LONDON -- Here we are on the second anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, and neither her life nor her death seems as momentous as it did this time last year. Does this mean she really was just a media phenomenon, ephemeral, superficial, appearing and disappearing in our lives without consequence?
The anguished relationship between the British establishment and Mohammed Fayed -- the owner of Harrods and father of Dodi, who died in the crash with Diana -- hasn't lessened by one jot. This year, his application for British citizenship was once again turned down for reasons neither he nor Home Secretary Jack Straw will make public. All this thickens the suspicion and air of mystery that still surrounds Diana's last months. How this mystery will alter her place in our memory will only reveal itself over time. But her relatively fast disappearance from public life -- the unexpected failure of her image to sustain its potency in popular imagination -- does point to the central importance of her physical presence. She wasn't just an idea, as some have thought; it was the troubled substantiality of her body and her behavior that so entranced people. Without that, she seems just a dream.
This phenomenon marks her out from most of the denizens of the public realm. Whatever else we demand of our politicians (and God knows what that is in this cynical and disillusioned age), it is not physical beauty or a healing touch. It may be part of the conceit of a few charismatic politicians that they have the healing touch. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher liked to make visitations to those injured in some ghastly accident, but the jokes about the deadly prospect of coming back to consciousness in hospital to find Thatcher looming over one showed this notion of healing was entirely her own fantasy.