Rebecca McQuillan: The grief at Diana’s passing wasn’t 'phoney': she mattered

I reached for it bleary-eyed and read the black script scrolling across the display. It was from a radio journalist: “Pls call re Diana death.”

I stared and stared. What? “Pls call re Diana death.” Diana? THE Diana… how? I crashed out of bed to put on the TV, not believing it could possibly be true.

But there it was, on every channel: Princess Diana had died during the night. In a car accident. In Paris. Two others, Diana’s partner Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul, had also died.

A car accident: it seemed unthinkable.

I was one of the thousands, perhaps millions, who sat on their sofas that morning in tears, watching the live coverage and struggling to believe it. There were her dates: 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997. How wrong this was. I made the calls I had to make, but was thunderstruck.

Why did I react this way? I didn’t ponder that question much at the time but I have done so since. After all, I had never met the woman and was not a royal watcher. Feeling sadness at a stranger’s untimely death, especially someone with children, is understandable, but this was something deeper. I felt wretched about it. My then boyfriend (now husband) was also shocked but was perfectly able to focus on other things, asking me what I wanted for breakfast and musing about what we were going to do with the afternoon (quite sunny, I believe).

By contrast, I had entered a different emotional state: grief.

Many others reacted the same way. It’s estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 tonnes of flowers were laid at London’s royal palaces. I didn’t understand that particular impulse – what’s the point in leaving flowers to rot on a pavement, I thought, ever practical – but

I could understand the desire to mark her passing.

In my own case, I now realise that my reaction was partly personal, since my loved ones and I had been affected a decade earlier by another car accident that claimed a life, also on an August night, very close to home. It had had a profound impact on me and even more so on some of the people around me.

I was distressed at the thought of those Diana left behind, in particular her young sons.

But my reaction was also because, in the way that sometimes happens with famous people, I had connected with the idea of Diana. I was aware of older adults viewing her with irritation, as an attention-seeker, but this felt unbearably cynical to me. I’d loved her since childhood and my admiration grew in my teenage years. The princess of my Lady Diana Spencer Ladybird book – the former nursery assistant who loved children and having fun – was a world away from the stuffy, protocol-bound Windsors. She loved dancing. She laughed easily.

As Princess Diana, she had boldly embraced unpopular causes, hugging children who were HIV+ at a time when many people believed the disease could be passed on by casual contact. She wore walked trails in Angola being cleared of landmines. She publicly supported an international treaty to ban anti-personnel mines, earning herself rebukes from Tory MPs. She replied simply: “I am not a political figure… my interests are humanitarian.”

The treaty was signed three months after her death.

She was unafraid to use her position for good, in a simple, direct way (powerful images were Diana’s forte) at a time when the royal family spoke in platitudes and avoided contact with issues deemed controversial. She showed emotion. She was the human with the beating heart in a gallery of statues.

And I loved her for being vulnerable. She confirmed rumours that she had battled bulimia at a time when public figures simply did not discuss their mental health. I thought her magnificent for doing so (it would be some time before we learned the interview in which she did so, with Martin Bashir, was obtained by highly unethical means).

In short, she was lovable.

The outpouring of public distress that followed her passing has been characterised as collective hysteria, a firestorm of phoney grief that we got off on in our millions, so superficial that it burned itself out as quickly as it had taken light. It was not very British, some said. The Scottish parliament referendum campaign was hastily suspended and did not resume for a week.

I thought the public reaction a bit over-the-top, reluctant to consider that perhaps I too had been caught up in the drama of the moment.

But to characterise it all as bogus emotion is at best a partial truth. For many younger people, Diana was the only royal in whom they could see themselves.

The events of 25 years ago have now passed into British mythology. There was Tony Blair’s “people’s princess” speech, so praised for capturing the public mood (personally I felt it was trite); there was the Queen’s address to the nation five days later, at Blair’s urging; there were the royals’ plummeting approval ratings. Polling showed they were regarded as out-of-touch and not “genuine” – nothing like Diana. The rather more easygoing image the family cultivated afterwards to help boost their popularity, owes much to her.

But how much have things really moved on? Meghan Markle, an independent, divorced biracial woman with three million Instagram followers, blew into the royal family like a breath of fresh air in 2016. Her willingness to speak about causes like women’s rights was strongly reminiscent of her late mother-in-law, but after a few short years she and her husband had departed The Firm, citing declining mental health, a lack of control and alleging racism. Another fail.

My own view these days is that the royal family should be gently retired, though I admit the thought of a presidential election gives me the heebee-geebees. They have been reduced to providing a famous signature and performing a real-life soap opera for our consumption, which isn’t ideal for them or us. What would Diana think if she were here today? She might be surprised so little has changed.