What the courtiers saw: the inside story of the great royal fightback

It is almost exactly a decade since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, transformed the country into what Private Eye would call a ‘cellotaph’: grottos everywhere, great and small, full of cellophane-wrapped bunches of flowers, teddy bears, candles, the scenes of unrestrained emotion and group trauma the like of which had never been seen before. The mood of the week preceding the Princess’s funeral shook the ancient institution of monarchy to its foundations. Ten years on, it is easy to forget how volatile and eerie those days seemed.

And yet the institution and the royal family have endured and prospered. Charles and Camilla, so vilified in the immediate aftermath of the Princess’s death, are now happily married. Last month Diana’s sons hosted a concert in their mother’s memory at Wembley that was a model of amiable contentment; indeed, William and Harry have come to embody an appealing sense of continuity and change — traditional values in a modern setting, if you will.