PART VII It was slow to sink in that Sunday morning. “What did you say? Princess Diana has died? Diana is dead?” This was one of those where-were-you-when-you-heard? moments. JFK, MLK, RFK, the Challenger explosion. We all remember where we were, and how unreal, entirely untethered,...
PART VI In what seems an impossible calculus, Diana, no longer in line to be queen, grew even more famous. Only this particular woman could have engineered such a thing, and such a thing could only have been engineered in our modern age—a golden age of...
PART V She was, in that instant in 1981, the world’s best- known personage and arguably its most beloved (two distinctions she would successfully hold for the remainder of her days). Before she ever cradled a sick infant at a children’s hospital or comforted an AIDS...
PART I The flowers were remarkable. In the hours and days after the death of the Princess of Wales, mourners from all over the United Kingdom streamed to the gates of Buckingham Palace, to St. James’s Palace, to Kensington Palace to lay bouquets in tribute to...