31 August
1997 · politics
Diana, Princess of Wales died in Paris
The news came through in the small hours of a Sunday morning, and the country that woke up to it did not behave like anyone expected. Flowers piled up outside Kensington Palace until they were waist deep. Strangers queued for eleven hours to sign a book.
Whatever you thought of it all at the time — and opinions were not as unanimous as people now remember — it was one of the very few weeks when the whole country was plainly living through the same thing at the same time.
“What do you honestly remember feeling that week in 1997?”
Also on this day
- 1888Mary Ann Nichols was murdered in Whitechapel — the first of the Ripper killings
- 1957Malaya gained independence from Britain