Diana’s Mourning

In the week following the death of Princess Diana, the media presented images of the entire British nation united in tearful, hysterical grief to mourn their “People’s Princess.” However, despite this emphasis on the response of the “people,” there has so far been no detailed examination of popular attitudes or media coverage during September 1997.

James Thomas radically challenges the myths surrounding the mourning with the first ever “people’s history” of the week. He combines a detailed survey of media coverage with analysis of a range of qualitative and quantitative evidence about popular attitudes, especially those of the “ordinary” people across Britain who recorded their views and actions for the Mass-Observation of Britain project.

Diana’s Mourning provides fascinating evidence of the diversity, complexity and ambiguity of popular reactions to Diana’s death, and demonstrates that, far from being united, the British people were in fact deeply divided in grief in September 1997. It not only questions the accuracy of media representations of popular opinion, but also illustrates the media’s power to influence attitudes and shape the myth of a nation in mourning.

Introduction