What Spencer was saying in no uncertain terms was that he considered the royal family unfit to bring up his nephews. It was a stinging rebuke of their father and the values of duty and tradition, which are the bedrock of royal life. The Anglican funeral service allows no place for allegation, accusation or the settling of scores. Quite the opposite: it is a ceremony of remembrance which is designed to bury the woes of this life alongside the body of the deceased. By going against time-honoured form, Spencer was guilty of gross bad manners. Hypocrisy, too, got an airing, because it wasn’t Victoria, his wife and the mother of his four children, whom the earl had brought to the abbey that day, but his latest mistress, Josie Borain. Spencer was not the person best qualified to deliver a lecture on good parenting to the Prince of Wales from the pulpit of an abbey in front of a worldwide television audience of several hundred million.

Curiously, the prince’s initial reaction was not one of outrage but of relief. Spencer had refused to allow him to see a draft of his address and after the telephone altercations he had had with his erstwhile brother-in-law in the hours leading up to the funeral, he had been expecting a lot worse than the admonition which was finally delivered. The Queen and Prince Philip, on the other hand, were appalled and their indignation was writ large in their stony glares.

As far as the public were concerned, however, Lord Spencer had hit precisely the right note. He had articulated what so many of them were feeling. His address was relayed by loudspeakers to the multitude packing the square outside and as he finished they gave a great roar of approval. It was borne through into the ancient abbey where the congregation, echoing the sentiments of those outside, burst into rapturous applause.

The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, who had been complaining all morning about the inconvenience of having to cut short her Tuscan holiday because of ‘that wretched girl’, looked straight ahead. So did Princess Anne, who had viewed the events of the week with all the down-to-earth attitude one would have expected of that pragmatic, no-nonsense woman.