Page 53 - BBC History - September 2017

popular. Despite having left office 10 years As the eldest child of the future George IV, resolutely refused to do. As the Whig
ago, Tony Blair is arguably one of the least Charlotte would have become queen if she politician Henry Brougham remarked:
popular public figures in the country. And had lived. Like Princess Diana, she was the “It really was as though every household
even Diana herself has disappeared from our child of an unhappy marriage with a throughout Great Britain had lost a
national conversation to an extent that would complicated love life of her own. Her father favourite child.”
have seemed unimaginable in those heady tried to arrange a match with the Prince of One lesson of Charlotte’s death is that there
days after her death. By 2016 there were even Orange, but despite signing a marriage is nothing the British people enjoy so much as
reports that her grave at Althorp was contract, she eventually broke off the a chance to indulge their taste for public
overgrown and neglected, a metaphor for the engagement. At one point, when her father sentimentalism. But there was an obvious
way the most photographed woman in the tried to confine her to her house, she fled, difference between 1817 and 1997. In the age
world has faded from our national story. managing to escape by the simple process of of the Regency, nobody talked of the stiff
What does it all mean? And what will running into the street and hailing a cab. Not upper lip. In the late 1990s, thanks not least to
future historians make of the moment surprisingly, all this made her a national Paul Gascoigne (pictured below left), who had
when, as the legend has it, a nation wept as celebrity: whenever she took a coach to the wept so spectacularly at the end of the 1990
never before, and when the monarchy itself seaside, she was invariably mobbed World Cup, Britain was only just emerging
seemed in peril? by huge crowds. from a long period in which public tears were
Alas, after a successful marriage to the generally regarded as weak and unmanly.
Public frenzy future Leopold I of Belgium, Charlotte died at In this context, the outpouring of national
The first obvious point is that Diana’s death the age of 21 while delivering a stillborn son. sentiment at Diana’s death had a clear
was not unprecedented. Royal occasions have In the aftermath, the country was plunged political connotation. The outgoing
always provoked public fervour and com- into mourning. Conservative administration had not
manded vast crowds, while one of the few Even the poorest people in the land were only been dominated almost entirely by
certainties of history is that the death of an reported to be wearing makeshift black men, it had been led by a prime
attractive young woman, especially one with armbands, while the capital’s shops, minister immensely unlikely to
small children, will always produce more the docks, the law courts and the burst into tears in public, the
public tears than the demise of an older one, Royal Exchange closed for two determinedly understated and
or a man. The frenzy following Diana’s death weeks. The story goes that demand ostentatiously unemotional
was indeed different from the more solemn for colourful ribbons and other John Major.
reactions to the deaths of George VI in 1952 or bright clothes collapsed so But if Major was a man who
Victoria in 1901. But there is actually a good completely that manufacturers always seemed uncomfortable
GETTY precedent for the events of 1997: the death of begged the government to reduce the talking about his feelings in front of
mourning period, which they
Princess Charlotte of Wales in 1817.
the cameras, Blair was different. And

Elton John sings ‘Candle in the Wind’ Spectators weep at the funeral procession, Whitehall, 6 September. Two out
in Westminster Abbey of three Britons professed to being upset, or very upset, by Diana’s death

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