News of the Princess flashed around the world.
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
Diana. Lady Diana Spencer.
JAMES D'ARCY: The death of Diana, Princess of Wales,
sent shockwaves around the world.
The Prime Minister was woken at two o'clock this morning.
What followed was a day that no-one had prepared for.
No-one could expect Buckingham Palace
to have been ready for it, and they weren't.
Whatever plans exist, rip 'em up.
Rip up the rule book. This is different.
Now we go behind the scenes
to discover what actually happened on the day Diana died.
Everything was a rush.
I didn't expect when I left home
to be standing in the embassy at Paris.
From those at the heart of events that day...
This has been your life, Jane.
You've recorded this woman all these years.
You have to be professional. You've got to go and end this story.
..in the newsrooms...
We were working against the clock.
Getting it wrong in a situation like this
was going to carry a very high price.
..and the corridors of Number Ten...
I went on the phone to Tony.
He absolutely clocked it straight away.
..to the RAF who brought her home.
There were over 400 press.
And obviously, my thought was, "This has gotta be a good landing."
This is the story of those 24 hours.
I think the death of Diana was one of the greatest stories
of the second half of the century.
It was a day that changed everything.
I can't recall it being a particularly busy
or newsworthy weekend.
It was a relatively quiet weekend...
..so I wasn't expecting to be called in
to do one of my biggest ever stories.
BIG BEN CHIMES
I was at home, and I lived very near to Television Centre,
and I was called at quarter to, one o'clock in the morning.
It was undoubtedly a serious accident,
and it would be something that we needed to cover
as breaking news... wherever it led us.
I was in bed, and then at 1:10, the phone went,
and it was my editor, Lucian Hudson, who was on the phone,
and he said, "I've got news for you."
And I said,
"Nick, this is Lucian. There's been a car crash in Paris.
"Dodi is confirmed dead.
"Diana was in the car."
Now, I'm not gonna repeat exactly the words I used,
but I more or less said,
"Don't wind me up at this time on a Sunday morning."
But he said, "No, this is serious." This was 1:10.
By half past two, I was on air in the BBC Studios
in Television Centre.
At the time, the BBC was still three months away
from launching their round-the-clock rolling news service, News 24,
and BBC World's global service, BBC Prime,
was the only live channel the broadcaster had.
I lived pretty close to Television Centre.
It probably took me 15 minutes maximum to get there.
There was that sense of, "Is this really happening?
"What on earth is going on?"
Because I thought to myself,
I was entertaining guests to a dinner a couple of hours ago.
We were working against the clock. The news was already out.
What we now needed to do was mobilise effectively for it.
To get on the air and stay on the air.
OK. Stand by, guys.
I realised that I'd be thrown in into a studio situation
where, earpiece in, camera on, erm, no autocue.
Having to work out what has really taken place and to be correct.
Sources were quite limited, but widely reported.
We know we had enough to go on to justify coverage.
But then what we all had to do was be vigilant
that we're not reporting something that was misleading
or indeed completely inaccurate.
Because getting it wrong
in a situation like this was going to carry a very high price.
MACHINE BEEPS
And we welcome viewers to BBC Prime with the viewers that...
with the news that Diana, Princess of Wales,
has been seriously injured and her companion
Dodi Al Fayed has been killed
in a motor accident in the French capital.
In Paris, the paparazzi at the scene
were arrested by the French authorities.
REPORTER: 'For once, they are the men
'in front of the camera, not behind it.
'The seven French paparazzi, witnesses say,
'were chasing the Princess's car on motorbikes when it crashed.
'Some or all could face charges, perhaps as serious
'as the French equivalent of manslaughter.'
TOM CRUISE: I've actually been in that same tunnel,
being chased by paparazzi,
and they run lights and they chase you
and harass you the whole time.
It happens all over the world.
You don't know what it's like being chased by them.
It is harassment.
Meanwhile, the news was beginning to break around the world.
I was the other side of the world. I was living in Hong Kong.
It was a Saturday night. Hong Kong was a party town.
And we'd all been out late.
And I'd woken up on the Sunday morning,
and I was on the sofa watching the television.
We didn't have mobile phones.
We weren't going to computers for news.
We had the local channels, some of which were in Chinese,
and then we had BBC World News, which I was just glued to.
SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE
I remember thinking, "When do I call home?"
We were seven hours ahead.
The rest of... the rest of the world didn't know yet.
"When do I call London? When do I call..."
My family were in Sheffield. Like, do I... Would I wake them up?
Would I tell them what I'm hearing?
I woke my dad up because he lived next door,
and I woke him up, and we put the television on,
and we watched it kind of unfold, not really believing it.
At the moment, we have no further official news on the accident,
which has taken place in Paris this evening.
We were trying to fill a very difficult void
where we knew what was going on,
but we didn't know the details of what was going on.
There wasn't that immediacy of access and corroboration
which you get these days.
Stephen, is there any further detail emerging?
No. Not really. Erm...
Initially, it seemed that maybe Diana, Princess of Wales,
had escaped relatively lightly.
I don't think anyone knew what was happening,
including Stephen Jessel.
He happened to be in Paris, but being in an apartment in Paris
doesn't mean to say you know what's going on.
There were obviously sources reporting on,
"Is Diana going to survive or not?"
And that's what we were closely monitoring.
And there was a thirst, a hunger, for facts, for information.
Got a piece of information here. What do we do with it?
We can't get it verified, so let's just hang onto that.
And the challenge for the first couple of hours
was to make sure we filled the space with good information.
What I didn't realise was that there were people who phoned in
and said they had seen a woman walk away from the wreckage.
And we were right to pause. Rather than speculate.
My dad said to me, "Do you know, Jane, I think she's died."
And I said, "Well, what makes you say that?"
He went, "It's getting serious, they're not saying anything.
"The Palace had gone absolutely quiet.
"There's no comment." I said, "No, it's not possible."
The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair,
was woken early today to be told of the crash.
A statement from Downing Street said he is shocked
and saddened by what he sees as a devastating, appalling tragedy.
Prime Minister Tony Blair was in his Sedgefield constituency
when he was told of the news, but at that stage,
no-one knew the full picture.
We heard for a reliable source that Diana had died.
The BBC typically relied on more than one source to report any news.
The way in which we discovered that the information was correct,
that Princess Diana was dead, came from the Philippines.
And it has just been reported
that Robin Cook, the British Foreign Secretary,
who's currently on a four-nation tour of the Far East,
has delayed his departure from the capital of the Philippines,
Manila, for what is described as an important announcement
about the health of Diana, Princess of Wales.
The sudden grounding of a senior minister's plane
only happens in times of national crisis.
It was the vital piece of corroboration
that Nick and Lucian had been waiting for.
Which, for me, was a prompt that we're that territory
of possibly talking about a death here.
At that point, there's a feeling of security
that the information is correct
and that therefore you can go with it.
NICHOLAS WITCHELL: 'Robin Cook, looking extremely sombre,
'of course, is an entirely inadequate word
'in the circumstances.
'We are aboard his plane, which is leaving in a few moments,
'but a few minutes ago, he came down the steps of the plane
'to issue a statement.'
Now we can report that the British Foreign Secretary,
Robin Cook, speaking in the Philippines,
has just confirmed that Diana, Princess of Wales,
has died following the car crash at midnight in Paris.
I remember thinking, "What happens now?"
You know, what happens for the rest of the day?
Does the rest of the day happen or does everything get cancelled?
And realising that London, the UK,
the rest of the world, was gonna wake up to this news.
You wondered what the world would make of it.
On Sunday morning, as newsrooms across Britain went into overdrive,
the Queen was two weeks into her annual summer residence in Balmoral.
With her were the Duke of Edinburgh,
the Prince of Wales and her grandsons William and Harry.
Well, the Queen was informed by the private secretary,
who was in London, and there is always
a private secretary on duty wherever the Queen is.
And he informed her and the Prince of Wales
what had happened in Paris.
She came out of the bedroom. I remember somebody telling me,
and she was sort of clutching a hot water bottle,
and it's cold there, even in the summer.
When the news came that Diana had died,
the shock must have been... palpable.
Charles was beside himself. He was a really distraught man.
And, er, the Queen and Prince Philip were devastated.
The Royal Household is ready for most deaths,
but not of young people.
I think they had to sit down and respond to this tragic death.
As the Royal Family came to terms with the tragic news
at their Scottish retreat...
..down in London,
people began laying flowers outside Buckingham Palace.
I was shocked.
It's hard to explain what is inside.
It's, erm...
It's tragic. It's obviously a sad day for England today.
Already, television crews, journalists,
photographers, are beginning to assemble here.
A single light is burning in one of the upstairs windows.
But at the moment, Buckingham Palace remains silent.
I was watching the scenes of Buckingham Palace,
and the first images I remember was kind of young guys
coming back from the clubs that night,
and they'd come just to try and get their heads around
the news that was coming out.
Why did you come here so early? What made you come so quickly?
Just to show our respect,
because we were in London, we wanted to show that we respected her.
Erm, just...
I don't know. Just to give a symbol that we cared.
'Diana, Princess of Wales.' 'Lady Diana Spencer.'
'Diana, Princess of Wales.'
News of the Princess's death flashed around the world.
By dawn, Britons up and down the country began waking up
to the news that Diana, Princess of Wales, was dead.
Diana, Princess of Wales, has been killed in a car accident.
SIRENS BLARE
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
I was completely shocked. It was totally unexpected.
I ran downstairs, and I put on the telly.
You know, my children want to know why there weren't any cartoons.
There was just a picture of Diana. I couldn't believe it.
Like everyone else, you know. She was very young.
It was very unexpected. And it was very tragic.
The death of the world's most famous woman
has brought tribute, disbelief and shock.
The phone went, and it was one of my colleagues
from Balmoral, and he said, "Just sit on the edge of the bed,
"put the television on, and be prepared."
That Sunday, the National Grid recorded a surge in power usage
as millions of Britons switched their TVs and kettles on
at the same time.
Typical British reaction is you put a kettle on
and make a cup of tea to console yourself
and then sit in front of the television set.
You know, you were mesmerised by it.
I never lived through JFK.
You know, I never lived through the moon landings.
I don't know what a unifying news event
would have felt like before this, but that was it.
You know, that was it.
Now I look back, and I think...
.."Was that the biggest news story that happened in our lifetime?"
But as a one-off news event,
there's been nothing bigger than that.
As the tributes continued to pile up outside Kensington Palace,
Diana's staff gathered inside to make arrangements
for her repatriation.
We were called to Kensington Palace,
where the Princess's office was part of her living quarters.
We were a little office with a small troop of people.
We all arrived, about six of us.
And, erm, Michael Gibbins, who was the private secretary.
When he told us the sad news that she had passed,
everybody was just horror-struck, really.
Diana's driver, Colin Tebbutt,
had been due to collect Diana that day from Battersea Heliport
so she could see her sons.
Having spoken to her less than 12 hours before,
he may have been one of the last people to talk to Diana.
You know, that night she'd rung, and she's gone now,
and that was... that was it.
In the office, there was a lot of silence.
We just looked at each other...
..trying to get together what we should do.
At the time,
Diana was still considered a princess by the British public,
but she was no longer an official member of the Royal Family.
Her unique position raised questions that no-one had a ready answer for.
I think she was a headache, frankly, to the Royal Family.
They didn't know what to do with her.
She was, at this stage, outside the Royal Family,
but yet she was still kind of adored by the nation.
And so I think she was straddling this slightly... odd role.
Even though she was officially out of the Royal Family,
as far as the nation was concerned, she was their beloved princess.
There was a disconnected nature of her new existence,
and that puts the Royal Household in a complicated position,
because essentially, she was now outside The Firm.
That Sunday morning, Diana's uncertain role
within the Royal Family was a dilemma felt by many.
Right from the start, everyone, whether it's Royal Family
at Balmoral,
members of the Spencer family on the end of the phone,
Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler in Downing Street,
the Lord Chamberlain at Buckingham Palace,
the British Embassy in Paris.
I mean, you've got all these operations
in the very early hours all having to make decisions,
and everyone's wondering, you know, "What do we do?"
Suddenly, a piece of news forces all the institutions
to re-establish what their role in this moment is.
And I think it was very tough, probably, in those early hours.
Tony Blair was still just three months
into his role as Prime Minister,
and this was the first major test for his new Labour government.
The first call he made was to his Communications Chief,
Alastair Campbell, to begin shaping the public message.
I went on the phone to Tony. He was up in Sedgefield.
We had a, you know, quick conversation.
He absolutely clocked it straight away.
There was a phrase he used to use, "My God, this is enormous doings."
You know, this is really big stuff here,
and we've got to just be absolutely wise and sensible and focussed.
As Campbell began crafting the official response,
Blair's team moved to open secure lines to Buckingham Palace.
Tony was having separate conversations
with very, very senior people in Balmoral
and with Her Majesty herself.
I mean, don't forget, we'd just come into government.
I mean, we'd only come in in June, and this happens in August.
So we were all sort of ingenues, you know, in government...
..and didn't sort of know quite, you know, how things worked.
Two institutions that didn't really know each other
were suddenly having to get to know each other at speed.
But what we were good at was sort of communications.
Having released one of the first public statements two hours earlier,
Blair made a second statement.
The British Prime Minister,
Tony Blair, said, "I am utterly devastated.
"The whole of our country,
"all of us, will be in a state of shock and mourning."
Meanwhile, the department in Buckingham Palace
responsible for ceremonial events,
the Lord Chamberlain's Office, was preparing to respond.
The head of the Household, David Ogilvy, Earl of Airlie,
suddenly found he was at the heart of one of the most important
ceremonial decisions of a generation.
I would imagine he would have listed the likelihood
of Diana, Princess of Wales, dying as zero.
And suddenly, not only is he seeing this news item,
but the implication probably starts to trigger.
How will this affect the Palace?
This was an unprecedented thing to happen to the Royal Family.
Nothing like this had ever happened before.
I think it was a most pivotal moment for them in the last 100 years.
The Earl of Airlie was down in London about to go on holiday,
and he rang up the controllers,
the head of ceremonial at the Palace.
Very distinguished ex-Scots Guards officer
called Malcolm Ross.
Said, "You need to get down here fast.
"Whatever plans we have, tear them up."
His words were, "This is going to be de novo."
Start afresh, clean slate. Rethink everything.
For a palace steeped in precedent,
one question loomed largest for all the key players.
One of the first decisions that was being made
in those early hours
was what sort of a funeral is this going to be?
And there was one more individual key to those decisions.
Diana's brother, Earl Spencer.
It was known that Earl Spencer
wanted to make this a sort of Spencer family affair
and make it a private funeral.
That was already being discussed.
I don't think in the moment of horror
coming to terms with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales,
anyone in the Royal Household probably thought
that it was necessarily going to be a Royal funeral.
I expect they might have thought, you know,
"This is Spencer business. She's left this family."
As dawn was breaking across the hills of Balmoral...
..Prince Charles gathered his thoughts and walked the grounds.
Charles had sort of set off on a long walk over the moors,
the heather moorland above Balmoral...
..and had talked to his key staff.
Where the Royal establishment and government machine
were undecided as to the best path forward...
..Charles's mind was already made up.
He would be the one to bring Diana home.
I don't think he had any sleep at all that day,
actually, thinking it all through.
Erm, this would not have been an impulsive decision.
This would be, you know, "This is my duty.
"It's where I belong."
And trite though it may sound, I think he would have thought,
"This is what she would have wanted."
Whilst the Palace were wrestling with the procedural details
of Diana's death, there was still the pressing need
to arrange the repatriation of her body.
What do we do next?
The Princess was with Dodi Al Fayed's people.
They wouldn't know how to inform people.
You know, the two... the two sisters.
Who's going to inform all these people?
You know, how are they being informed?
We then got down to, "Good God, what do we do?"
But then our private secretary took me to one side and said,
"Colin, I'd like you to go to Paris and be my eyes and ears."
Be my eyes and ears. Not the Palace, his.
Everything was a rush from then on.
Getting the car to the airport, getting on the plane.
Everything was a rush.
Put in charge of the logistics of recovering Diana's body,
her chauffeur, Colin Tebbutt,
scrambled to get on the next flight to Paris.
So, I rang some contacts and managed to get on a flight at seven o'clock
of which was packed with press and media.
Amazing that I got a seat.
In fact, Prince of Wales's, His Royal Highness's,
one of his police team had to sit in the jump seat.
As Diana's household departed for the British Embassy in Paris...
..the Royal Family were contemplating how to break the news
to Diana's two sons, William and Harry.
There was a lot of sadness up at Balmoral,
and what was uppermost in their mind was William and Harry.
Because William was 15, Harry was 12,
and it was having to deal with them.
There was a real sense that our response
to this appalling tragedy is going to be governed
by what is easiest, what is best for the boys.
It had been decided not to wake the two young princes
during the night.
The Queen immediately said that every television
and radio set had to be removed,
and the only TV set that remained was in the private rooms
of the Queen and Prince Philip.
For her, the only important thing was to protect Harry and William
from this devastating tragedy of the loss of their mother.
It was only when morning came
that they learned the heartbreaking truth.
We know from Prince Harry's book that it was his father
who told them individually.
He wanted them to know.
He wanted to make sure he was aware of all the facts.
Probably the hardest... hardest thing he's ever had to do.
I can't think of anything harder.
Across the country, special second editions
were hitting newsstands, rushed out in the wake of Diana's death.
This morning's papers have started to catch up with the news
of the death of the Princess of Wales,
and have brought out special editions.
Some of them have not.
Some of them are rushing editions onto the streets with the news
that she was seriously injured.
The morning press run had been stopped,
pages torn up and first editions scrapped.
It's not often you find Sunday papers in Britain
printing this late,
but this is a story of enormous magnitude.
The poignant headline simple, black, "Diana is dead.
"Princess and Dodi killed in a car smash."
I think the tabloid editors that night
will have looked at the weeks they'd just run
in which she was on holiday in the Med with Dodi and thought...
.."There's something happening here,
"and I do not want to get on the wrong side of it."
Everyone will speak their truth until the person
at the centre of it is dead,
and then suddenly, you get a whole different tone.
The... 180 degree turn about Diana
of nearly all press and media
in an incredibly short period of time
was quite extraordinary.
It felt like something unpredictable happening on a large scale.
They've taken her life. I'm sorry.
I blame The Sun newspaper and their ilk.
The surge in public feeling the papers had sensed
was now spilling onto the streets outside the palace gates in London.
Within the past half hour,
the police have been clearing people back,
a little bit back from Buckingham Palace.
And put out metal barriers because they're obviously expecting
that a lot more ordinary people will be coming here
during the day just to make their own
direct personal contribution to the nation's grief.
People were starting to take flowers to Kensington Palace.
And my dad said, "You should go up there and take the pictures."
I said, "I don't want to go. I'm too upset."
He said, "Why don't you pick some flowers from the garden
"and take them up?"
I had some roses and various things, and I walked up to the gates.
There was quite a lot of my colleagues there,
and they all said to me, "Oh, Jayne, where's your cameras?"
I went, "I can't take any pictures" because people were very hushed,
and there was this smell, and people were just
all coming like a pilgrimage.
They were putting little pictures down of her
and little notes saying, "You're beautiful and we miss you."
And it was all very emotional and raw.
But it was the smell.
As I walked up, I don't know what it was,
but as I walked up, I just smelled all these roses.
And that smell, even now,
when I think of that event, I think of the smell of the roses.
Meanwhile, staff at Downing Street and Buckingham Palace stood poised,
waiting for a decision on how to proceed
with the funeral arrangements.
Various conversations were going on with,
you know, different people.
You know, everybody was anxious to get it right.
A lot of it was about making sure that her funeral would be
representative of what the people felt.
A group of soldiers who travelled up on the train from Salisbury
specially to lay their own floral tribute,
came across and said how strongly they felt
that there should be a state funeral.
And if there wasn't one, they would volunteer to march
as a guard of honour for her.
What sort of funeral was it going to be?
Was it going to be a Royal funeral,
or was it going to be a private family funeral?
And that really was up to the Princess's brother,
Viscount Althorp.
Charlie Spencer, he was in South Africa.
Erm, they had trouble contacting him,
but once they did get hold of him,
he made a decision pretty quickly that it was to be a Royal funeral.
And then we sort of blew off the dust off the paperwork
and started the ball rolling.
It was decided that this can't be a private funeral.
It's a world event and the whole nation, certainly,
but a lot of the planet is going to want to,
erm, pay their respects.
Once the Royal machinery goes into play,
nothing distracts or deters it.
That is what's so incredible about that machine.
There is a mechanism in train,
and the mechanism is that wherever the body is,
if it is at a place where it is necessary to fly it back,
then they fly it back.
If, for example, it had happened in Sandringham,
it would have come back either by car or by train.
If it happens in Scotland, it comes back by plane.
It happened in Paris, it came back by plane.
There are plans.
RADIO: 'We're being held out quite a long way away,
'as you can probably tell, but we got it.
'The Hercules landing at Northolt.'
I flew the Prince over 700 times and the Princess over 200.
I was a sort of flight instructor for him,
and most of the time, the Prince was up front
and actually flying the aircraft.
He used to come up and do the take-off and landing
on all his trips.
That morning, I had planned to fly the Prince
and one of the princes down to RAF Lyneham from Aberdeen.
They were going back to school, and we got a call
from Strike Command, who were our tasking agency,
to say the plan's changed.
The Prince wanted to fly to Paris.
I immediately got dressed and went into Northolt.
At 10:27am in County Durham,
new Prime Minister Tony Blair was preparing to address the nation.
Could we have your reaction to the news?
I feel like...
..everyone else in this country today.
Utterly devastated.
Our thoughts and prayers are with Princess Diana's family,
in particular her two... sons. The two boys.
Our hearts go out to them. She was The People's Princess.
And that's how she will stay, how she will remain.
In our hearts and in our memories forever.
He was brilliant at comms, brilliant at delivery,
brilliant at capturing the moment.
He seemed instinctively in tune with the mood of the country.
The words he chose, the way he spoke.
And it seemed, for a moment, that it was Blair who was responding
on behalf of the establishment, on behalf of the head of state,
on behalf of the Princess's own family.
He was the one who was taking the lead in all this.
Immediately, that was gonna be a headline around the world.
She was The People's Princess, and it was heartfelt.
It summed things up.
The numbers of people who've turned up here
have continued to grow.
I would say that there are now perhaps two
or 3,000 people standing, watching the palace,
just alone in their thoughts, really.
There is no Royal Standard flying on the palace
because the Queen and Prince Philip aren't here.
But if one looks at the government buildings that are within eyeshot,
the Home Office has its flag, the Union Flag,
flying at half mast as a mark of respect.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, the Royal Family were attending
Sunday service at Crathie Kirk as usual.
Three black cars emerged from the castle
and crossed the River Dee.
The family on its way to church.
In the first car,
the Queen Mother with the Duke of York.
Behind them, the Prince of Wales seated between his sons,
and finally the Queen,
dressed in black with the Duke of Edinburgh.
Everything is by tradition. Everything is how it is done before.
So the first thing we saw of the boys was when they were going
to the church for Sunday service.
At the time, inside Balmoral,
the absolute overarching worry for everybody was the boys.
You know, how do we make this in any way less unbearable for them?
I think it was exactly the right place for the boys to be.
The sense of shock and paralysis and isolation up there was intense,
and all they were thinking about was proceeding
as they always had preceded.
Of course, on this occasion,
the rules were all about to be rewritten.
As the Royal Family sat in Crathie Kirk,
the wheels were already in motion to carry out
the first Royal repatriation in living memory.
RADIO CHATTER
With the decision made to grant Diana a Royal funeral,
a directive from the Ministry of Defence
tasked the RAF with bringing her home.
The decision to bring the body back did surprise me.
It surprised everybody at Northolt.
There is an op order which says if a member
of the Royal Family dies overseas, day four is repatriation.
But thinking about the reaction to her death,
I think the Household probably made the decision,
"Let's get her body back as quickly as we can."
I felt it was right that I did the job of bringing her home,
having flown her so many times.
Bringing Diana home that same day broke with Royal protocol,
triggering a high-speed operation against the clock.
There was quite a lot of change going on left, right and centre
because we had to fit
what we call the coffin fit in the hold of a 146.
It's basically fibre wood with ball bearings fitted in it
so that the coffin could be moved easily
and slid sideways to go out of the door.
As shortly after that, there was another change.
Instead of going from Northolt to Aberdeen,
we had to go via RAF Wittering because we were to pick up
her two sisters who were going to travel
with the Prince out to Paris.
In case there's any last-minute changes,
the private secretary was on-board.
The press secretary, she was in tears,
and I just put my arms out, gave her a hug.
Everyone was in a real state at the time.
But it became, you know, "We've got a job to do."
And everybody knew that everybody else
would be doing their bit towards it.
Apparently, the Queen and Prince Philip
are leaving the service.
There they are, just coming back down the drive
from Crathie parish church.
The young princes, William and Harry,
have been at the church as well.
We're not sure in which car they are travelling.
The decision for Charles to bring Diana home from Paris
had been made hours earlier,
but the Palace still hadn't told the public...
Of course, the Prince of Wales
is not thought to be with his family there.
..leaving the press in the dark, struggling to keep pace
with the movements of the Royal Family.
I think... Dermot, I think he was said to be there,
so we may be able to see if we look carefully.
Let's see if we can.
There's the Queen Mother. In that that third car along.
Pretty sure that that contained the Prince of Wales
and the princes William and Harry.
Meanwhile, in Paris, Colin Tebbutt was at the British Embassy
preparing for Prince Charles's arrival.
Reasonably dressed. As smart as I could be.
But at that time in the morning, I didn't expect,
when I left home, to be standing in the embassy at Paris.
I was taken inside into an enormous room,
which had probably ten to 15 people working on what they were doing
and what Paris was doing and everything happening.
I just had that feeling in my mind
they were expecting lords, ladies, generals
and people of that ilk from the Household at the palace.
And went in there,
and the ambassador approached us, and his words were,
"You're the first people from the Princess's household.
"We are very, very pleased to see you."
Which then lifted me.
RAF Northolt, a secure military airfield in West London,
was selected as the arrival point for Diana's repatriation.
Plane wasn't coming back until the afternoon,
but there were certain preparations to be made at RAF Northolt.
Getting sort of generators off the apron,
getting trucks off the apron, getting airport steps off the apron
to set up a press position because we were expecting
a lot of press, and they needed to see what was going on.
We ended up at Northolt.
I think we were out there about one o'clock in the afternoon,
a team of six of us. We needed to get a motorcycle team up there
to escort the hearse from there to Fulham Mortuary.
And we'd already planned a route, which we thought
was the most convenient and best route for us.
We were waiting for the aircraft.
There was no definite ETA for the aircraft at that stage.
Meanwhile, having picked up Diana's sisters, Jane and Sarah,
the Royal jet was on its way to collect Prince Charles in Scotland.
When we landed at Aberdeen, the usual guy came out to see us.
He said the Prince is en route from Balmoral.
He arrived at Aberdeen about 20 minutes after we'd landed.
That day, Prince Charles became sort of the Royal emissary.
I suppose he becomes the member of the family
who goes out to pick up Diana and bring her home.
What the media used to call the wars of the Wales's.
You know, the rows that led to their separation
and their divorce.
I mean, all that stuff just sort of suddenly felt peripheral.
Don't forget, Charles at that time,
was sort of portrayed as a bit of a pariah.
You know, he was the baddie in this marriage.
And so I think there was something quite brave about Charles
stepping into that, erm, position
and saying, "No, of course I'm gonna go and do this.
"You know, she's my former wife. She's my sons' mother."
Flying from Aberdeen to Paris, which was just under two hours,
the air traffic control authorities, both London and in France,
were all saying,
"Please pass on our condolences to the Prince of Wales."
It really made me realise the enormity of what we were doing
and how it's almost a worldwide acknowledgement
that people were sad that she had passed away.
As the Royal jet travelled south through British airspace,
Anfield Stadium lay silent beneath.
The day's only Premier League game,
having been cancelled as a mark of respect.
Very sad. I mean, flags at half mast everywhere
and, erm, people's hearts at half mast as well,
I think, really, you know?
I just recall, you know, the atmosphere
because I've never felt London so quiet.
Even the birds didn't seem to fly.
You know, there was no noisy traffic,
there was quiet, hardly any planes,
and all you could hear was the sound of people crying.
Shortly after 4pm British time,
the Royal jet touched down at Villacoublay Airport
and was met on the runway by the British ambassador's car.
Prince Charles arriving at the small military airport outside Paris.
There's the Prince's car.
The Prince clearly visible there in the back.
Accompanied by Diana's sisters, Prince Charles made
the short 15-minute journey to the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital,
where they were greeted by French President Jacques Chirac,
flanked by a presidential guard.
A rare tribute.
We were standing outside the door.
The Prince came up to me and thanked me for coming.
I answered in words I can't remember.
It was a very, very quick conversation.
He was obviously very upset, but he was very professional.
The Prince asked if there were any members of the clergy there,
and then the Prince, the two sisters and the vicars
went into the room and the door was shut.
I was a little bit worried that the coffin
had just come out as it was, you know,
which I was hoping there'd be a cover to put over it.
I was quite delighted to see that the Royal Standard,
which had been brought by an RAF officer,
was placed over the coffin, and I thought that was very fitting
and a very, very nice thing to happen.
In covering her coffin with the Royal Standard,
Charles was breaking from tradition
and sending a clear message that Diana was to return home
as a beloved member of the Royal Family.
Sisters of the Princess behind there.
Harrowing time for them all.
So we then started to leave the hospital and, erm...
..at this part, I was totally amazed.
Because everything had stopped in Paris,
and the crowds were very deep and applauding,
which I found really, really heartwarming.
APPLAUSE
There is the hearse in the centre of your picture now.
Bound for the military airport at Villacoublay,
where it will be placed on that BAE 146
on which Prince Charles arrived earlier.
Seeing that coffin arrive, just suddenly,
you sat back and thought, "Oh, it's for real."
A large part of the Royal Family was no longer with us.
Because she played a major part.
REPORTER: At a quiet military airport west of Paris,
the RAF took over.
A slow progress to an aircraft of the Queen's Flight.
And a few flowers for the journey.
He wanted to take off just over an hour
before our arrival time at Northolt.
The Prince and the rest of his party arrived.
He got on board, and it was back to the job,
getting the aircraft ready
and getting the flight back to London on time.
I was very, very impressed by His Royal Highness.
He'd lost his ex-wife, but he still was holding everything together
when he could have broken down, but he didn't.
I sat with the two sisters...
..and talked about what I can't tell you.
You know, about the Princess.
The take-off from Villacoublay was into a setting golden sun.
And it somehow seemed fitting.
The floral tributes lying outside the main gate of the palace
is now stretching some 20ft or so out in front of the gate.
Up and down the country,
everyone from factory workers to schoolchildren
were united in shock at Diana's death.
It's not just what you've done For us that makes us love you so
It's all the joy of who you are The friend we've come to know.
The flowers were starting to stack up outside Buckingham Palace.
I remember talking to Lord Airlie, who had taken charge.
He was asked,
"What are we gonna do about changing the guard tomorrow?"
Because the guard need to come through those gates,
and they're now covered in flowers.
And he took the decision very early on.
Leave the flowers where they are. We'll move the guard.
He could see ritual, tradition dictates.
You do things by the book.
Well, you know, we've just ripped up the book.
We're gonna do things differently.
It became a bit of a health hazard because the flowers started
to sort of turn into compost.
It's a very difficult job to do.
These people are coming from all over the country.
I've been speaking to the ladies that've come down from Newcastle,
from Liverpool, and they've got no reason,
but they just feel they had to come down.
How are you coping yourself? Erm, having to cope.
It's a job. It's gotta be done. It's not a very nice job.
It's not very nice time to be around here,
but you've got to carry on.
I think the death of Diana had resonance for many people
on a personal level, and I think a lot of people found,
in her death, a way of exploring their own grief.
The only people we think of at the moment is William and Harry.
That's who I feel really sorry for.
As grief turned to anger, the nation demanded to know who was to blame.
The story that we understood was that she was pursued by paparazzi.
We just knew the basics.
We knew that there'd been a car chase.
We knew that paparazzi had been involved.
Erm, and that was pretty much it.
In Paris, the French authorities were treating the paparazzi
as potential suspects.
REPORTER: Seven photographers detained near the scene
of the fatal crash are still being held.
Reports of photographers detained in Paris gave public anger
in Britain a clear focus.
Don't you think that what you're doing is wrong?
Anyone with a press badge was seen as complicit.
Don't. I don't want to be on the papers.
You, the press, that killed her.
You're the scum. Yes!
APPLAUSE The news were going,
"It's all the photographers. It's all the photographers' fault."
And I thought, "Oh, my goodness, I'm one of those photographers."
Jayne Fincher has photographed Diana since before the engagement.
Diana had asked her for advice on dealing with the paparazzi.
Last year, Jayne Fincher resigned from the Royal rota of photographers
because of what she called increasing bad manners
within the media.
Standing in front of her, blocking her way,
trapping her in the corner and down a road,
you know, banned her car.
I mean, just really like being like a fox
with the hounds around her at times.
She said to me once, "You've got to remember, Jayne,
"I watch all of you as much as you watch me."
She said, "We travel the world,
"and when I get off the plane, there you all are."
She goes, "I know when so-and-so's got a new car.
"I know when so-and-so's got a new outfit."
She says, "It's not just you looking at me. I'm looking at you."
I very clearly remember the last time I photographed her,
and it was in December '96,
and she was visiting a ballet in London,
and she arrived, and she just looked so sad.
And she looked across at me, and I looked at her,
and she sort of kind of mouthed to me, "Sorry."
And then she went.
I just saw her disappear out the door.
And that was the last time I saw her in the flesh.
An hour before the Royal jet was due to land,
a select group of photographers were in position at RAF Northolt
to document the arrival of the Royal flight.
Jayne was amongst them.
I felt reluctant all the way through about picking up a camera,
but I thought, "No, I've got to pull myself together.
"This has been your life, Jayne. You've recorded this story.
"You've recorded this woman all these years.
"You have to be professional. You've gotta go and end this story."
On the ground at RAF Northolt, royal press secretary
Dickie Arbiter was overseeing arrangements for the arrival.
When the press arrived at RAF Northolt,
I had a briefing with them in one of the hangars,
and I borrowed a photographer's steps,
and I stood on the steps.
I didn't have to say much.
All I said, "We know why we're here, don't we?"
And they kind of got the message.
It was a very strange atmosphere there, and we were all very quiet.
We were getting our cameras out and looking a bit sheepish.
Yeah, I felt that for once the media was feeling a bit ashamed of itself.
We're all part of that team, you know?
The royal photographers, in quotes, that covered all their events,
not just her, but the Queen and everything else.
So, erm, not a word was said amongst us.
They were normally a very noisy bunch we were together.
A lot of banter and jokes and, you know, very noisy lot.
Everybody was absolutely silent.
They were... Yeah, they were as shocked as I was.
The majority of reporters and photographers
and television crews, they all knew Diana,
but none of them could quite believe that she was actually dead.
And when we saw the BAE 146 of the Queen's Flight
sort of make an approach to Northolt with its light shining,
still didn't believe it.
Just 17 hours after the fatal crash in Paris,
the Royal flight carrying Diana's body home
approached RAF Northolt.
When we came back, there were over 400 press.
So we knew that the world would be watching.
And obviously, my thought was, "This has got to be a good landing."
So as you see, a perfect touchdown there.
I taxied the aircraft to the end of the runway
and brought the aircraft on stand at 7:00.
There was Tony Blair, and there was the Defence Secretary
to greet Diana off the plane.
As the whole world watches this extraordinary tableau
on a rather unlovely bit of RAF tarmac.
When the engines were switched off and the slow whine died down,
and the RAF Colour Guard from the Queen's Squadron
marched to the hold of the aircraft.
And we saw this box coming out draped in a Royal Standard.
I don't think anybody believed it.
It was like, "This is the reality now."
But even then I kept thinking, "No, it's not her in there.
"You know, it's not her. She's a young woman.
"It's not her in there."
I do remember looking at Jayne, and she was crying,
but it's hard to explain, to put into words,
how a bunch of really hard-nosed journalists,
photojournalists, who have been with this lady
and covered some pretty hairy events around the world,
and there we were in total shock, if you like, thinking,
"There she is."
And there was Charles standing there with her sisters,
and they looked devastated.
You know, it's quite hard picking a camera up
and pointing at people in that situation.
It's... It's uncomfortable.
I had told the photographers
that they were to be no motorised cameras, just single-shot.
And you really could have heard a pin drop.
Couldn't hear any birds. There were no birds at all.
It's almost as if they knew
that something mournful was happening.
And all you could hear was the hobnail boots on the tarmac.
On the apron.
I kept having these flashes of these times I'd been with her.
And I kept seeing the times I'd photographed her with her boys.
That was the thing that really upset me.
The hearse sort of did a U-turn and came around,
and it just literally came right in front of the press pen.
And I just remember it was close, and I just thought,
"I can't relate this to her being in that coffin."
I don't think any of the media quite believed what they had seen.
There's usually a tremendous scramble to get the pictures
and get the story back to base as quickly as possible.
There was no rush that day.
REPORTER: The hearse now leaves RAF Northolt,
the police outriders...
..clearing the way, as if anybody would want to get in the way.
Flanked by a motorcycle escort, the hearse carrying Diana's coffin
began its planned journey to a mortuary in London.
The ten-mile journey should have only taken 40 minutes,
but no-one had accounted for what happened next.
We were gonna go straight down towards the M4,
but we ended up using the M40 because once we got
to the Polish War Memorial roundabout,
we couldn't go straight on because of the crowds.
I was absolutely flabbergasted at how cars had stopped
on the westbound carriageway of the M40,
and people got out and stood alongside
the central reservation barrier,
and that was all the way back into London.
People. People. People.
Absolutely frighteningly amazing.
JAYNE: It was chaos.
The thought hadn't even occurred to me
that all these people would come,
and they were parked all along the road.
This pilgrimage had started immediately.
Then the tears started, and I just cried my heart out.
You know, she's been a big part of my life.
I thought, "You better pull yourself together.
"You can't drive like this.
"You know, you can't see what you're doing."
All the way down the A40,
we had flowers, people cheering, clapping.
And that's when the first flowers started being chucked
from the side of the road.
And it's very similar, actually,
to when Elizabeth II flew home from Scotland
and her coffin came into RAF Northolt.
And it was a fairly wet evening. But that didn't stop the crowds.
And again, the A40 as the hearse came through.
People were standing by the side of the road...
..you know, chucking flowers in vast numbers.
And those are the moments I always find where you think...
.."This is why monarchy is different."
After a post-mortem examination at a West London mortuary,
Diana's body was placed in a hearse and driven to St James's Palace,
where her coffin was laid in the Chapel Royal.
There she is, in the same chapel where Elizabeth I
prayed for the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
I mean, she could not be more, you know, central, if you like,
to the, er... t-to all things royal.
That's Diana being kind of fully embraced
by the Royal establishment.
I had a spare half-hour,
and I sat in the Chapel Royal with her,
and I suppose there was an anger
that had built up over the course of the day.
Angry that she'd gone to Paris, she'd got in his car,
and I was angry that it had come to this,
and it was so unnecessary,
and it was such a waste of a good person.
When I look back on that day, how Britain,
if you like, handled it was the way we do things that way,
and we do them well.
And I was proud to be part of it.
I went back, went home slightly dazed, exhausted,
wondering where I'd been for the last 24 hours.
I didn't shed a tear or show emotion on air
because the adrenaline kept me going, but certainly,
sitting in front of the television,
that's when the floodgates unleashed.
There are people here from every walk of life.
Every age, every race.
And despite the time of night, still streaming into the park here.
It's quite incredible.
The British people really had come to identify
with this young girl who they'd seen grow up.
They'd seen, er, Diana through the years.
You know, with all of her ups and downs.
Still, she was The People's Princess.
She was.
They felt that she was their representative in the monarchy.
A few minutes ago, I walked along the wall
that goes from the road all the way up to the palace.
It's about 400 yards,
and every inch of the way, there are people praying.
Still little children at this time of night.
People laying flowers, people keeping vigil, candles.
Almost like a shrine all the way along.
The day that Britain lost a princess and as John Simpson said,
"A young woman described by all to whom she reached out
"as irreplaceable."
Good night.
It was a day that changed everything, wasn't it?
I mean, it was a day...
..which started with kind of lurid headlines about,
you know, what she was doing on Dodi Fayed's yacht
and ended with her essentially lying in state.
I look back at that 24 hours and think,
given the enormity of what happened and the shock of it,
I think it was a feat of dignified, methodical tradition,
pageantry, pomp, respect, love and compassion
all coming together in a spectacular way.
Everybody did an extraordinary job,
given, er, where we were in the early hours of that morning
to where we were as night fell.
And there is the Princess of Wales
inside the Chapel Royal at St James's Palace.
And that just seemed entirely appropriate.