To still not understand the Diana "thing"?

[TeaCake5]

As William and harry said they were bewildered by people who didn't even know her acting in the way they did. Yes it was sad that she was killed but to hand around kensington palace for days crying? Ridiculous.

excuse me for relying on actual published and sourced accounts rather than believing some random on the internet claiming their brother's babysitters aunty once worked for them and told them

Sneer all you like Margaret. I choose to believe my close friends who worked alongside the sources you mention. I've met staff and PPOs over the last 25 plus years, not one of whom had much of a good word to say for Diana.

Not to mention that my friends, unlike Jephson, Ken Wharfe (who along with Burrell was pretty much despised by them because he betrayed confidences) etc chose not to sell their stories despite being offered quite a lot of money.

Incidentally I didn't say Diana intervened, I said she was impossible to brief. That's not the same thing.

It irritates me that people keep bringing up Diana's lack of academia.

None of the royals are particularly bright including Charles. Prince Harry went through Eton and could barely scrape 2 A levels.

Louise - my FIL also knew Diana - he thought she was lovely. Everyone is going to have differing opinions.

It is really irritating and unjustifiable that Charles and Edward got into Cambridge with below standard grades. I think William did earn his place didn't he?
There was an article in the Mail about the exam scandal which referred to the help Harry got in his exam. To be fair he may not have been the only one as I'm sure the school feels intense pressure to get pupils where they want to be.

Whatever their relative intelligence levels there is still a big divide between someone with a Cambridge degree and someone with no academic qualifications at all. It would seem to be an odd match in most other contexts.

my FIL also knew Diana - he thought she was lovely. Everyone is going to have differing opinions.

I know that but I found interesting that none of the people I knew who worked for the family liked her at all (and none of them pretended Charles was a saint). I was told one story about her treatment of a particular staff member which was far worse than Charles yelling at his.

She was lovely to plenty of people she met socially no doubt. She also seems to have had a documented tendency for falling out with friends and just cutting them dead.

I don't doubt they could all be a bit difficult at times but the idea that she was a saint really gets my goat.

Getting poor grades in an exam doesn't mean you're stupid, it could just mean you didn't revise for example, but I think there's no doubt that Charles and William are brighter than Diana or Harry. For someone to leave public school with no exams is pretty poor, even allowing for the fact that she was expected to marry well, not have a career at all. I've read she failed all her resits too, which is pretty unusual.

Another who felt like a Martian at the time. Perfectly sane, intelligent friends of mine were overwhelmed with grief, I couldn't understand at all.

While I can understand people finding the hysterical reactions to her death inappropriate, I really struggle to understand some of the vitriolic comments about her. Some people criticise those being hysterical by being inappropriately vile. All a bit kettle and pot really.

Someone should tell Greer she is actually a misogynist and should stfu. Why on earth say someone who died tragically young was 'the worst fuck in the country'

It was ridiculous and it was the first time that the media really drove the narrative IMO, I am a republican and was quite amused at the 2 fingers she was showing to the royal family, the fact that the royalists have jumped on the death with some moral relativism is quite astonishing.

The Christopher Hitchens piece for channel 4 the year after her death is quite good to see the story of the other half of the population at the time that wasn't swept up in the mass hysteria.

Its uploaded into 4 chunks on youtube

In fairness I think I read that Diana was dislexic at school and in the past no help or allowances were made for this. She was exceptionally emotionally intelligent and had great people skills. Prince Charles was never considered very bright or intellectual until middle age.

Or even dyslexic

I really didn't get it either. No-one I knew was sad, beyond a detached sadness that two children lost their mum. I worked on Pall Mall at the time and never even walked around the corner to see the flowers.

I was no fan of Diana but I miss her dramas. For me, she was fun. I'm sure if she was alive today she'd be feuding with Carole Middleton, would be a very difficult MIL to Kate and would be playing her off against Meghan.

She was an interesting person who did many unpleasant and downright bonkers things, but also did some good - particularly in advancing society's acceptance of people with AIDS. I defy anyone to say that her literal embracing of people with what was then called the gay plague wasn't groundbreaking. Perhaps you had to live through it and and know people who were HIV+ at that time to get it. Perhaps that's why some of the PP on this thread who were 10 or 16 at the time of her death don't get the importance. It was a really big deal.

I wasn't devastated at her death. I was subjected to a hysterical tirade by someone who said I wasn't worthy of being in the crowds at Hyde Park to watch the screened broadcast of her funeral because I was too flippant. I didn't go, btw, I was musing about taking my mum, who loved Diana. In the end we watched it on the telly, but if I had gone, I wouldn't have sneered at the people weeping around me and I don't feel the need to ridicule those people now.

That's what I object to about this thread. The OP and her supporters seem to me to be terribly superior and a bit shitty.

'I'm sure if she was alive today she'd be feuding with Carole Middleton, would be a very difficult MIL to Kate and would be playing her off against Meghan.'
I can imagine it being the opposite, she'd be best buds with Carole, be a very doting gran and be seen shopping with Meghan and kate. Anything to push Charles and Camilla out.

I do think she'd have been a nightmare MIL, particularly if she'd never found love herself.

I suspect any lack of help was because 'gels" like Diana didn't need to be intellectual, just to marry well. I had a dyslexic friend (we're a bit older than Diana) who got more than enough help at a state school in the 70s. I had another friend whose background was very upper middle class. Her brothers went to public school. Her parents decided not to send her "because she didn't need the same education" according to her father. She inherited money from her grandmother when she was about 10. She persuaded the trustee to let her spend it on school fees and she went to boarding school.

I think Diana would have found it hard to come to terms with the ageing process. She had reasonable good looks and could be made to look stunning with her beaty therapists, clothes etc. i think she loved admiration and being a "fashion icon", but as she got older all the attention would go on her daughter in laws, i don't know how she'd have coped with that tbh.

Diana would be 56 today. I think she'd be coping with the ageing process well enough.

I share(d) the bewilderment at the extraordinary outpouring of emotion. I was also baffled and irritated by the relentless media obsession with Diana before and after her sad death.

My partner and I had arranged on funeral day to drive from London to Weymouth to see a small steamship (we used to scubadive wrecks of these things). There was almost no traffic on the roads because everyone seemed to be watching the funeral, so we arrived too early. We decided to go for a swim in the municipal open (surprisingly) swimming pool. We were the only customers, and the staff were clearly furious they couldn't watch the funeral as they hassled us for half an hour about where we left our towels, which lanes we swam in, how close we swam to each other, that we both kept our watches on, and similar, which we got fed up with and got out.

Still, the steamship was lovely.

How dreadful for you Galdos and yet, what a wonderful memory

What I mean is that if I was working on the day of a significant event such as the World Cup final or the funeral of Princess Diana, I'd be tempted to keep an eye on it on the telly.

Obviously I'd hate for you to drown and wouldn't be furious with you for splashing about in the pool - are you sure they were? - so would keep a watching brief on both matters. It's professional pride, innit?

As an experienced scuba diver, I'm sure you were okay and am so glad you found the steamship smashing.

I remember the day of the funeral well, as I was involved in a parking dispute with a woman in a Range Rover. I won and she stood raging at me with her hands on her hips.

Oh dear. I had a less confrontational day watching the funeral on telly with a bit of a walk afterwards. Then we had dinner. Fish and chips. It's what she would have wanted