Has Di almost been forgotten?
2004-08-31 12:48
London - Seven years after the death of Princess Diana sparked a national outpouring of grief across Britain, the late royal's memory appeared on Tuesday to be gradually fading from the public consciousness.
Just a smattering of floral tributes to the princess could be seen on the pavement outside Kensington Palace in central London, Diana's former home, on Tuesday morning, the seventh anniversary of her death.
The area had become a sea of flowers in the days following Diana's death in a car crash in Paris in the early hours of August 31 1997, an accident which prompted near-unprecedented scenes of national grieving.
The former wife of the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, was a hugely popular figure, beloved both for her charitable campaigns and her glamorous and often troubled life.
"Fewer and fewer bouquets"
Her funeral brought vast, weeping crowds to the streets of London, with commentators alleging that the very un-British outpouring of emotion marked a sea change in the country's national consciousness.
But each subsequent anniversary of the accident has seen ever more muted commemorations, a fact royal officials conceded on Tuesday.
"A handful of bouquets and posies are there already but it's not as many as last year," said a spokesperson for Historic Royal Palaces, which manages Kensington Palace and other royal residences.
"Kensington Palace has noticed that it's getting fewer and fewer every year."
Diana's children, Princes William and Harry, would spend the day in private, a spokesperson for the pair said. There were no plans for an official commemoration, even at the London fountain built in memory of the princess.
There would be an area around the oval channel-shaped fountain in London's Hyde Park for people to leave bouquets, a Royal Parks spokesperson said, but few were expected.
Diana, who was then aged 36, died along with companion Dodi Fayed and chauffeur Henri Paul when their Mercedes limousine crashed into a pillar in a Paris underpass as they sped away from pursuing press photographers.
An official French investigation into crash found it had been caused by a combination of excessive speed and the fact that Paul had been drinking and was not trained to drive the heavy, armour-plated car.
A British inquest into Diana's death began earlier this year but was adjourned while the head of London's Metropolitan Police, Commissioner Sir John Stevens, carries out another investigation.
Stevens has pledged to put an end to the rash of conspiracy theories surrounding the crash, some propagated by Fayed's father, tycoon Mohamed al-Fayed, who insists the pair were murdered and that Britain's intelligence services were involved.