#511 | The Death Of Princess Diana
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Hello, hello, hello and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English. I'm Alistair Budge and today we are going to be talking about the death of Princess Diana.

It is the story of a princess, the press, the royal family, and what people called the utterly preventable death of a young woman.

Before we get right into today's episode, I want to remind you that you can become a member of Leonardo English and follow along with the interactive transcript and subtitles over on the website, which is leonardoenglish.com. Membership of Leonardo English gives you access to more than double the number of episodes, plus all of our learning materials, including instant translations in 12 languages, study packs, and much, much more.

So, if you are ready to take the next step on your English learning journey, the place to go is LeonardoEnglish.com. Okay then, let's get started and talk about the death of Princess Diana. In the early hours of Sunday, August 31st, 1997, a black Mercedes-Benz entered the Pont de l'Alma underpass, a tunnel under the Seine River in Paris.

The car was going fast, with later reports estimating it was travelling at 105km/h, more than double the tunnel's 50km/h speed limit. There was a good reason for this, or at least you could understand why the driver was going so fast. The car was being chased by a reported 30 paparazzi photographers on mopeds and in cars.

Cameras were flashing as the photographers weaved around the car, poking their cameras at the tinted windows, the shutters clicking non-stop. For inside the car was Diana, Princess of Wales, the former wife of the heir to the British throne, and almost certainly the most recognisable woman in the world.

Next to her was Dodi Fayyad, the son of the Egyptian businessman and owner of the Harrods department store, Mohamed Al Fayyad. Nobody knows exactly what Diana and Dodi were talking about on that trip back, but the whole world would know what happened next. At exactly 23 minutes past 12, shortly after entering the tunnel, the driver lost control of the car.

The Mercedes smashed into another car and then crashed head-on into a pillar. Neither Dodi nor Diana were wearing a seatbelt. Dodi Fayed was pronounced dead at the scene, along with the driver, Henri Paul. Diana was still alive, as was the only other occupant of the car, Dodi's bodyguard, a man called Trevor Rhys-Jones.

She was still conscious and was able to talk to the doctors who were fighting to save her life. Unfortunately, it was an unwinnable fight. The impact from the crash had been so great that her heart was pushed out of place and this tore a pulmonary vein, causing massive internal bleeding. At 4 o'clock in the morning, after almost three and a half hours of French doctors fighting to save her life,

Diana, Princess of Wales, the woman many people had thought would become Queen, was pronounced dead. This much of the story I imagine you will know already. But what we will do in this episode is try to go a level deeper and unpack what was happening before the crash, the crash itself, and its aftermath. But first, let me give a very brief reminder about the protagonist of our story.

Princess Diana, or Diana Spencer as she was before she became a princess, was born on July 1, 1961 to an aristocratic British family. Her family had extensive ties to the royal family. Diana was a distant cousin of Charles, Diana's grandmother was friends with Charles' grandmother, and Diana's family even lived in a large mansion that they rented from Queen Elizabeth.

On the surface, Diana had a very privileged upbringing, but emotionally, it was not a happy one. Her mother left her father when she was seven years old, and Diana would later say that her childhood was very unhappy. Her family was well known in aristocratic British circles, but it wasn't until her relationship with Prince Charles that she truly became a household name across the world.

At the age of 20, she married Prince Charles in a ceremony that was watched by over 750 million people. It was a spectacle of royal pomp and glamour that made her an icon overnight. But while her marriage to Prince Charles was made out to be a fairy tale for the press and the public, the reality was quite different.

Behind the scenes, the marriage was troubled from the start, with the most well-known issue being Charles' ongoing affair with his former lover, Camilla Parker Bowles, who you might know is now his wife. Diana and Charles separated in 1992, and would officially divorce four years later, in 1996.

In the interests of balance, Diana also had her own fair share of affairs. But she emerged from the divorce in a much more positive light than Charles. And she stood on her own two feet. She was a public figure in her own right. She became deeply involved in humanitarian causes, including raising awareness about AIDS and campaigning against the use of landmines.

She did things that no royal had previously done. She hugged a man suffering from AIDS, which was hugely important in debunking the myth that you could catch HIV through physical contact. She walked through a field of live landmines. She had a warmth, approachability and humanity that no member of the royal family had previously shown, and you could reasonably argue has shown since.

Her warmth and charisma made her the so-called 'people's princess', loved by millions around the world. She had this rare ability to connect with people, particularly the vulnerable and marginalised, and this made her immeasurably popular at home and abroad.

But this popularity came at a price. She was relentlessly pursued by the press in a way that no royal before and after ever has been. The tabloids followed her every move, and the public's fascination with her personal life, her relationships and her charity work was insatiable.

She was constantly hounded by photographers, and the scrutiny was so intense that Diana publicly spoke out in a TV interview about quite how difficult it was to live under the media's microscope, and how she felt that she lived in a goldfish bowl. It was this obsession with photographing her, as we'll come on to talk about in a minute, that some people said ultimately led to her tragic death.

So, what was happening in the lead-up to the crash? Why was Diana in Paris that night? And what role did the paparazzi play in it all? Diana and Dodi Fayed had only met six weeks before, but it was a whirlwind romance. They spent the summer of 1997 together, travelling on Dodi's father's yacht in the Mediterranean and staying at his family's villa in the south of France.

Although it had only been going on for a few weeks, their relationship had captured the attention of the press, and speculation was rampant about whether the couple were about to announce an engagement. On the evening of August 30th, they ate at the restaurant of the Ritz Hotel in Paris, which was owned by Dodi's father, Mohamed Al-Fayed.

After dinner, they decided to leave and head back to Dodi's apartment before leaving for London the following morning. The problem was, as always, the hordes of paparazzi waiting eagerly outside the hotel, knowing that Diana and Dodi would have to leave eventually. But Dodi had a plan to throw them off, to trick them.

A decoy car was sent to the front of the Ritz, while Diana and Dodi slipped out through a secret door at the back of the hotel and into the Mercedes. But the plan didn't work. They were spotted. The paparazzi were soon on their tail, chasing the car through the streets of Paris. This takes us back to that tunnel, to the fateful moment when Henri Paul lost control and the car smashed into a pillar.

In the immediate aftermath of the news, there was an almost national sense of bereavement in the UK. An estimated 1 million people travelled to London to pay their respects to her, leaving bouquets of flowers and letters of condolence outside Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace, her private residence. The news was full of interviews with members of the public in tears, people who had never met Diana,

felt like they had lost a loved one of their own: a wife, mother or sister. And Britain isn't known to be a nation of people who are particularly comfortable with their emotions. You might know the term 'stiff upper lip', which is this idea that it is honourable to avoid showing any emotion, even in times of great sadness and despair. But something was different.

There were men, women and children in tears at the loss of this woman they had never met. Commentators would later point to it as a defining moment in British history, a time when people in Britain became comfortable with displaying their emotions. For one family in Britain, however, there was no such emotional awakening. The royal family was staying at Balmoral Castle, its large country estate in Scotland.

There were some token public statements put out in the press, but the Queen and the wider royal family were criticised for what was interpreted as a cold and emotionless reaction, especially compared to the outpouring of grief from the general public. Diana's funeral took place a week after her death, on September 6th.

and was watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people across the world. If you were one of them, you might remember that her sons, the then 12 and 15 year old Harry and William, walked behind the funeral procession, together with Prince Charles, Prince Philip and Diana's brother, the Earl of Spencer.

The inclusion of the boys in the funeral procession was highly contentious and was criticised by many as showing an utter lack of compassion. After all, these were two boys who had just lost their mother and they were being forced to grieve in front of a live crowd of millions and billions more watching on TV.

Unsurprisingly, Prince William would later say that walking behind his mother's coffin was one of the hardest things he has ever done. As you may remember, the guest list at the funeral service itself was a veritable who's who of notable figures. World leaders, past and present, kings and queens, musicians, Hollywood actors and directors.

There had initially been concerns that the funeral shouldn't have been held in Westminster Abbey, a large cathedral in London, partly because there wouldn't have been enough guests to fill it. These concerns were clearly unfounded. Every seat was filled, and an estimated 2.5 million people descended on the streets of London to pay their respects.

In the weeks and months afterwards, questions started to be asked about who was to blame, and whether her death could have been prevented. Was it simply a tragic accident, or were there other forces at play? Mohammed Al-Fayed, Dodi's father, pointed the finger directly at the royal family, and made the shocking accusation that Diana and his son were murdered in a plot orchestrated by the British establishment.

Many pointed the finger at Henri Paul, the driver, as tests later revealed he had been drinking alcohol and he was four times the legal limit. In other words, he was drunk, he crashed, and that's the end of it. Others laid the blame squarely with the paparazzi, arguing that their pursuit had forced Henri Paul to drive at reckless speeds to avoid them.

The paparazzi had never given her an inch of privacy and, to her last breath, had used her as a product to squeeze money out of. And in one final display of the transactional nature of the paparazzi's relationship with Diana, as she lay dying in the wreckage of the car, instead of trying to help in some way or giving the paramedics the privacy to try to save her life, members of the press jumped onto the roof of the car

and continued to take photos of the critically injured woman. It was the paparazzi that ultimately bore responsibility. So the argument goes. Henri Paul might have been drunk, but he wouldn't have been driving so fast if the car wasn't being pursued by the paparazzi. And this is not just a theory, it's not just someone's argument. There was a lengthy official inquest into the death,

which concluded that, and I'm quoting directly, "Diana was unlawfully killed by the grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles" meaning the paparazzi, "and of the Mercedes driver, Henri Paul." In other words, if she hadn't been followed by the paparazzi, and if Henri Paul had been sober, she would still be alive today. And going one level further up,

Some lay the blame at the feet of the public, the people who bought the newspapers and magazines that paid the paparazzi for their photos.

A single picture of Diana could go for 500,000 pounds, more than a million euros in today's money. So it's hardly surprising that the paparazzi chased her so relentlessly. It is us, the public, who must bear some of the responsibility for endlessly buying the magazines with paparazzi pictures of Diana.

and for having such an insatiable appetite to consume every last detail and picture of the private life of someone who is a vulnerable and lonely woman, struggling to repair her life after a nasty public divorce. Now, it has been more than 25 years since the events of that fateful evening in Paris. Her sons have grown up, married, and had children of their own.

They both, reportedly, have a visceral hatred and distrust of the press, especially the British tabloid press. And who can blame them? The official verdict was that their mother's death was unlawfully caused first by the paparazzi. Without the paparazzi, these two men would still have a mother. Their children would have a grandmother.

To wrap things up, perhaps the question to leave you with is to ask what has been learned from Diana's tragic death. It highlighted the dark side of fame and the extreme consequences of a relentless press. But did it change anything? More than 25 years later, her story still serves as a powerful reminder of the human cost behind the headlines.

Okay then, that is it for today's episode on the death of Princess Diana. I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learned something new. As a final reminder, if you enjoyed this episode and you're wondering how to more than double the amount of episodes you can get, plus learn with our interactive transcripts, subtitles and key vocabulary, then the place to go for that is leonardoenglish.com.

And if you aren't yet ready to become a member, but you'd like to do something nice to support the show, then I would love for you to think about leaving a review or a star rating on your favourite podcast app. It takes less than 30 seconds to do, but they are super helpful and each one brings a smile to my face. You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English. I'm Alistair Budge. You stay safe and I'll catch you in the next episode.