Diana after Diana: How her story kept changing long after her death
This article reflects on the enduring public fascination with Princess Diana nearly three decades after her death. It explores how her legacy is constantly reconstructed through media and personal memoirs, such as the recent book by her brother, Charles Spencer.
Why it matters
It highlights the cultural phenomenon of myth-making surrounding public figures and the tension between private memory and public narrative.
Twenty-nine years ago, on August 31, 1997, a woman was ‘hunted’ to her death.And yet her carcass still finds its way onto paper and television screens, every few years hollowed out, stuffed and reconstructed into whatever we think it is best for her to become.Diana Frances Spencer, who later became the Princess of Wales, has lived two lives but has been only allowed to die in one of them. There is the Diana who lived, and died as the paparazzi hunted her on a fateful night on the roads of Paris.
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