My Cultural Life - London

I must admit to being one of the first who hoofed it down to Kensington Gardens with a bunch of £5 M&S flowers when I found out early in the morning of Sunday 31st August 1997 that Princess Diana had died during the night.

I've never been sure exactly what it was that compelled me to do it, but it turned out soon afterwards that I was certainly not alone. In fact, it became a slightly embarrassing thing to own up to, what with all the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth that ensued.

'The Queen' takes you right back to that time and, although it doesn't attempt to get to the roots of the extraordinary public reaction to the death, it does remind you of the intoxicating, if mawkish, sense of self-righteous solidarity among ‘the people’ that week, and its effects on the key figures in the royal family and government, in particular the Queen.

The narrative doesn't really stray from the one already lodged in the public perception - with Elizabeth II and the Establishment all bound up in notions of protocol and precedents, while 'call me Tony' Blair - the nation's mourner-in-chief - persuades them to break with tradition and rub shoulders with the great unwashed for the first time in their history. And if Charles has at times been portrayed as a self-pitying wimp, the view is compounded here in his attempts to cosy up to Blair and his fretting about being shot.

What makes the film fascinating, though, is the oh-so-believable and unexpectedly humorous behind-the-scenes perspective on this familiar narrative. Blair's swift journey from gauche rookie to the people's Prime Minister, and his surprising outrage in the face of Alistair Campbell’s irreverent attitude; Prince Philip's allusions to his own infidelity; the Queen Mum aghast that her own funeral plans have been hijacked and rejigged to include 'stars of the stage and screen', or 'homosexuals' as Philip would have it.

I'm not sure if Campbell did actually coin the phrase 'the People's Princess' or had a hand in making the Queen's address to the nation more touchy-feely but, after seeing the film, I'm more than happy to believe it. The scattering of national in-jokes, such as Gordon Brown being told over the phone to ‘hang on’, also lend the film a pleasing intimacy.

With hindsight, of course, the great outpouring of grief that week seems a bit shallow and fleeting - in the film, after things have calmed down, Blair assures the Queen that she only risked public approbation for ‘about five minutes’.  What’s more, if the proliferation of Union Jacks and face paint at the Queen's 80th birthday celebrations this summer were anything to go by, the great British public seems to have easily reverted to their pre-Diana royalism and love of pomp and ceremony.

I’m still not sure why I made the trip to Kensington Palace that day, but the film took me right back to that extraordinary, empowering moment when I felt like one of ‘the people’ at a time where ‘the people’ seemed to be the puppeteers of the powers-that-be for once. Even if it was only for about five minutes.

Highly recommended to anyone who remembers where they were when they found out that Diana had died.