The turreted battlements of Balmoral castle are remarkably resistant to the onslaught of unpleasant reality, however. Queen Victoria hid behind them following the death of Prince Albert, detached from the world beyond, secure in a realm of her own creation which remains very much as she left it, down to the furnishings and the wallpaper. Now her descendants were doing much the same thing following the death of the princess. After the uproar of the first night, Balmoral had settled back into its old routine, and if the atmosphere was muted, everyone still dressed for dinner.

If that was due in part to the royal family’s firmly held conviction that in times of trouble, sticking to the rules of protocol offers the best form of defence, it also reflected the antipathy some of them felt towards Diana, because of all the controversies created by her relationship with Prince Charles.

While her sister, her mother and her husband had long given up on Diana, the Queen retained some of her affection for her daughter-in-law. Alone in her family, she found it in herself to sympathise with her problems. Changing the long-established traditions for a woman who, by the letter of the law, was no longer royal was quite another matter, however. She had objected to Tony Blair being represented on the funeral committee, which had been set up under the chairmanship of her Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Airlie, and it had required another argument to induce her to give way. And it was only when Prince Charles insisted that his ex-wife, as the mother of two princes of the blood, was entitled to (but didn’t have) a state funeral that she had given up on her idea for a small, private ceremony.

What she said she was not prepared to do, however, at least not at this stage, was defer to the demands of the mob and go scurrying back to London. Such an action ran counter to the dignity she had been brought up to hold dear. But events were rapidly sliding out of royal control, and even the Queen’s resolve was eventually broken. On the Thursday, a Union Jack was hoisted over Buckingham Palace and flew there at half-mast for the first time in British history. That same day, the family came out of their self-imposed seclusion to look at the flowers and letters of condolence which had been lain against the stone walls of the Balmoral estate.