“THE spring has gone out of the year,” said an ancient Greek general, mourning the loss of young soldiers: and that was very much the mood in London last week, most affecting, I thought, at the beginning, when the gestures were still quite spontaneous. Buckingham Palace was largely for tourists: Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana had lived, was the place for Londoners. Television was not enough; you really had to see it for yourself-the thousands upon thousands of flowers, the policemen gently shepherding, a few people crying, cynics astonished at their own inability to remain unmoved.
In a lifetime of London occasions—VE Day, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the ill-omened fireworks-starred night before the Prince of Wales’s wedding-I have never seen anything like it. Gazing at the widening lake of flowers, one could not but ponder the magnitude of the Palace establishment’s mistake in its handling of the Diana problem. “She is a controversial figure,” was the best they would say about her only a few weeks ago. Some controversy! And still, now, they were getting it wrong.
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