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This week it will be ten years ago that Diana, Princess of Wales died and the remembrance train is in full swing. No doubt it will all culminate in wall-to-wall coverage this coming Friday, the actual date on which she died in a car accident in Paris. So if you’re allergic to it all, make sure you tune out on that day.

The case however has fascinated me immensely and it is worthwhile contemplating the two key aspects of her death. On the political side it was the near constitutional crisis following her passing, captured imaginatively in the excellent movie The Queen - which I reviewed here. For Americans it may be hard to understand, but royal power in some European monarchies is not limited to the symbolic or cultural realm, political power is a prerogative still enjoyed by quite a few sovereigns. On the social and cultural side Diana’s impact continues to be far reaching, and Time’s Catherine Mayer had a very worthwhile piece last week which yielded this excellent excerpt:

The comedian David Baddiel, whose novel Whatever Love Means begins on the day of Diana’s funeral, sees her as an exponent of “a degraded version of therapy culture,” a self-help addict who couldn’t stop spilling her guts. She “didn’t know who she was but gained an identity through her messiness, through her lack of identity, by splattering her lack of identity on the walls of our culture,” he says. “People chimed with that.”

And so it is indeed. Diana’s death accelerated the emergence of a new and very public culture of death, now an integral part of the lives of the ‘commoners’. Personally I subscribe to the more private approach to mourning – whether it is a loved one or a public figure – but in our highly individualistic society where tradition and restraint have given way to the unfettered celebration of the self that is apparently no longer the norm. Diana somehow left the commoner with this message: ‘you too can be special in death’.

And as science and technology are allowing us to postpone death’s eventual call, it seems that we are increasingly unable to deal with its eventual arrival. Our forefathers must no doubt frown on the hysteria that now accompanies something that used to be a regular and private affair. That too is a part of Diana’s legacy.

This is funny: US president George W. Bush winked at Queen Elizabeth and made a mistake by saying that she had visited America in 1776.

Stumbling over his words, he came perilously close to suggesting that the monarch had toured the States in 1776.

And although the President’s following wink was initially rewarded with a regal glare, the Queen did at least seem to see the funny side of the blunder.

After the blunder the President paused and turned to the Queen to acknowledge his gaffe, joking that she “gave me a look that only a mother could give a child.”

Ripples of laughter echoed around those gathered at the event and the President laughed off the mistake and continued his speech.

Not worth getting worked up about: I had a good, friendly laugh when I watched the video at Hot Air, Bush dealt quite well with it. He made a joke out of it / laughed it off.