Burnley & Pendle Citizen - the local newspaper for our community

New light shed on Diana crash

From the Bolton Evening News, first published Tuesday 4th May 2004.

Diana -- Death Of A Goddess by David Cohen (Century, £16.99)

William and Harry by Ingrid Seward (Headline, £7.99)

RENEWED investigations into the death of Princess Diana six years after her death in a Paris car crash is igniting interest once more in that particular royal family.

Britain's top policeman, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens, has been in the Alma Tunnel this week trying to discover the cause of her early death. He is also attempting to discover the truth, if any, behind those conspiracy theories.

This air of mystery is probably helped by the publication of David Cohen's book Death Of A Goddess, not the least because it is well-researched and does shed new light on the crash.

It shows the amount of evidence apparently not made available by the French police, including Mercedes driver Henri Paul's true role on behalf of MI6.

David Cohen is a film-maker as well as a writer and his close attention to detail reveals a man with an eye to the bigger picture.

Whatever results from the current re-examination of forensic evidence and other influences, his book is a useful reference to time, place and circumstances. History should reveal the rest, and the truth.

And parallel with the continued questions is the unabated interest in Diana's princely sons William and Harry.

So, Ingrid Seward's eponymous chronicle of their lives will certainly find fans, both here and especially in America.

She recounts their enormously privileged chidhood, the trauma of their parents' divorce and the subsequent tragic death of their mother with the eye of an experienced royal-watcher.

She continues in the same pragmatic way through the tabloid gossip, the scandals and the ordinary achievements of two young men forced to live their lives in the spotlight.

Worse, when they were both at a vulnerable age, their mother brought her version of her married life into the public arena, including the infamous Panorama interview.

No-one can forget the moving sight of both boys with their father at Diana's funeral, walking in that heartbreakingly dignified way with emotions locked in everywhere but their eyes.

And since then, in spite of various media "agreements", their activities and life milestones have seldom been off TV or out of the national media.

In spite of all that, as recent pictures show, William and Harry appear to be growing up remarkably normally. It is the un-royal life that Princess Diana always wanted for what she described as "my boys" and, in spite of her life and death once more in the headlines, at least they have that.

Angela Kelly

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