I’m currently reworking my novel Mother of Eden, in which my main protagonist, Starlight Brooking, finds her elevated to a princess-/madonna-like status and I was interested this article about the changing image of Princess Diana.
I remember a while back in a dentist’s waiting room, I was flicking through the pages of a women’s magazine. It was a Woman’s Own, or something like that – i.e. by no means an alternative or radical publication – and I found an article in it about people who were ‘famous for being famous’, famous without having done anything themselves to deserve it. Princess Di was one of the examples, along with the likes of Paris Hilton.
Diana had already died when I saw the article, but the dog-eared magazine was a few years old. The saint-like status that came with her death would have made it unthinkable for a magazine of that kind to include her in such a list, but I was intrigued how quickly our collective memory had erased this view of her.
“I was intrigued how quickly our collective memory had erased this view of her.”
For some of us it was never erased.
I have to say I was utterly baffled at the seeming national hysteria over her death. She certainly wasn’t in the conversations of most the people at my work for the week or so it lasted.