Thirty-five years ago this week, London was en fete, and the rest of the United Kingdom and much of the world came to a halt as Lady Diana Spencer promised to love, honour – but not obey – Prince Charles. Her vows – like her wedding dress, her hair and even her virtue – were under global scrutiny. No wonder she fluffed her lines and muddled the Prince’s names, calling him ‘Philip Charles’ instead of ‘Charles Philip’. In hindsight, the mix-up seems another omen for a doomed marriage, along with the Prince of Wales’s notorious ‘whatever in love means’ remark on the day of their engagement. This year, as in years past, there has been nothing to distinguish the date, July 29 – but then, there has been precious little recognition, anyway, of the contribution Diana made to the Royal Family and to the life of the nation. The rush to commemorate her in the aftermath of her death at the age of 36 in a Paris car crash is but a distant memory. Only the most devoted of the Princess’s supporters know of the Diana memorial walk, a seven-mile trail through four of London’s parks, marked with 90 plaques in the ground; or of the Diana memorial playground with its wooden pirate ship in Kensington Gardens. There is also, of course, the memorial fountain – derided by some as a glorified ditch – in Hyde Park, where tourists cool their feet on hot summer days. But more of that later. This erasing of Diana by a vengeful Establishment has been a powerful narrative, aided in part by the near silence of the royals. But this week, Prince Harry, who together with his brother William have been the finest and most visible memorials to the late Princess, indicated that the years of silence are at an end. He spoke poignantly of his regret of not opening up sooner about how his mother’s death affected him. He was just 12 when she died. At a barbecue held earlier this week for the UK mental health campaign Heads Together, Harry, 31, said he only began speaking about the loss three years ago. He added, “It’s OK to suffer, as long as you talk about it. It’s not a weakness. Weakness is having a problem and not recognising it and not solving that problem.” His remarks, which were welcomed by charity chiefs for his willingness to break the stigma surrounding mental health issues, came just days after he had been praised by the Terrence Higgins Trust for taking an HIV test live on Facebook. The charity, which campaigns to promote good sexual health, greeted it as a ‘ground-breaking moment in the fight against Aids’, and it was likened to the historic occasion when Princess Diana first shook hands, without wearing gloves, with Aids victims in Middlesex Hospital nearly 30 years ago. But while his actions were being celebrated as examples of Harry’s vital qualities in championing taboo subjects – and of his transformation from Prince of Knaves to Prince of Hearts – it was his reflections on his mother that were being talked about in Buckingham Palace corridors this week. Long-time courtiers were left wondering about the significance of the remarks and why, almost 19 years after Diana was killed in that high-speed car accident, Harry should now feel the time was right to ‘open up’ about her. Some, perhaps cynically, were suggesting that he may have a ‘guilt complex’ over the manner of Diana’s airbrushing from royal history. He can hardly be blamed for that, although over the years, her two sons chose to do little in the way of public gestures towards her memory. In 2000, he and William declined to attend the opening of the Diana playground, so close to their old home at Kensington Palace. And until a decision was taken over the so-called fountain or water feature, they took scant interest in the debate over a suitable permanent memorial. This, of course, should not be interpreted as an unwillingness to mourn their mother – they missed her desperately – but rather a determination to keep their grief and their loss private. However, there was one other over-riding factor, a dread of upsetting their father – and Camilla. “For a long time, they worried, and those around them worried, too, that whatever they said about their mother could be misinterpreted as somehow being critical of the Prince of Wales,” recalls an aide. “The whole Diana subject was tricky, and their sensitivity about saying anything was noticeable.”