On August 31, it will be 20 years since the premature death of Diana, Princess of Wales, rocked the world. In a poignant and insightful tribute, royal biographer Christopher Wilson investigates Diana’s legacy and her continued inspiration and influence on her boys, Princes William and Harry.
The memory is as fresh as the scent of a newly plucked rose, while the legacy grows more powerful as each year goes by. For most people even today, 20 years after her death, the name Diana needs no suffix. Come late August, the floral tributes will once again pile up outside Kensington Palace – fewer now, the donors older – but the worldwide passion for Diana, Princess of Wales, remains as potent a force as ever.
For Prince William and Prince Harry, the grief has gone, but the longing remains. For the rest of us, it’s as if she never went away. As William himself says, “Everyone knows the story. Everyone knows her.”
And on this 20th anniversary, the Princes have begun talking about their mother like never before – blowing the cobwebs away, dusting down her reputation, encouraging others to take a fresh look.
“All I want to do is make my mother proud,” says Harry. “It’s she who inspires the work I do. When she died, there was a gaping hole, not just for us, but also for a huge amount of people around the world. If I can try to fill a very small part of that, then job done.
“I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12 had quite a serious effect on not only my personal life, but my work as well.”
William speaks equally lovingly about Diana. “I would like to have had her advice,” he says.
“I would love her to have met Catherine and to have seen the children grown up. It makes me sad that she won’t, that they will never know her. I still find it difficult now – the shock is the biggest thing and I still feel it 20 years later about my mother. People think shock can’t last that long, but it does. It’s such an unbelievably big moment in your life and it never leaves you.”
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