeral procession go past. The tears and open sobbing in the crowd really was testament of how many people just loved and adored the Princess.