COMPARE and contrast.When Princess Diana died, all normal radio and television programmes ceased for the whole day. Hysterical sentimentality took over the airwaves and all four main BBC radio stations broadcast the same thing. It was a Sunday, and I remember saying to my wife: "Never mind, there's a Mozart concert on this afternoon. We'll get some relief then." Not on your life. It was cancelled and all we got was wall-to-wall Di.
But when Princess Margaret died, the mass media did not go into a frenzy. Everything continued as usual. The appalling corruption of the nation's children known as Saturday morning TV, went on as before. In the evening, there was the brainless and tasteless orgy of audience participation in the choosing of a Pop Idol. Sports events were not cancelled as in Di's time.
How do we begin to account for the enormous differences in the way these two royal deaths were received? It's only reasonable to say that, while Margaret's demise was half expected since she had been ill for many years, Diana's was sudden, dramatic and out of the blue. But I think there is more to it than that.
Diana was young and glamorous. She was a one-woman soap opera; her daily, media-exposed, life brash and sordid enough to fill a week's episodes of EastEnders. Margaret had been glamorous - but that was long ago, in the days when it was possible to combine glamour with good taste. Margaret loved the sensual pleasures of life, but she preserved a sense of restraint and the notion that some personal things are private. Diana seemed to live her life as if she expressly intended it to take place on camera. More significant still was the fact that Diana seemed to be at one with the tabloid culture of the mass media, so that a great many people saw her as "one of us". Margaret was intelligent and refined; moreover her manner of speech revealed her for the regal personage she was. She was definitely not "one of us".
She worked hard too: three hundred public engagements a year before she fell ill, and a near lifelong presidency of the NSPCC. Margaret also pioneered work with her own AIDS charity long before Diana's spin doctors told her that this - like the landmines stunt - would look good on her CV.
In 1955, Margaret willingly forfeited her best opportunity for happiness when she refused to marry the man she adored, Group Captain Peter Townsend - because he had been divorced. Her reasons for refusing this marriage are instructive. She said she would not marry a divorced man because she was "...mindful of the teachings of the church". She was being very harsh on herself, especially as Townsend was divorced before he met Margaret: it was not a case of her splitting up his marriage. Mind you, the Church of England, did not exactly show much Christian charity in the matter. It wouldn't let an innocent girl marry a divorced man. How times have changed! The Church these days is ready to bless any sort of perversion so long as it can be described as a "relationship".
Thank you for combining glamour with responsibility, Margaret. Rest in peace.
Published: Tuesday, February 12, 2002
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