A reporter remembers the death of Diana

The call came at5 o'clock London time on a sleepySundaymorning.

I had gone to bed with the news that Diana, Princess of Wales, self-proclaimed Queen of People's Hearts, and daily fodder for gossip mags and Britain's notoriously cruel red-top news rags, had been in a car accident in Paris and was being treated in hospital for a broken arm.No big deal right? Wrong.

Through the haze of sleep I heard a Toronto editor shouting down the line, "Diana's dead, how quickly can you get to Buckingham Palace?"

Thirty minutes later I was there, as dazed as the handful of still-shocked Londoners gathered at the sealed gates of the Queen's London home. The Royal Family wasn't there, the flagpole on the palace's roof was bare, as protocol demanded.

Strong reaction

The Royal Standardcould only fly when the monarch was in residence, and she was with her family, including Diana's sons, at her Scottish estate of Balmoral.

As mourners began the ritual of placing flowers by the gates and tying personal messages of grief to its black bars I asked what they thought of her death.

Some could barely speak and choked back sobs as they struggled to put feelings into words.Most were deeply touched, tearful, experiencing almost a personal loss. To them Diana was an innocent, a beautiful young woman and mother who had been poorly used by her husband and her royal in-laws.She had fulfilled her duty and provided the monarchy with not one, but two heirs, and now look.They had killed her.

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Who "they" really were would become a central point of debate in the ensuing two weeks of national angst.Was it the paparazzi who pursued Diana relentlessly (and who she occasionally used as leverage in her ongoing battle with Prince Charles for the public's support.) Was it her resentful ex-husband?Or some shadowy secret service acting on the orders of God-knows-who because she planned to marry Dodi Fayad?

Royal Family reacts

As the Royal Family struggled to deal with its own grief over her death, a great black tide of anger and recrimination surged up to the gilded gates of Buckingham Palace and Diana's home at Kensington Palace.

The flotsam of lurid flower arrangements, mawkish stuffed animals and personal messages to Diana and her sons piled up.

The sickly sweet scent of rotting vegetation hung thick over the crowds as tens of thousands of sad-faced Londoners stood in near absolute silence in a deep semicircle waiting their turn to move forward and behold the growing spectacle.

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Elsewhere, thousands waited hours in line to sign one of dozens of books of remembrance.It quickly became clear this was more than a tragic car accident.It was suddenly a national crisis, a political time bomb that could permanently damage, perhaps even destroy, the Royal Family and its hangers on.

As I hurried around London that week, gathering radio tape for CBC News, the growing resentment among the Queen's subjects was palpable.It was all anyone talked about.Stoked by headline-hungry tabloids, labourers and nannies, bus drivers and store clerks, demanded evidence of grief from the Queen and her family.

"Where Is Our Queen, Where Is Her Flag" the Sun blared.Like the monarchs of France, forced to eat dinner in public to satisfy the curiosity of gaping crowds at Versailles, the Windsors were compelled to display their anguish.

Public hears from the Queen

Four days after Diana's death, the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles and his two now motherless boys finally emerged from Balmoral to examine the shrine local folk had placed there.

Strict protocols were tossed as the government of Tony Blair and the Queen's household functionaries struggled to regain the initiative in a PR nightmare.The bare flagpole on Buckingham Palace was dressed with a Union Jack at half-mast.The Queen returned to London and recorded an unprecedented message to the public, speaking movingly of her daughter-in-law's legacy and the pain of her loss.

Finally mollified, the newspapers refocused their ire on the villainous paparazzi, whom they accused of pursuing the former princess to her death (for photographs that those self-same tabloids paid big money for, incidentally).

Public life and death

The funeral, eight days after her death, was a state spectacle.It was the largest public event I had ever covered and I was struck by its scale.

The emotional outpouring of a nation famous for its reserve and stoicism was at times overwhelming.But I was also struck by a nagging hollowness in that eruption of grief.

There was no doubt that a young mother killed in a car accident was a tragedy.I felt bad for her sons. But what did it signify?What did that enormous reaction to her death really mean?I asked myself that question repeatedly during that extraordinary week but never found a satisfactory answer.

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Standing in the sunshine in front of Westminster Abbey on the day of Diana's funeral, I watched as a million people fell quiet to hear the strains of Elton John's repurposed pop hit drifting through London's rarely silent streets. It seemed a fitting salute to a pop culture icon who had lived, willingly or not, and died in the public eye.