She made it into the book
Diana,
Princess of Wales
1961 – 1997 · Sandringham, England
Mother · Humanitarian · The People's Princess
This book belongs to women over fifty — and to the rare few who never got there but changed the world on their way through. Diana taught an entire generation of us what it looks like to reach for the person everyone else steps around. She was 36.
The things she loved
Forget-me-nots
Her favourite flower — planted in their thousands at Kensington Palace in her memory. As if she could ever be forgotten.
Duran Duran
Her favourite band, and she told them so. "She was certainly our favourite princess," Simon Le Bon said at her memorial concert.
Dance
Ballet-trained and never happier than mid-twirl — she once surprised the world dancing on stage at the Royal Opera House.
Her boys
William and Harry, above everything. She queued at theme parks and sat in hospital wards so they'd know real life.
The people others avoided
She held hands the world was afraid to hold — and changed what the world was afraid of.
"Hello"
Lionel Richie has said the 1984 ballad was her favourite song. A romantic to the last.
What she did
Born Diana Spencer at Park House, Sandringham — a kindergarten teacher before she was a princess.
Married at St Paul's while an estimated 750 million people watched. She was 20.
William, then Harry — and a new kind of royal motherhood: school runs, theme parks, arms always open.
The handshake. She took the hand of an AIDS patient without gloves, on camera — and dismantled a stigma in one gesture.
Walked a live minefield in Angola for the HALO Trust, months before the international landmine ban treaty was signed.
Died in Paris, 31 August. The gates of Kensington Palace disappeared under a million flowers.
What we remember
We remember the touch. The gloves that came off, the eye-level crouch beside every child, the hand held in every ward the cameras didn't want to enter. Royalty had always been distance — Diana made it nearness — and no palace, before or since, has been able to take that back. Those of us who watched her as young women are the keepers of it now.
Rest gently, Diana. You made the book. Read her full story on the blog