The very public life of Diana, Princess of Wales ended just as it had started 16 years earlier: with hundreds of thousands lining the streets and millions globally tuning in to watch. The 20-year-old’s 1981 wedding to Prince Charles was cause for great celebration, but her final journey, at 36, through the streets of London, with her two young sons made to walk – heads bowed – behind her coffin, threatened to bring down the 1200-year-old British institution she had helped revitalise.
In the years between, Diana’s life had swung from dizzying highs to brutal lows. The great tragedy of the woman who would become the most loved and photographed of her generation is that she spent her days crippled by feelings of loneliness and inadequacy.
“The public wanted a fairy princess,” Diana told her biographer, Andrew Morton, in 1991. “Little did they realise that the individual was crucifying herself inside because she didn’t think she was good enough.”
Diana Frances
