Portrait of the Week – 10 January 2004

Mr Michael Burgess, the Coroner of the Queen’s Household, opened the inquest on Diana, Princess of Wales, the conclusion of which, he said, would not come for more than a year; he had asked Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, to investigate her death, which was on 31 August 1997; as Coroner for Surrey, Mr Burgess also opened an inquest on Dodi Fayed. The Daily Mirror published a sentence from a letter written by Diana in October 1996 saying, ‘My husband is planning “an accident’’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury, in order to make the path clear for him to marry.’ Mr Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, was readmitted to the Labour party, from which he was suspended in 2000 after standing against the Labour candidate for mayor. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, visited British soldiers at Basra, in southern Iraq, after his family holiday at Sharm el-Sheik. He returned to Westminster to meet a fine old row about university fees. Mr Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said that British troops would remain in Iraq for years not months. British Airways flights to Washington were delayed on several days running through American anxieties about terrorism. A working party under the Rt Revd Michael Nazir Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, proposed, as one solution to the problematic consecration of women as bishops in the Church of England, that a non-geographical province could be set up with no women clergy. Firemen arriving at a fire at Warburton’s bakery in Wednesbury were stoned by youths suspected of starting it; 30 fire engines were needed. The Traffic Management Bill before Parliament made provision for local authority traffic wardens to impose fines of £100 on drivers who ignored ‘No Right Turn’ signs. Thousands of commuters found services by South West Trains cancelled after a mishap during engineering works at Clapham Junction; fares went up.