-June 1997, and New York City is host to the world's hottest celebrity, selling history's most famous wardrobe.

-It was the auction of the century.

-And it's yours!

-The auction was a hit parade of iconic moments in Diana's life and times.

There was the fairy-tale princess from a more innocent age, so-called Dynasty Di from the '80s, Hollywood glamour for a glitzy new world, and the newly independent woman of the '90s, just when girl power was in the air.

-The clothes were symbolic of a life that she led, and they were being left behind.

-The auction would prove a tragic swan song rather than a new beginning.

And Diana's death two months later revealed just how caught up we all were in her life.

Against the backdrop of the old order crumbling and a new one taking its place, Diana was a modern woman for every age... -Hugging has no harmful side effects.

-...who made the waves as well as riding them.

-I am not a political figure.

My interests are humanitarian.

-To tell the story of Diana's life is to revisit the final decades of the 20th century in which she played so great a part.

♪♪ ♪♪ On December 31, 1989, the world marked the arrival of a new decade that seemed full of promise, nowhere more than Berlin... -And thousands came streaming through this gap, opened officially just before Christmas.

-...where just a few weeks earlier, the wall had come tumbling down.

-And through another hole, another East German border guard takes advantage of the new liberties.

After all, it is New Year's Eve.

-The '90s had that feel of life, rejuvenation.

when the walls started coming down, literally -- Berlin Wall, Mandela.

My daughter was born in '89, and I almost called her Liberty, because it was a time of freedom.

It was almost like time had caught up with Diana's ethos of embracing, of caring, you know, of reaching out to people.

-What did you call your daughter in the end?

-Billie.

[ Laughs ] ♪♪ -But that same New Year's Eve, Princess Diana seemed to be searching for a different kind of freedom.

She spent much of the night on the phone, to a lover.

♪♪ Unknown to either, somebody was listening in, and tapes of the conversation were sent to the national press, with consequences that would resonate for the rest of the decade.

-Oh, Squidgy, I love you, love you, love you, love you!

-But for the time being, it was royal business as usual.

-Food is always a talking point on a royal tour.

You never quite know what you're going to end up with.

But at this state lunch at the government house in Enugu, the royal couple will tuck into a plate of catfish.

♪♪ -The first overseas tour of the decade, to Nigeria, served up the familiar royal fare.

-The prince and princess called on the state king.

The princess met one of his many wives and was congratulated on having such a young husband.

-Diana's role was purely ceremonial.

-The Shehu ignored the princess, another reminder that in northern Nigeria, it's a man's world.

♪♪ -But this visit represented everything that Diana was not going to be in the '90s -- silent, ornamental, and put upon by the patriarchy.

And back home, she was cultivating a kingdom of her own, one in which she would reign as queen of hearts.

-Diana!

-[ Indistinct shouting ] ♪♪ -I was about 8 or 9, and I just felt so excited to meet Princess Diana.

I can just remember her saying what a lovely, beautiful singing voice I had.

I'm totally blind, but she just touched my hand, and that's what made me trust her.

-Diana first visited Chickenshed, a theater company open to all abilities, after she'd been invited by a friend.

-Diana came along to a performance that we did in 1990, and it was love at first sight, really.

After the show, she came backstage, and she was due to meet I think about 6 kids, but there was 150 on the stage, and she said there's no way she'd leave anybody out.

And she met everybody.

I felt that Diana always felt a bit of an outsider to the royal family, and I think that she saw what you might call other outsiders in Chickenshed.

-In its early years, Chickenshed was based out of just that.

♪♪ But the combination of Diana's mega-watt celebrity and the emotional engagement had a transformative effect.

-She did actually agree to become our patron.

I cannot express the difference from when she first became our patron.

We would do a fundraising event, and instead of raising 5,000, we might raise 250,000.

So Princess Diana was a real life fairy princess for us, because she did sprinkle her magic dust over us.

-Diana's fundraising prowess made her the poster girl for the caring, sharing '90s.

♪♪ But for the reporters covering Diana, it wasn't her charity work that kept their journalistic appetites whetted.

Especially when a feast of revelations was about to be served up.

-I received a cassette tape through the post to my office in an unmarked envelope simply addressed to me at the "Daily Mail" in around September 1991.

I remember playing it in my editor's office.

-I was astonished, because it became clear that she was -- She had a very close relationship with the man she was speaking to.

-The explosive recording was sent to at least three newspapers, in what some suggested was an orchestrated campaign to smear the Princess of Wales.

-I mean, the irony is that at the time that the newspapers had this tape, none of us thought that it could ever be published.

It was sort of seen as something that won't and couldn't happen.

Was Diana aware that it was circulating?

I suspect she was.

I don't know that for certain, but I think it must have been known by 1991 that this tape was doing the rounds.

So it is entirely plausible that this was at the back of Diana's mind when she decided she wanted to unburden herself to Andrew Morton.

-It was like you'd been given a secret, and that secret could be very dangerous.

Well, it's a question I never asked Diana.

Why did she choose me?

Why did she ask me?

[ Bird caws ] ♪♪ I think that she knew that I was independent of the BBC, ITV, Fleet Street.

She knew that I was a freelance writer.

She knew that I had written sympathetic pieces about her.

So at the time, she was looking to, I think, tell her story.

And I happened to be the right guy in the right place at the right time.

-Andrew Morton's best selling book, "Diana: Her True Story," would change the course of Diana's life, the monarchy, and arguably history.

Unknown to almost everyone at the time, Diana herself instigated, directed, and did everything but actually write it.

-In the '90s there wasn't social media.

You know, and I don't think you can write that off, because in order to talk about her issues, it meant the summoning of a writer, a journalist.

It meant inviting other people in to have your story told.

And that's -- that's a huge step.

It's much more difficult than picking up a mobile phone and talking to a phone and posting it.

-Here's the world's most famous princess saying, "Do you want an interview?"

Of course.

And it happened in the most incongruous of circumstances.

I met a mutual friend at a cafe.

All around, there were people eating bacon and eggs and beans.

My friend came with his little battered tape recorder, inserted a tape.

I put the headphones on, and I listened as Diana poured out this story.

She was talking about bulimia.

She was talking about a woman called Camilla Parker Bowles.

Never heard of her.

She was talking about attempted suicide.

So it was -- it was breathtaking.

And after that meeting, it was as though you'd been admitted into a secret circle.

♪♪ -The unraveling of the royal marriage was taking place against the crumbling of all sorts of orthodoxies.

♪♪ With the Cold War over and nuclear Armageddon no longer on the cards, in the '90s, we could have a bit of me, me, me time.

♪♪ -In the '90s, sexuality changed.

We were coming out of sort of the greedy '80s, and we started reflecting on what really mattered and what really mattered was how we felt about ourselves and how we felt about our relationships.

♪♪ -Inhibitions were thrown off.

"Basic Instinct" was one of the top grossing movies of 1992, while in the UK, a magazine culture flourished where sex talk was out in the open.

-We started to see sex as more integrated into conversation and also into your life, that we knew people were having sex, but people weren't really talking about it in an acceptable way.

And I think in the '90s, we started being honest about what we're feeling and not having to fake orgasms or pretend that you're happy in a marriage where you're not.

Diana was part of the movement in the '90s, and I think she was a real spearhead of it, of being able to talk about that which otherwise would have been embarrassing or shameful.

-Diana wasn't the only global icon in 1992 with a book that left little to the imagination.

[ Crowd shouting indistinctly ] -It's a sealed item, so it's not going to shock children.

-But while Madonna's weapon to reclaim the narrative was her sexuality, for Diana, it was searing emotional honesty.

-I think the reaction was one of absolute shock that a member of the royal family could have any kind of life.

It's that kind of revelation that maybe the queen goes to the loo.

I mean, it's just not spoken about.

And here it was, mental health problems, bulimia, all laid out.

-I think the public have been outraged by the intrusive nature of the authors and the journalists concerned.

-It's an odious exhibition of journalists dabbling their fingers in the stuff of other people's souls.

-You know, the establishment was bloody in tooth and claw.

-Extracts were published in Rupert Murdoch's "Sunday Times," proof positive for some that the British constitution itself was under attack.

-I think that Mr.

Murdoch's agenda in this country is partly to make money, and partly to try and do down what he perceives as the establishment and the monarchy in particular.

-The establishment were distressed because of the fact that it seemed to be true and authentic, and it compromised their long-cherished views about the monarchy and the heir to the throne.

And the fact that the heir to the throne was effectively living with another man's wife was not something that they wanted to see splashed all over the Sunday broadsheets.

♪♪ -Although Diana was sticking her neck out... -Afterwards.

Afterwards.

-[ Reporters clamoring ] -...it was Morton's head on the block.

-Well, the "Daily Telegraph" thinks he should be hung by the neck very slowly until he dies.

-The motivation was to tell the truth.

For once, forget the propaganda.

Tell the truth about what's really going on.

I was a bit like a fairground boxer fighting all comers with one hand tied behind my back, because I could not say Diana was behind this book.

Everyone I've spoken to, people who are close to the Princess of Wales, are assured -- have assured me that the portrait is a fair, sympathetic, and accurate one.

I had to basically say her friends and her family helped, but not the princess.

It is an accurate story.

It's a true account.

The people at the center of it have stood by their stories.

And if we were talking today and she was alive, I'd still be saying the same thing.

-She wanted the world to know what her life was like.

Make no mistake about it, she never regretted doing the Morton book, because she felt it was important to people to realize that it was all an act.

This great union between her and Charles had not been the stuff of fairy tales, and she felt that she owed it to the public for them to know what was going on.

♪♪ -I seem to remember from phone-ins that we did around the time of Morton's book, that Morton actually came in to take calls.

-Has he got any conscience at all?

I don't think he should have done this.

-There was a tranche of public opinion that thought that he wasn't telling the truth, or that he in some way transgressed Diana's privacy.

-Does he not feel guilty in lining his pockets?

-That died away quite quickly, and the public quickly came to understand that he hadn't done anything of the kind, that actually, they were hearing the authentic voice of Diana, Princess of Wales.

I think things changed quite a lot, and I think people felt very sympathetic towards her.

And I think for her, if she wanted to have a breakthrough moment with the public and reach them, I think she did.

♪♪ -Diana had always reached the parts of the country other royals could not.

But now, in the wake of the Morton revelations, opinion polls showed she was more popular than ever.

-So, Mom, I remember this book we had of Diana.

I'm guessing you, like, tore through that book pretty quickly.

-Yep.

-[ Laughs ] -And the relationship with her public assumed an almost intimate quality.

-How often would my mom mention Diana?

It's probably easier to say how often didn't she mention Diana?

She'd speak about her as if they had just gotten off the phone.

It was very personal.

If she wore an outfit, Mom would be like, "That was a great choice for her.

She knew to accentuate her legs and her shoulders," or she'd be like, "Oh, I wouldn't have done that, Di, if I were you."

It was very personal, as in I genuinely, as a kid, thought they were best friends.

I had no clue that she was a member of the royal family.

I really thought her and my mom used to just gab on the phone.

-Writer and director Alegria was born the same year that Morton wrote his pioneering misery memoir, which mom Simi snapped up hot off the press.

-So, when you read it, was it sort of like, kind of confirming everything you thought about her life and the things she went through?

-I identified the fact that she's married into a family where the in-laws don't talk to her.

They're cold.

They reject her.

You know, in Nigeria, when you marry, you marry the man, and then you have to deal with the in-laws.

-So you marry the family.

-And that's what Princess Diana did.

-So you have to try and get on with them.

-You have to try and get on with them, you know.

You dare not disrespect his mother, or else your suitcase would be out through the door, you know?

So when you see what happened in the inside, the way -- the queer looks she was given, like there was something wrong with her.

And she was going through bulimia, rejection by her husband.

She was labeled mad.

Here she was, putting in words what millions of women all over the world were going through.

-It was empowering.

-Yeah, it must have been.

-She empowered a lot of women, especially women -- you know, women of color.

We just thought, this woman is our sister.

She's one of our kindred.

♪♪ -Morton's book sold over 2 million copies globally.

But as the world began to learn about the rot at the heart of the royal marriage, the Windsor family's misery was just beginning.

-The Duchess of York left Balmoral Castle today using a side entrance of the royal estate to drive to Aberdeen Airport.

-In August came news that the Duchess of York had been photographed having her toe sucked by her financial adviser, John Bryan.

-Buckingham Palace say the departure was as planned before the publication of the photos, which showed her half naked at the poolside with her Texan financial advisor.

-Fergie was very publicly banished from the royal fold.

-The queen now seems to be besieged with problems.

The quiet family holiday in Scotland has simply been ruined.

-Four days later, the unexploded ordnance that had been sitting in the safes of national newspapers finally detonated.

"The Sun" published the Squidgy tapes.

-That whole summer of 1992 was incredibly febrile, and it was almost like there was a competition between younger members of the royal family to see who could plumb the depths further and fastest.

Every day, there was -- The story was twisting and turning one way and the next.

Yeah, it was immediately after the Morton book.

Many people characterized the Squidgy tape as some sort of corrective.

"This will bring Diana down a peg or two."

That was sort of the underlying message.

-It is a scene of chaos and destruction.

-The annus horribilis climaxed in November with the incineration of Windsor Castle, and even the most literal minded could grasp the symbolism for the House of Windsor.

-It's clear that what we're witnessing here is a national tragedy.

The battle for control still far from over.

A whole royal treasure house at risk.

♪♪ -It is announced from Buckingham Palace that, with regret, the Prince and Princess of Wales have decided to separate.

-As Windsor Castle lay in smoldering ruins, Prime Minister John Major heralded the beginning of the end of the royal marriage.

-Their Royal Highnesses have no plans to divorce, and their constitutional positions are unaffected.

-Newly separated, Prince Charles decamped to his country estate and busied himself creating a pastiche of the past, a model village in Dorset.

-What I want to try and see is how to design on a traditional basis.

-Diana's rival court was based out of Kensington Palace.

Her chosen causes were more contemporary, and she spoke with that most valuable of '90s currencies... -Ladies and gentlemen.

-...authenticity.

-Eating disorders have, at their core, a far deeper problem than mere vanity -- feelings of guilt, of self-revulsion, and low personal esteem.

-Diana during the '90s heralded a very different approach, where it was okay to talk about things that weren't, you know, going right in your life.

-Before 1992, if you were bulimic, it was more likely that you were suffering on your own, that you didn't know that other people did it, and you didn't know why you were doing it.

-Eating food has now become an expression of how we feel about ourselves.

-And when Diana came out and talked about these embarrassing things, it was a breath of fresh air.

We could finally talk about it and learn about it and stop it.

-Suddenly, here she was, talking from the heart.

And I think that whole phrase, "from the heart," I look back at the '90s, and I think that's when it started to become something that people could do, and gradually almost became the norm.

-Diana's newfound candor didn't come out of thin air.

Following Oprah's lead in the States, in the '90s, even buttoned-up Brits were getting used to regular Joes and Joannas spilling their emotional guts on TV.

But with all this emoting came a sense that nothing was off limits.

If Diana was now considered an open book, more and more, she was viewed as a book that anyone could leaf through.

-On an average day outside Kensington Palace, there would be four, five, six, seven photographers all waiting and hoping to do the same thing, i.e., photograph Diana, waiting, waiting, all for, you know, 10, 15 seconds of action.

And you could spend days, days not seeing anything sometimes.

-These days, Max Cisotti only photographs the rich and famous with their full consent.

But back in 1993, he was just starting out.

-I became a paparazzi by accident.

I was in the right place at the right time with my camera, got a few decent pictures of a few celebs.

Sold them and thought, yeah, this is quite fun.

More than the money, it was the excitement, because you had to go out and search for whoever it is you wanted to photograph.

It was almost primeval instinct of hunter-gatherer, in a way.

Instead of going out hunting for food, we were going out hunting for pictures.

-For Max and his fellow "hunter-gatherers," it was worth going the extra yard to snap the newly separated Princess Diana.

-So, we're just outside the Harbour Club, where Diana used to come quite frequently.

As you can see, this wall is quite tall, and so to be able to photograph her, we would have to have stepladder sort of about this high or a bit less, but I didn't do it too much, because I'm a photographer, not a window cleaner.

So the ladders are not for me.

♪♪ -Often viewed as ruthless mercenaries, the paps could sometimes be recruited into one of the bloodiest media battles of the decade, the war of the Waleses.

-It's fairly obvious that one faction talks to one lot of Fleet Street, and the other faction talks to the other.

Sometimes they both talk at the same time to the same newspaper.

-Even the most innocent excursions could be weaponized.

And this was war fought in theme parks and at sea... ...and on the ski slopes.

-Prince Charles, clearly keen to cooperate with the paparazzi, enjoying a rare opportunity to project himself as the father figure.

-Oh, you're lovely.

-How's the snow?

-Perfect.

-The war of the Waleses when it took off was something quite spectacular, 'cause both of them had very different weapons, and both of them were quite happy to use them against each other as cudgels to get their case across in the press.

-Yes, it all comes flooding back to me, and it seems like it's only yesterday.

-Richard Kay of the "Mail" was one of the foot soldiers in this battle royal.

-I'd just forgotten how much there was.

It was -- It was every day.

Mad.

-And his key source on Diana turned out to be...Diana.

-It moved, obviously, from being reporter and subject to -- to a proper friendship.

I mean, it's just -- That was the way it went.

That's all.

-I suppose I was on the front line in terms of reporting it, but I wasn't partaking in the battle.

Some of the reporters, I think, like Richard Kay, were probably part of the battle.

There was a famous picture I think that was taken of Diana and him in a car together chatting.

That was a major story at the time, because of course, it showed just how complicit Diana was.

-Of course, I felt I was being used, but, I mean, I know that I was in a position where any of my rivals would have given their right hand for.

I mean, we're in the information business, and I was getting information about a hugely interesting and controversial subject.

And obviously, I was only doing what anyone else would have wanted to do.

I was lucky in that I could go to the main source, if you like.

-As the war raged on, everyone had an opinion.

-I'm Welsh, but I don't like him as Prince of Wales.

-I'm in favor of Charlie, not her.

-Fatefully, in 1994, Charles invited in a documentary crew to see things from his perspective.

-Never before has a member of the royal family talked so frankly.

-Appears to have stirred up quite a fuss.

And you'll have a chance to see it, and then you'll be able to judge for yourself.

-Broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby's film was screened to a gathering of royal reporters... -So if anybody takes a picture, we will stop the film.

-...who, along with the rest of the country, saw the Prince of Wales fess up to his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.

Once again, it was time for the defenders of the faithless Charles to step up.

-I'm afraid heirs to the throne throughout the ages have had affairs.

After all, if you are the Prince of Wales, everybody, every attractive woman has an eye on the Prince of Wales and has had throughout the ages.

-What leg does he have to stand on?

-The best thing that can happen is for the queen to live for a very long time.

-The guy was very frank, and I feel sorry for him.

Wouldn't like to be in his position.

♪♪ -On the night that Charles' TV confession aired, Diana showed her mastery of the art of media warfare by deploying what was immediately dubbed the revenge dress.

-That black dress that she wore, the revenge dress.

-Oh, my God.

-You liked it?

-Oh, yeah.

-Who didn't?

It's a great dress.

-You know, in Africa, we have hairstyles.

You know when the ones, they braid?

Yeah.

-Oh, the fancy designs.

-The fancy designs, the hair.

In the olden days, when men had more than one wife, those hairstyles mean -- They mean very abusive -- They're like swear words.

There's one that means shut up.

-Okay.

-So when she put on that dress, I said, "Oh, girl, you can't braid your hair, but you've said it all."

It was amazing, you know?

That black dress, you know, off shoulder?

-Off the shoulder.

-Her nice legs?

Oh, my God.

♪♪ -By the mid-'90s, it was no longer just about newspapers.

-There won't be eight channels.

There'll be 80 channels before very long.

-Satellite TV was now firmly a part of the media landscape, and news was truly global and real time... -O.J.

Simpson has a gun at his head.

-...with the information superhighway getting wider and wider.

What's more, information was getting easier and cheaper to disseminate.

-It's a revolution in communications.

-Although the internet was only in its infancy, a transfer of power from established broadcasters and publishers was well under way.

-The media is changing and growing very fast.

So you need stories all the time.

Even if they're small, even if they're insignificant, even if they're a bit intrusive, you're going to try and run them somehow, because you need to feed the beast, and the beast has an unending appetite.

-The roads are this one and that one.

-It fell to Max and his fellow foragers to gather tidbits to feed the beast.

And of course, Princess Diana was their most lucrative quarry.

-Towards the mid-'90s, new celebrity magazines were literally -- one was being born every six months.

So there was more space, more pages to fill.

For us, it was a bonus, because there were more outlets, and prices rose.

If you look at this picture, the two other guys that I was working with were concentrating on Diana.

So there was no point in me getting -- trying to get the same picture.

So I thought, "Okay, well, I'll go for a wide shot, which shows Diana with photographers."

We're driving past here and just saw her car.

[ Chuckles ] With an average Diana picture, because of her popularity, she would sell all around the world.

And very few celebrities have that appeal.

So with her, even if you would make, you know, perhaps £500, well, you might make that in, you know, 15, 20 territories, which, yeah, is still a lot of money, but it might be the only money that you earn for two, three months.

-The final volley in the war of the Waleses came with the now-discredited Panorama interview in November 1995, where Diana famously revealed that, "there were three of us in an overcrowded marriage."

An audience of 23 million people also saw her admit that she'd had love affairs of her own.

In the age of Oprah, Diana was singing a heartbreaking lament, and she largely succeeded in winning the sympathies of her most reliable constituency, the public.

-But it's just got to be the truth.

I don't know.

-She does come across as if she's been done wrong by the prince.

-She needed to put her side of the story for us to hear, you know.

I think it's right that she's done it.

-Here, come out.

Can you come out?

Come right out, please.

Right out.

We can't see you there.

Close the door.

Lovely.

Hang on.

-In July 1996, Diana's solicitors served up the latest morsel to the ever-ravenous press pack... -You wouldn't care to read it, would you?

-No, I'm afraid not.

-No?

[ People speaking indistinctly ] -...the terms of her divorce from Charles.

-She will have to give up being HRH, Her Royal Highness.

And in addition to his £17 million lump sum, Charles will pay the £400,000 it will cost each year to run an office for his ex-wife.

As for Diana, her precise future role is still unclear.

♪♪ -The day after the divorce was announced, I was working for the "Sunday Mirror."

And myself and I want to say four or five other photographers were on the south side of Kensington Palace.

She drove out, and we followed her all the way out towards Richmond.

♪♪ And she pulled into a cul de sac, did a U-ey, and one of the photographers on a motorcycle followed her into this road right here.

Princess Diana was roughly where I am right now, and the chap that she was having a go at was approximately there.

I was just there perpendicular on the main street, um, and I was able to take a few pictures.

Literally, the whole thing lasted three to four seconds.

So, in that first picture, you can clearly see, and I'm pretty sure that it -- I'm not sure you can see -- In fact, you can just about make it out, the reflection of a chap on a motorcycle who was standing parallel to where Diana was.

And you can see that she starts having a go at him.

Um, and it's only the last minute that she saw me.

Obviously, there was a lot of excitement at the "Sunday Mirror."

I mean, they did take a while to decide whether to use them or not, because they were quite dramatic, quite strong, and visibly, she was quite upset.

But the following day, I saw that they used it on page one, four, and five as a spread with the headline "Princess of Wails."

♪♪ -If the fairy tale was officially over, then it was time for Diana to write a new narrative.

Although no longer HRH, she was something the late 20th century esteemed even more.

-In America, she's celebrity number one.

-Like the Spice Girls, who were soaring their way up the global charts, Diana was busy breaking America.

-This is one of the nicest British invasions that the White House has ever had.

-The indisputably Posh Spice, Diana channeled her own version of girl power.

-The evil that men do lives after them.

-The summer of '97 was a wild dance... -It's emerged that Princess Diana has enjoyed a second holiday, this time with Mohamed Al-Fayed's son.

-...involving Diana, the press, the paps, and, of course, the millions of us who devoured their stories and photos.

But then, in the early hours of August the 31st, 1997, the music stopped.

-We have reports from Paris that Diana, Princess of Wales, has been killed in a car accident and that her partner, Dodi Fayed, has also been killed.

-I mean, I remember about an hour after hearing the news that she'd died, I was in the shower, and I suddenly burst into tears.

[ Chuckles tearfully ] And it's funny.

I can actually connect with that emotion right now.

I can feel it coming up now.

♪♪ It was without doubt the biggest story of my career, without question.

-Our whole show today is dedicated to Diana, Princess of Wales, who tragically... -Every single day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, was 100% Diana.

That's -- That's all we did.

-When Diana first appeared in public, she unwittingly revealed more than she intended.

But by the time she died, it seemed as though there was almost nothing the world didn't know about her.

-Let's face it, most people didn't know her personally.

They all thought they did through all of our pictures, paps, and official -- and interviews and so on and so forth that she did.

And that's why everybody felt connected to her.

-I just need to be here.

Everybody else feels the same.

-It's terrible.

You feel so alone and grieved, you know, as if you've lost someone you know.

-The whole world was in mourning.

She was someone people could relate to.

They knew about her problems, her heart.

She'd gone through divorce.

She'd been spurned.

She'd -- There'd been another woman.

You know, so many people could identify with what she'd been through.

She'd, you know, talk to people.

She'd embraced people no matter what their background, their faith, their color, what have you.

And you saw a reflection of that when it came to the crowds grieving.

♪♪ -If you want to talk about your feelings on this terrible, terrible event, then we're making space for you on this grimmest of mornings.

I vividly remember the -- the sheer anger that was felt towards the media generally, but the tabloids in particular.

-Why should the news reporters and photographers hound people?

-It was at that point, actually, for me, that I realized that this was going to be huge in terms of the public reaction, and God knows where it was going to go.

-Why do they pay so much money for the photographs?

Why were the paparazzi after them?

If there was no money, if there was no money in the photographs... -This was the vox populi.

This was the voice of the people.

I think once the first couple of days had gone by, somebody noticed that the flag staff above Buckingham Palace didn't have a flag on it.

Where's the queen?

Where's the queen?

It suddenly seemed as if there was an almost sort of imperious dismissal of what had happened coming down from Scotland, from the royal family on their summer break.

-Do you think the queen should abdicate?

-Yes, and I think Prince William should take the throne with guidance, personally.

-So there was a sudden, palpable sense of the grief and the anger that was being directed at the tabloids, suddenly switching like a spotlight and targeting Balmoral, and this great shout of, "Where are you?"

and "Where's the flag?"

-They're the most cold people on this earth.

-And as for Prince Charles, well, I think there's not a lot he can say, really, is there?

-And a lot of resentment, which people -- some people felt towards the royal family for the treatment of Diana and resentment towards Charles for his affair with Camilla.

And all of that was coming out.

And then, of course, against her own judgment, the queen came down to London.

-We didn't know that the car was going to stop and that she was going to mingle in the crowds, and no one knew quite what the crowds would say to her.

There didn't seem to be any obvious bodyguards.

She and Prince Philip got out, and actually, the crowds were very warm to her.

-I think there must have been five or six seismic mood shifts that week in public opinion, and all in the same sort of broad direction, almost like those murmurations of starlings, you know, that kind of randomly pitch around the sky.

That was public opinion that week.

But I think we kind of forget just how dangerous actually the mood became.

♪♪ -Funnily enough, this was exactly the spot I was in for the funeral cortege, as well, because it came out of Kensington Palace, and it was right here, and I was somewhere along here, I can't exactly remember where.

I could have been a little bit further along, but roughly here.

It was almost, you know, like us paying our respects in a way, you know, photographing the funeral.

It was something I felt I needed to do.

♪♪ -The Britain that's on display at the funeral and the response to it, that completely unfettered outpouring of emotion, is so different from this very orchestrated, very hierarchical Britain that's on show at the time of the royal wedding.

♪♪ It's going to be a completely different public response.

It's not going to be the restrained mourning that would have been expected years before.

And that's a world away from the Diana in the big dress.

♪♪ The country has changed.

It changed very profoundly.

-We used to live just up there past the bus stop near the library.

We came, me and my sister and my mom, and we walked down this street up and to the dual carriageway where her hearse was going to be passing by.

My sister and I were hitched up on the railings, 'cause I was 5, and she was about 3, and people had flowers and were throwing them onto the hearse as it passed by.

So, I'd actually never seen you -- well, to this day, I've never seen you cry.

And I remember seeing you cry when Diana passed, 'cause I just remember you kind of standing at the dual carriageway looking very sad.

That's when I think I knew it was something quite big and serious.

-I think because of the way we followed Diana, when she died, it was like you've lost one of your best friends.

-Yeah.

-So we were all crying.

You know, we changed.

The British never showed emotion.

And that's the way we all were, you know, hiding our emotions, killing ourselves inside.

But her death, the beauty of it is simply that it made us realize that we were also human.

And we found ourselves, as well, in it.

That was the lasting gift she gave to us.

[ Birds chirping ] -In the twists and turns of Diana's life, it's possible to chart the changing world at the end of the 20th century, and her death revealed that it was never just about her.

It was also always about all of us.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪