the office to warn the editor of the News of the World , Phil Hall, who was still in evening dress, having been summoned from a formal dinner when news of the crash came in.
Even as the front page of the News of the World was being changed to make room for the story and photographs from Paris, word was filtering through that photographers at the scene of the crash were being rounded up and arrested. ‘That was the first time I felt sick,’ recalls Lennox. ‘I couldn’t believe the names as they came over the wires. These were not paparazzi but brilliant, award-winning photographers who had worked in trouble spots around the world. But in our celebrity-obsessed world they earn more from a pavement shot of Diana than in two months working in central Africa.’
In Paris, as the medical team at the Pitié-Salpétrière hospital tried in vain to revive the Princess, Father Yves Clochard-Bossuet was summoned and asked to administer the last rites to her. The first indication waiting photographers had of the drama unfolding inside the hospital was when they saw an official from the British Embassy step out of a hospital room, lean back, and then start sliding down the wall, clearly in deep distress.
At four o’clock in Paris (3 a.m. in London), Diana was pronounced dead. At once the photographs of her lying in the back of the wrecked Mercedes were transformed from a valuable commodity into a curse, a veritable plague that infected everyone who touched them. ‘Delete, delete, delete,’ Lennox shouted to histechnician, Mark Hunt. ‘Bury them in the machine.’ From that moment on the pictures, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist, and anyone who asked about them was given a curt and abrupt answer regarding their whereabouts. For they were now evidence of a terrible complicity in the shameful ending of the fairy tale; a damsel in distress exploited by commercial greed to feed the public’s shameless voyeurism. As for the photographers who had milled around the wrecked car only seconds after the crash, they now began their own journey, a nightmare that started in a police cell and ended in prosecution, financial ruin and, for at least one, suicide.
While the pictures of the dying Princess became a liability rather than an exclusive, Lennox was enough of a seasoned campaigner to realize that one day they might well surface. In his work in the war zones of the world, the award-winning photographer had a rule of thumb for some of the gruesome images he witnessed and captured on film: today, tomorrow, and maybe never. He put the Diana pictures into the ‘maybe never’ category, believing that one day someone, somewhere might take a chance and publish them. Seven years later, in April 2004, he was proved right when, in America, CBS TV broadcast grainy shots of the Princess trapped in the car as part of a documentary ‘investigating’ the crash.
On that fateful night, 31 August 1997, Diana had been on a different journey, one that began in hope and ended in tragedy, a life cut short just as it was truly beginning. While it was the journey of only one woman, somehow it came to embrace and involve us all. In a life of many contrasts and contradictions, one of the most savage of ironies is that Diana’s life ended in a tunnel just as she was seeing light at the end of her own long march to fulfilment and happiness.
C HAPTER O NE
Hard Road to Freedom
T HE P RINCESS OF W ALES was deep in dinner-table conversation with the film producer David Puttnam. They had known each other for years and Diana regarded Puttnam as one of the uncle figures in her life, a shoulder to lean on and a sympathetic ear always there to listen during times of trouble.
At that time, in March 1992, Puttnam, who was part of a growing group of insiders who had some inkling about her troubled life, sensed that Diana was under greater stress than usual. As they chatted at an AIDS symposium at Claridge’s Hotel in central London, the
Even as the front page of the News of the World was being changed to make room for the story and photographs from Paris, word was filtering through that photographers at the scene of the crash were being rounded up and arrested. ‘That was the first time I felt sick,’ recalls Lennox. ‘I couldn’t believe the names as they came over the wires. These were not paparazzi but brilliant, award-winning photographers who had worked in trouble spots around the world. But in our celebrity-obsessed world they earn more from a pavement shot of Diana than in two months working in central Africa.’
In Paris, as the medical team at the Pitié-Salpétrière hospital tried in vain to revive the Princess, Father Yves Clochard-Bossuet was summoned and asked to administer the last rites to her. The first indication waiting photographers had of the drama unfolding inside the hospital was when they saw an official from the British Embassy step out of a hospital room, lean back, and then start sliding down the wall, clearly in deep distress.
At four o’clock in Paris (3 a.m. in London), Diana was pronounced dead. At once the photographs of her lying in the back of the wrecked Mercedes were transformed from a valuable commodity into a curse, a veritable plague that infected everyone who touched them. ‘Delete, delete, delete,’ Lennox shouted to histechnician, Mark Hunt. ‘Bury them in the machine.’ From that moment on the pictures, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist, and anyone who asked about them was given a curt and abrupt answer regarding their whereabouts. For they were now evidence of a terrible complicity in the shameful ending of the fairy tale; a damsel in distress exploited by commercial greed to feed the public’s shameless voyeurism. As for the photographers who had milled around the wrecked car only seconds after the crash, they now began their own journey, a nightmare that started in a police cell and ended in prosecution, financial ruin and, for at least one, suicide.
While the pictures of the dying Princess became a liability rather than an exclusive, Lennox was enough of a seasoned campaigner to realize that one day they might well surface. In his work in the war zones of the world, the award-winning photographer had a rule of thumb for some of the gruesome images he witnessed and captured on film: today, tomorrow, and maybe never. He put the Diana pictures into the ‘maybe never’ category, believing that one day someone, somewhere might take a chance and publish them. Seven years later, in April 2004, he was proved right when, in America, CBS TV broadcast grainy shots of the Princess trapped in the car as part of a documentary ‘investigating’ the crash.
On that fateful night, 31 August 1997, Diana had been on a different journey, one that began in hope and ended in tragedy, a life cut short just as it was truly beginning. While it was the journey of only one woman, somehow it came to embrace and involve us all. In a life of many contrasts and contradictions, one of the most savage of ironies is that Diana’s life ended in a tunnel just as she was seeing light at the end of her own long march to fulfilment and happiness.
C HAPTER O NE
Hard Road to Freedom
T HE P RINCESS OF W ALES was deep in dinner-table conversation with the film producer David Puttnam. They had known each other for years and Diana regarded Puttnam as one of the uncle figures in her life, a shoulder to lean on and a sympathetic ear always there to listen during times of trouble.
At that time, in March 1992, Puttnam, who was part of a growing group of insiders who had some inkling about her troubled life, sensed that Diana was under greater stress than usual. As they chatted at an AIDS symposium at Claridge’s Hotel in central London, the
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