Today will not bring closure

As the excitement about today’s Diana memorial service grows, take a look at Fergus Shanahan’s plain-speaking column in the Sun. He makes the perfectly valid point that the anniversaries of deaths are rarely, if ever, celebrated: there are no services, for example, to mark the passing of the years since Churchill’s death on 24 January 1965. Nor does it seem likely that there will be a major event on 30 March 2012 to mark the milestone of a decade since the Queen Mother’s death. In making a recent Radio 4 documentary on the Diana effect upon the monarchy in the past ten years, I formed the distinct impression that many of those involved in the controversies would like this memorial to be a book-end which draws to a dignified close ten years of remorseless obsession, analysis and cultural anguish. That would be the traditional British way. But these days “closure” is harder to achieve, and I doubt it will be forthcoming amid today’s tears and tributes.