Excitement at the wedding was not confined to central London. Although there were fewer street parties than at the Silver Jubilee in 1977, the likely explanation is that, four years on, people were less inclined to see it as a once-in-a generation collective event, and preferred to watch it on television. Yet almost every village organized some sort of celebration. In Tynemouth, the council staged a ‘harbour spectacular, complete with commandos storming the cliffs’. In Harrogate, the Great Yorkshire Showground hosted a medieval joust, motorbike stunts and a firework display. At Caernarvon Castle, hundreds gathered to watch the ‘largest portable colour television screen in the world’. In Romsey, Hampshire, where the couple spent their first night of married life, some 30,000 people turned out to cheer their black Rolls-Royce, among them a landlord who had decorated his pub with colossal eight-foot portraits of Charles and Diana, and a butcher who ‘modelled wedding rosettes from breast of lamb, garnished with the initials C and D in liver’.fn1 And in battle-scarred Brixton, a Rastafarian record-shop owner organized a street party on Railton Road, with hundreds of people dancing to reggae music. People in Brixton were fond of Prince Charles, he said, because he had visited Lewisham earlier that year to open a social club. ‘People like him being married to Lady Diana. That is why we are holding a peace dance so that we can get the community back together and generate some spirit.’8
The television audience was simply phenomenal. More than 28 million people watched the coverage in Britain, as well as an estimated 750 million worldwide. Almost all of Mass Observation’s correspondents were among them. In Lambeth, Margaret Bradshaw put on a ‘red, white and blue jumper’ and settled down to watch with her husband and elderly mother, while friends and neighbours popped in and out all day. ‘Fantastic,’ she wrote. ‘Proud to be British … Something cheerful in the gloom of redundancy, youth unemployment and riots.’ In Chelmsford, Jean Carr and her family spent the day in front of the television. ‘It was a lovely and joyful day,’ she wrote, ‘one that will be always remembered … Lots of people were glad of the wedding and it took their minds for a little while of the ressesion [sic].’9
In Darlington, Susan Gray dressed her 4-year-old daughter in a red, white and blue pinafore before heading over to her own father’s to watch the show. Not only had Susan prepared a wedding scrapbook for her daughter, she had also bought her a special wedding mug, to be brought out as a surprise with her ‘wedding day elevenses’. The whole family enjoyed the day, even Susan’s adult brother, who originally claimed he would rather spend the time with his model aircraft. Her father, husband and brother were ‘really taken’ with Diana’s dress, and agreed that she was ‘bringing prettiness back into clothes’. For her part, Susan noted that although Darlington was a Labour stronghold there was no talk locally of ‘flying the red flag or having anti-wedding events’. Her husband reported that even the ‘most staunchly Socialist of his immediate colleagues had watched the whole thing on television and said that “it was all worth it”’.10
Down in Devon, Mary Richards watched the wedding with her husband and daughters. Since it was a special occasion, she had splashed out on a bottle of wine, something usually reserved for Christmas. ‘We girls are all very fond of Charles,’ she wrote:
We are happy to see him married to such a lovely girl. Wished we could have been in London … We all helped ourselves to food watching the telly all the time, we didn’t miss anything. (The music made our hair stand on end.) We opened the wine and toasted the royal couple … Wished we could have been there cheering with the crowds.
That evening, they walked the one and a half miles into Newton Abbot (‘buses are too pricy’) to see the council’s official pageant. The programme for this event was close to parody: while a concert by the Royal Marines was fair enough, some of the other events – a ‘display of movement to music’ by the Kingsteignton Ladies Keep Fit Group, a ‘Motor Cycle Gymkhana’ or an ‘Exhibition of Fire Eating by Mr W. E. J. Lane (weather permitting)’ – seemed like something from Private Eye. But Mary adored ‘every minute of it. Thousands of people in town all friendly, like Christmas … It was a wonderful day. A day to remember.’
Afterwards, Mary felt moved to record some thoughts about the day and what it meant. She began with her friends and family:
Trade union leader we met. It was very nice but! One of Diana’s presents cost twice as much as the house your Debbie is buying on a mortgage.
Daughter aged 20. I would rather see them spend our money like this than on bombs and missiles …
Daughter aged 19. I think I am a royalist? Yes, I know I am. The Americans must be green with envy, they will have their majorettes out tomorrow.
My husband watched TV all day, more than I had time to, and his comment was ‘What a load of rubbish!’ He started watching the wedding an hour before we could. We did not believe what he said he had obviously enjoyed every minute of it.
8 year old daughter. I shall marry a prince when I grow up. I am going to be posh!
My comment. A great day – Wonderful! Going to watch it all over again Sunday evening.
The wedding, Mary explained, was ‘a good excuse for some fun and games’ and ‘an escape from the depressing times we are going through’. She did not begrudge the cost of the House of Windsor; if Britain became a republic, ‘it would be spent on bombs’. As for the principle of the monarchy, she was all for it:
Royalty is like an extended family to many people. People know and can relate to members of the Royal Family, they have problems just like us and celebrations that we can join in.
Working people I know did not find it a bore. We escaped for a day and joined the Royal Family in their happiness. We worried with the Queen hoping no one would be killed or injured by some mad fool.
Everything went well we enjoyed the few mistakes our Royalty made, it was just like our very own big family day.
We don’t want a President or a Dictator or anything like that. We love our Royal Family and [are] looking forward to the next big happy event in their lives.
Over the page, there was a poignant little addition. ‘Royalty on the whole set high standards of morals and are an example of old fashioned family life,’ she wrote. ‘Nearly everyone I know think the Royals are great and often talk about them like they talk about their own families.’ Poor Mary was in for some disappointments in the years ahead.11
Of course not everybody was carried away. The ever-jolly Kenneth Williams thought the dress ‘badly designed’, the music ‘rotten’ and the ‘speakers of prayers & addresses all very bad indeed’. Yet that other great diarist of the age, Adrian Mole, had a thoroughly good time. ‘How proud I am to be English!’ he wrote. ‘Foreigners must be as sick as pigs! We truly lead the world when it comes to pageantry! I must admit to having tears in my eyes when I saw all the cockneys who had stood since dawn, cheering heartily all the rich, well-dressed, famous people going by in carriages and Rolls-Royces.’ Disappointingly, Adrian missed the exchange of rings because his grandmother had started crying and he had gone to fetch some toilet roll. But they had a wonderful street party afterwards, complete with ‘jam tarts, sausage rolls and sausages on sticks’, while a Des O’Connor album played on the stereo. At the end, ‘Mr Singh made a speech about how great it was to be British. Everyone cheered and sang “Land of Hope and Glory”. But only Mr Singh knew all the words.’12
What did it all mean? Among most people’s memories of the day were the glamour of Diana’s dress, the fact that both Charles and Diana stumbled while reciting their vows, and of course the kiss on the palace balcony. Many also remembered the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, who called the wedding ‘the stuff of which fairy tales were made’. In fact, he was pointing out that while fairy tales typically end with a wedding, a real wedding is the beginning of an adventure, not an end. Unfortunately, most people heard only the words ‘fairy tale’, which were to be cruelly replayed for years to come.
Yet amid the pageantry, few co
mmentators forgot the terrible headlines of the last few months. ‘In a grey world, for a troubled nation smarting from a crown of social and political thorns,’ said the front page of The Times, ‘it was a day of unbridled romance, colour and celebration, shared with half the globe.’ The royal historian Robert Lacey was less cheerful. ‘We are travelling a hard road this summer,’ he wrote in the Express. ‘The ruined streets of Toxteth, Southall and Northern Ireland make a bleak backdrop to the carriages, fine clothes and flowers.’ But ‘if the shattered shop windows of Toxteth remind us of humanity’s greed, selfishness and imperfection, this marriage of two young people reminds us of the best, the freshest, the most idealistic of human impulses.’13
Even the ultra-conservative George Gale did not forget the woes of recent months. Wednesday, he said, had belonged to the ‘ordinary people’, not the rioters, strikers and law-breakers:
They were saying, as they sang and cheered and laughed and waved their flags, that they did not hate their police, that they admired their soldiers, that marching military bands could constrict their throats and wet their eyes, that they loved their country.
They were saying that they were the majority and that they did not riot in the streets or vandalise housing estates or loot shops or mug old women or fight on football terraces or maraud the country in packs of motorcycles.
They brought along their children; no one would be hurt; there would be no need to board up shop fronts; there would be no call for riot shields, CS gas canisters, flaying truncheons.
Even Gale admitted that ‘a royal wedding does not improve decaying city centres. It does not wipe out racial hostilities. It does not make the deprived and disaffected suddenly love the forces of law and order.’ But it proved, he thought, that ‘there is more to Britain than riots in Brixton and Toxteth, that in city centres there can be dancing as well as rioting, that the police are friends and not enemies, that the country can relax and enjoy itself, that patriotism and tolerance are still alive – and both doing well.’
All this was predictable enough. But what was a bit less predictable, and made for a contrast with the Silver Jubilee in 1977, was the defiant, supercharged patriotism of some of the editorials. It was as if every bleak headline about unemployment and violence had made it all the more urgent to broadcast Britain’s virtues from the rooftops, as if every step down the ladder had made it all the more important to boast about how high Britain stood. ‘London may no longer be the most important of cities,’ said the Express, ‘but it is still the capital of pageantry and yesterday it was the focus of all attention.’ The Mirror offered a similar blend of self-pity and self-importance. ‘Our politicians are wrong almost as often as our weathermen,’ it admitted. ‘We build cars with more faults than a McEnroe line judge. Motorways with more cracks than a stand-up comic. Our cricketers need wider bats. Our soccer players wider goalmouths to aim at. Our golfers are bunkered.’ But ‘at one thing we CAN still beat the rest. We know how to throw a wedding. The pageantry, splendour, timing and organisation of Wednesday’s great show was the envy of the world.’
Unfortunately, the paper went on, the forecast for the next few years was ‘gloom and doom … on all fronts’. So all true patriots should hope for another Royal Wedding. ‘Come on, Prince Andrew! Your country needs you!’ It had clearly not occurred to the Mirror that fate might provide an even more effective way of stoking patriotic sentiment than a wedding. But in July 1981 nobody was expecting a war.14
The excitement of the Royal Wedding took a long time to fade. Afterwards, hundreds of thousands of letters poured into Buckingham Palace, while stores were deluged with orders for copies of Diana’s dress. A month later, the BBC’s official Album of the Royal Wedding sold more than 130,000 copies to top the charts for two weeks, while the video recording raced straight to the top of the video charts. And when, on 5 November, the palace confirmed that Diana was expecting a baby, the newspapers were beside themselves. ‘The Happiest News of the Year’, said the Mirror. ‘What Wonderful News!’ said the Express. ‘Naturally,’ said the prospective father, ‘my wife is overjoyed.’15
There had, of course, always been enormous interest in the Royal Family. Even so, the enthusiasm for Charles and Diana went far beyond the fascination with Princess Margaret or Princess Anne. One explanation is that the appetite for patriotic escapism was simply much greater in the summer of 1981, partly because of the shock of the recession and the riots, but also because, after years of being lectured about how low their morale had sunk, the British people were desperate to feel good about themselves. But there was obviously another element, captured in that Daily Express headline: ‘DIANA, THIS IS YOUR DAY.’ The X-factor was Diana herself.16
Looking back, it is easy to spot the signs of trouble ahead. At the age of 32, Charles had had numerous aristocratic girlfriends, among them the future Camilla Parker-Bowles. In essence, he only married Diana, who was almost thirteen years his junior, because the pressure was mounting and she seemed reasonably suitable. Few people close to the couple were under any illusions, except perhaps the girlish Diana. Even in their famously excruciating interview to publicize their engagement, they sat at opposite ends of a sofa and seemed at best politely affectionate. When the interviewer asked if they were in love, Diana murmured softly, ‘Of course.’ But Charles, in a moment of overwhelming awfulness, gave a thin smile, as if the idea were faintly ridiculous, and said: ‘Whatever “in love” means.’ Diana laughed – at the time.17
In other circumstances, this might not have been an insuperable problem. But no royal couple in modern times had been under such pressure from the media. At the turn of the 1980s, Fleet Street was in the throes of change, with the Sun, the Mirror and the new Daily Star locked in fierce competition to woo working-class readers. Tellingly, it was the ultra-patriotic, anti-deferential Sun, on 8 September 1980, that first revealed Diana’s relationship with the Prince, using a photograph of the two at a polo match. Within days reporters had descended on her London kindergarten, cynically photographing her with the sun directly behind her, so that her legs would be visible through her thin skirt. The next day, the Mirror ran a front-page comment on ‘Lady Diana’s slip’, advising her to wear a petticoat if she wanted to avoid such embarrassment again.18
Right from the beginning, therefore, the 19-year-old Diana was the equivalent of a hunted animal. Journalists lurked outside her west London flat at all hours, sometimes literally chasing her flatmates down the street. One intrepid reporter tried to break into the kindergarten through a lavatory window, while the Sunday Mirror persuaded the Spencers’ former butler to sell a story about her fondness for teenage pranks. When the same paper claimed that Diana had enjoyed a nocturnal assignation with Prince Charles on the Royal Train, Buckingham Palace threatened to sue. Her mother wrote to The Times demanding to know whether editors thought it ‘necessary or fair to harass my daughter daily, from dawn until well after dusk’, while some forty-five MPs signed an early day motion deploring the press’s misbehaviour.19
It was no wonder, then, that Diana struggled to cope. When the engagement was announced in February, she was moved into Clarence House, supposedly to protect her from the press. But this only fuelled her sense of being a prisoner. And by July her mood had visibly changed. At a polo match in Hampshire, the Saturday before the big day, she fled in tears from crowds of reporters. The next day, watching Charles play polo again at Windsor, she looked pale and miserable. She was ‘very tired and very nervous’, a palace aide explained. But the papers agreed that she had lost a worrying amount of weight: so much, in fact, that her dress designers had to make almost daily alterations. ‘Darling Di, You’re Lovely’, declared the front page of the Sun, the day before her wedding, ‘But Promise Us You Won’t Lose One More Pound.’ Later, after her marriage collapsed, the newspapers blamed Prince Charles, and there were certainly millions of easier families to marry into than the Windsors. But how many brides could have tolerated such headlines without throwing themselves of
f a cliff?20
The paradox is that the same papers that hounded Diana about her weight also elevated her into a symbol of Britishness itself. By nightfall on 29 July her image was already evolving from the blushing English rose to the coolly poised embodiment of elegance and glamour. She was a star. But she was a particular kind of star, the epitome of a type. ‘The Princess of Wales’, declared one bestselling book, ‘is the 1980s Supersloane. When Diana Spencer began to appear in newspapers in the summer of 1980, the Sloane Ranger style started its gallop down the high streets, What the papers called the “Lady Di look” … was actually pure SR – a walking lesson in Mark II Sloane style at its best.’21
So said The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook (1982), one of the strangest and most revealing publishing phenomena of the age. Although it is always associated with Princess Diana, the Sloane Ranger nickname had been invented in 1975 by Harpers & Queen’s features editor Ann Barr and the marketing consultant Peter York. They used it to describe the kind of upper-class, slightly dim-witted girls who had grown up in farms and manor houses, had been to boarding schools and now shared flats around Chelsea’s Sloane Square. It soon caught on, and by the turn of the decade the label regularly appeared in the appointments pages of The Times. ‘A really “cushy number” … would suit young, married Sloane Ranger,’ explained one advertisement for a secretary to a property firm, though it paid less than the next advert, which called for a ‘Dishy Secretary with Brain’. ‘SLOANE RANGER: Much photographed ad agency reception requires a thinking receptionist/telephonist who will add to, rather than detract from, the picture,’ read another advert. ‘SLOANE RANGER,’ began a third advert. ‘Young Secretary needed by a highly prestigious firm of Estate Agents. Beautiful offices: good secretarial skills and a public school education essential.’22
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