Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media

 ‘Parallel Earths: Diana 2000’

A review essay by Will Brooker

England Her England: The Princess and the Populace, ed. Catherine Hilton (London: Absolom, 2000)
Angel of Mercy: Diana and Cultural Mythology, ed. Dave Kollock (London: Terramare, 2000)
Diana at 39: Nation, Culture, Monarchy, ed. Mark Raymond (Cambridge: Peacock, 2000)

As we near the third anniversary of the accident which killed Dodi Al Fayed, Henri Paul and Trevor Rhys Jones – and witness the publication of three substantial new volumes on Diana’s life and cultural meaning – it is perhaps time to give voice to the unsayable. What if she had died too? How would the Britain we know now have been altered if the Parisian surgeons had failed to pull off their “miracle”, if Diana’s sternum rather than spinal column had been crushed by the impact, if the morning of August 31 1997 had seen the country awake to the death of the Princess of Wales?.. [Full Article Here]

From:  Issue 1 (Spring/Summer 2001), ed. Matt Hills and Sara Gwenllian Jones.