Same old story? The tale of Diana, Princess of Wales

This paper examines some retellings of the Diana story and considers a number of issues in relation to that story. It examines the crisis produced by the 'ending' of Diana's story with her death in a car crash in 1997 and the problems that this posed for existing accounts of Diana's significance; the struggle over Diana's 'true story' and the contention that 'her story' is only 'a question of his desire'; the reproduction and reworking of key narrative frameworks around Diana in competing versions of the story following her death. It explores the significance of these stories as articulations of some important cultural preoccupations with the individual self; with public and political life and with femininity and women's future at the beginning of the 21st century.