LETTERS The myth of Dianamania
Sir: Graham Turner (`Her candle has not survived the wind', 14 November) begins, `When Lady Susan Hussey . . . arrived at Balmoral . . . she found it hard to convince the royal household of the intensity and magnitude of the grief which was sweeping the capital.'
London is not the only town in the king- dom. I recollect, in that first week of September last year, the throne-bashing tabloids howling, 'The Queen should return, to be among her own people!' Leaving aside that a higher proportion of the population of upper Deeside have more in common with the granddaughter of the Earl of Strathmore than most people dwelling along the lower Thames, this crass metropolitan Parochialism was pouring off the press — a week before the Scots were due to vote in a national referendum on self-government.
Nor do you have to go as far as Aberdeen- shire to test whether the media-driven hyste- ria reflected the public mind. On the Wednesday morning (three and a half days after the event in Paris), I went into my local eaff, a dozen miles south-west of London, for a cup of coffee. The young lad behind the counter, seeing the front page of my Daily Telegraph, muttered vaguely, 'Funny old business — this Diana thing!' It was the first mention I had heard, outside the press and radio, of the accident.
This hardly suggests a national uprising against the House of Windsor.
lain Burgess 4 Cedars Road, Hampton Wick, Middlesex
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