5.9k Share this
The world learned the People’s Princess had died on August 31, 1997. Within hours, flowers and cards flooded the gates of Kensington Palace, where the princess had continued to live following her divorce. The day before Diana was laid to rest, Her Majesty and Prince Philip were seen reading the cards and taking in the outpouring of love.
On the last day of August in 1997, the world mourned as it learned that the people’s princess had died in a tragic car accident. One week later, Princess Diana was laid to rest before the eyes of her family, friends and the world, in one of the most-viewed television spectacles of all time.
Like her life, Diana’s funeral had no shortage of controversy, from her brother’s eulogy spliced with thinly veiled attacks at the Royal Family and media, to behind-the-scenes conversations that decided how William and Harry were expected to act in the face of the remarkable tragedy. Overall, the day was marked by the unspeakable sadness surrounding the Princess’ death.
This is what happened the day the world said goodbye to Diana, Princess of Wales.
Earl of Spencer, Prince William, Prince Harry, and the Prince of Wales are seen waiting as Diana’s coffin prepares to leave, following the funeral service at Westminster Abbey. The funeral procession ran for about 30 minutes along a two-mile long route, and attendees flocked to both sides of the street, pouring their condolences to the people’s princess and her family as they passed.
Where were William and Harry when Princess Diana died?
The car accident that took Princess Diana’s life occurred shortly after midnight on August 31, 1997, in Paris. Diana was alive when she was rushed to hospital, but eventually succumbed to her injuries and was pronounced dead hours later.
The Queen was vacationing with William and Harry, ages 15 and 12 at the time, at their Balmoral estate in Scotland at the time. In the middle of the night, she was informed of the accident through her secretary, but she decided to not wake the boys.
Instead, the Queen instructed her staff to remove all TVs and radios from the castle to ensure the young princes wouldn’t hear the traumatic details surrounding the accident. When the boys finally learned of Diana’s death, Harry begged Charles to allow him to accompany him to Paris to retrieve her body, but he was told to stay behind.
To the public’s dismay, Her Majesty and the family stayed at Balmoral until Prince Charles returned and boarded a plane to London with the young princes on September 5. Although the princes typically aren’t allowed to fly together, the Queen granted special permission considering the devastating circumstances.
When they arrived at Buckingham Palace, Prince Charles walked around with the young princes. They shook hands with the mourning crowd and watched people wipe away tears.
When Princes Charles and the young royals arrived home for their mother’s funeral, they walked along the street to take in the thousands of bouquets and cards left outside their home.
Harry later recalled thinking, as he stared at the thousands of flowers and the grief-stricken crowd, ‘How is it that so many people that never met my mother can be feeling more emotion than I am?’
Later that day, the Queen addressed the nation. It marked the second time in her reign that she has made a special address – the first was on February 1991 during the first Gulf War. She offered her condolences for the passing of her former daughter-in-law and explained that the family had delayed their return to London to allow William and Harry to grieve privately in Scotland.
That night, Princess Diana’s casket was brought into the palace, the place she had called home since 1981.
The young princes shook hands with the crowd and felt mourners tears on their palms. Harry later recalled thinking, as he stared at the thousands of flowers and the grief-stricken crowd, ‘How is it that so many people that never met my mother can be feeling more emotion than I am?’
Did Diana, Princess of Wales, have a royal funeral?
Although Princess Diana had a royal funeral, because of her fame and the public’s love for her, former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s team was heavily involved with planning the service.
The funeral’s planning committee worked to accommodate the masses of people who had taken to the streets by allowing – for the first time ever – camping in Hyde Park and St James’s Park. It was also decided that the procession route would be extended to two miles to allow for as many people as possible to see the Princess’s casket as it was laid to rest.
The procession proved to be a point of contention for the state, the Royal Family, and the Spencers.
Earl Spencer reportedly wanted to walk alone behind Diana’s coffin, but royal advisers were not happy. Prince Charles was adamant that he also wanted to walk behind it. And the rest of the funeral team felt William and Harry, then 15 and 12, should be there, too.
But William refused to join the procession, saying he wanted to grieve privately. Prince Philip and the Queen reportedly agreed, and Princess Diana’s brother also raised objections to the boys walking, saying it wasn’t what their mother would have wanted.
However, Blair’s team persisted, leading to a heated exchange with Prince Philip. The night before the funeral, Prince Philip told William, ‘I’ll walk if you walk’.
Prince William was initially against walking in the procession from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey, but Prince Philip, with the blessing of Tony Blair’s team, encouraged the prince by saying: ‘If you don’t walk, you may regret it later. If I walk, will you walk with me?’
Years later, Lord Spencer shared that he was ‘lied to’ about Prince William and Harry wanting to walk behind their mother’s coffin, as he had raised objections with royal officials before, saying that it is not what their mother would have wanted. But he was told they wanted to do it, which he later realized was not the case.
The night before her funeral, Harry and William shared their last nonpublic moment with their mother in a room in Buckingham Palace where her casket stood, covered with a wreath and surrounded by flowers from a handful of the billions who adored their People’s Princess.
Years later, Lord Spencer shared that he was ‘lied to’ about Prince William and Harry wanting to walk behind their mother’s coffin, as he had raised objections with royal officials before, saying that it is not what their mother would have wanted. But he was told they wanted to do it, which he later realized was not the case.
How much did Princess Diana’s casket weight and why was it lined with lead?
As is tradition for British royals, and despite no longer being married to Prince Charles, Diana was given a royal funeral. As such, Princess Diana was buried in the traditional lead-lined coffin. The coffins can be sealed airtight, slowing the decomposition of the body and preserving it for up to a year.
Eight soldiers were chosen to carry Diana’s coffin. To ensure the pallbearers could carry the 700-pound coffin, they practiced with a concrete stone and wore metal studs on their shoes. One pallbearer, Phillip Bartlet, later recalled that the metal and slick surface of the Abbey’s marble floor made it feel ‘like an ice skating rink’.
Another pallbearer, Nigel Enright, said he’ll never forget the looks on Diana’s sons’ faces. He added: ‘It wasn’t until it was all over that the emotion finally took hold, though. I don’t mind admitting we cried and cried for hours when we were back at the stables we used as a base.’
As is tradition for British royals, and although she was no longer married to Charles, Diana was given a royal funeral. As such, Princess Diana was buried in the traditional lead-lined coffin, which weighed an astounding 700 pounds.
Why did the Royal Family and Lord Spencer walk behind Princess Diana’s hearse?
The funeral began at 9:08am. Princess Diana’s casket was driven from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey in a funeral procession that was guarded by police.
As the hearse made its way through London, the Abbey’s tenor bell marked every minute of its journey.
Prince Charles, Harry, Lord Spencer, William, and Prince Philip walked two miles behind Diana’s casket during the infamous procession through central London, passing a million mourners en route to the ceremony.
During the 30-minute procession, William and Harry were joined by their father, the Prince of Wales, their grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, and their uncle, Earl Spencer.
Lord Spencer described walking behind his sister’s coffin as the ‘most horrifying half hour of my life’.
In the years since, Earl Spencer has said there are aspects of royal life that still do not make sense, noting it was a ‘very bizarre and cruel thing’ for Diana’s two sons to be asked to walk behind her body as people were wailing and shouting their condolences.
Earl Spencer said the emotion of the crowd was ‘pulsing’ through them as they followed the coffin.
Prince Harry has revealed his anguish at being forced to walk behind his mother’s coffin as a 12-year-old and said no ‘child should be asked to do that under any circumstances’.
In an episode of Oprah’s The Me You Can’t See, Prince Harry revealed he is still haunted by the sound of hooves clacking on the pavement, which he heard during his mother’s funeral procession.
He told Newsweek magazine: ‘My mother had just died, and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television.’ He continued: ‘I don’t think any child should be asked to do that, under any circumstances. I don’t think it would happen today.’
William described the procession as the ‘hardest thing’ and a ‘very long, lonely walk,’ He added that there was a balance ‘between me being Prince William and having to do my bit, versus the private William who just wanted to go into a room and cry, who’d lost his mother.’
In a BBC documentary, William said he used his hair as a ‘safety blanket’. ‘At the time, I felt if I looked at the floor and my hair came down over my face, no one could see me.’
In a BBC documentary, William also shared that choosing to partake in the procession ‘wasn’t an easy decision and it was a sort of collective family decision to do that… there is that balance between duty and family and that’s what we had to do.’
What happened during Diana’s funeral?
In the days leading up to the funeral, the Queen had faced criticism for not showing emotion. It has been reported that then-Prime Minister Tony Blair encouraged her to drop her guard. Here, Her Majesty is seen wiping away a tear upon entering Westminster Abbey.
Following the nearly two-hour procession, Diana’s funeral ceremony began at 11am on September 7, 1997, inside Westminster Abbey, the same church where William would marry Kate.
It began with the Abbey choir and congregation singing I Vow To Thee My Country, a hymn that Prince William requested since it was played at his parents’ wedding and was a favorite of his mother’s. Diana’s sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, then read an eight-line stanza by A Price Hughes, called If I Should Die and Leave You Here Awhile.
Soprano Lynne Dawson sang Verdi’s Requiem, a piece that was special to Diana because it was played at the first concert she attended with Charles. Her other sister Lady Jane Fellowes then read a poem by Henry Van Dyke, and when she began reading, ‘Time is too slow for those who wait…’, there was a moment of shock as she sounded exactly like her sister.
Seated next to the Duchess of Kent, Frances Shand Kydd, Princess Diana’s mother, is seen here at a requiem mass at Westminster Chapel, which was held the night before her daughter’s funeral.
Prime Minister Tony Blair then read a Bible verse followed by a performance from the legendary Elton John, one of Diana’s good friends.
The Princess of Wales had a closed casket throughout the ceremony because the Royal Family thought it would be disrespectful to leave it open following the car accident and autopsy.
What song did Elton John sing at Princess Diana’s funeral?
When Elton John took his place at a grand piano, he played a rewritten version of Candle in the Wind, made especially for Diana, and he never performed it live again.
Elton and Diana had fallen out a few months earlier, but had reconciled during Gianni Versace’s funeral in Milan, where they were seated next to each other. As Elton sobbed, Diana held his arm.
At the start of the last verse, Elton’s voice cracked, and he later said: ‘I had to close my eyes, grit my teeth. I thought to myself: “You’ve got to get through this because she would have got through it, if the roles had been reversed.”’
Elton John and Princess Diana had been friends since 1981, when he sang at Prince Andrew’s 21st birthday. Elton later shared: ‘Me singing Candle in The Wind at her funeral was one of the most surreal things I have ever done. I was thinking, “Don’t sing a wrong note. Be stoic. Don’t break down, and just do it to the best you can without showing any emotion whatsoever.”‘
What did Lord Spencer say during his eulogy at Princess Diana’s funeral?
Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother, wrote his eulogy in just two hours by writing from the heart and concentrating on celebrating an extraordinary life, lived to the fullest. Lord Spencer said he had rehearsed his speech while standing in front of Diana’s coffin at St James’s Palace, where the coffin stood for five days, and said he ‘heard a whisper that sounded like satisfaction in that sad, sad place’.
The day of the funeral, Earl Spencer delivered a historic speech that encapsulated all the ways in which Diana had moved the world. He said: ‘There is temptation to rush to canonise your memory, there is no need to do so. You stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities not to need to be seen as a saint. Indeed, to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being, your wonderfully mischievous sense of humor with a laugh that bent you double.’
He confirmed what everyone thought they knew about the Princess: that she was ‘selfless’, ‘extraordinary’, and ‘irreplaceable’.
The Queen and other senior royals refused to applaud after Lord Spencer delivered his vitriolic eulogy at Princess Diana’s funeral, even though her sons, Princes William and Harry, did.
‘But your greatest gift was your intuition, and it was a gift you used wisely. This is what underpinned all your other wonderful attributes and if we look to analyze what it was about you that had such a wide appeal we find it in your instinctive feel for what was really important in all our lives,’ Lord Spencer said.
He famously attacked the media for the way his sister was treated. Calling the media ‘on the opposite end of the moral spectrum’ from Diana’s goodness, Spencer said that it was a great irony that ‘a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.’
Spencer went on to lambast the royals, remembering Diana as a British girl who ‘needed no Royal title to continue to generate her brand of magic’. And he pledged to William and Harry that his ‘blood family’ would protect them, saying they would not only be ‘immersed in duty and tradition’ that royal life brought, but allowed to explore all aspects of their lives.
When he was done with his speech, the crowd outside and the young princes began applauding, along with Prince Charles. However, the Queen and Prince Philip looked straight ahead.
Years later, when asked if the Queen or anyone else said anything to him about his speech, Earl Spencer replied: ‘Somebody I know very well said to her “What do you think?”, and she said, “He had every right to say whatever he felt, it was his sister’s funeral.” So that’s all.’
Who attended Princess Diana’s funeral?
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman had been married for seven years when they attended Princess Diana’s funeral with Steven Spielberg (pictured). According to Diana: The Intimate Portrait, a biography about the late Princess, she reportedly developed a crush on the Mission Impossible star after they met in 1992.
Among the 2,000 attendees at Princess Diana’s funeral, along with royalty, some of the biggest names in Hollywood attended, including Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Steven Spielberg, Sting, Mariah Carey and Tom Hanks. George Michael also attended, as he and Diana had grown close through the years. Michael said the Princess was one of the only people who made him feel like an ordinary person.
Several political figures, including then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, were also present. Hillary was personally invited by both the royal family and the Spencer family due to her “close personal association with Diana, Princess of Wales,” according to then-White House Deputy Press Secretary Joe Lockhart.
Considering Diana was a force in fashion, it’s no surprise that fashion legends like Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld, and Donatella Versace, who was still mourning the death of her brother Gianni, a funeral Diana had attended weeks earlier, also paid their respects.
Princess Margaret is seen here arriving with her son, Linley Viscount, to the funeral at Westminster Abbey. Princess Margaret was the Queen’s younger sister, and had a special relationship with Princess Diana. However, they had a falling out after Diana’s interview with Martin Bashir because she felt Diana had betrayed her sister.
Where was Princess Diana buried?
Following the ceremony, the bearers from the Welsh Guards carried Diana’s coffin for the final time. The choir sang a piece written by the composer John Taverner that quotes Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’ As the princes followed the coffin out of the Abbey, William was seen giving Harry’s hand a squeeze.
Before the journey to Althorp, Diana’s final resting place, began, there was a moment of silence observed across the nation – even nearby traffic lights were held red. The hearse moved off to loud applause and began its 75-mile journey, and the crowd immediately started throwing flowers.
Diana was originally going to be buried in the Spencer family vault at a local church, but Lord Spencer was concerned about public safety and security. He decided it would be better if she was buried on an island on the grounds of Althorp Estate, the home where she grew up and that has been in the Spencer family for centuries.
At the wheel of Princess Diana’s hearse (pictured) is 58-year-old Sidney Clarke, a former electrician and the royal undertakers’ most senior employee. Also in the car is Sidney’s boss, Keith Leverton, and Royal Protection Officer Graham Craker, who was one of Diana’s favorites. There was concern that some members of the public would throw themselves in front of the hearse. Fortunately, that did not happen.
Diana’s former husband, sons, mother, siblings, a close friend, and a clergyman were present during her burial. Diana was buried in a black long-sleeved, three-quarter length woolen cocktail dress designed by Catherine Walker, which she had bought weeks before. A set of rosary beads was placed in her hands. They were a gift she had received from Mother Teresa, who died the same week as Diana. In her hands, there was also a photograph of her sons, one that had traveled with her and was found in her handbag. Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell, reportedly took some pictures of Prince Harry and Prince William from under her glass dressing table from her Kensington Palace apartment and put them in her coffin as well.
When was Princess Diana’s funeral and how many people watched?
Lady Spencer was buried on September 6, 1997, and an estimated 2.5 billion people watched as the beloved Princess’ family and friends mourned her untimely death. The ceremony lasted for about one hour, and her young sons, brother, Prince Charles, and Prince Phillip walked for thirty minutes behind her body as the hearse wound its way through central London, passing a million fans lined up along the streets, toward its destination and Diana’s final resting place.
Princess Diana’s funeral remains the most-watched live event in the UK, with 31 million viewers, compared to her wedding, which was viewed by 22 million people in the UK, and 750 million globally.
Here, NBC News’ Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, and London Sunday Times’ Andrew Brown are seen covering the funeral of Princess Diana of Wales on September 6, 1997, in London, England.
Who was really responsible for Princess Diana’s death? Seven conspiracy theories
Source: DailyMail
