The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, started on 6 September 1997 at 9:08 am in London, when the tenor bell of Westminster Abbey started tolling to signal the departure of the cortège from Kensington Palace. Diana's coffin was carried from the palace on a gun carriage by riders of the King's Troop and escorted by mounted police along Hyde Park to St James's Palace, where her body had remained for five days before being taken to Kensington Palace. The Union Flag on top of the palace was lowered to half mast. The official ceremony was held at Westminster Abbey in London and finished at the resting place in Diana's family estate of Althorp, Northamptonshire.
Two thousand people attended the ceremony in Westminster Abbey while the British television audience was 32.10 million on average, one of the United Kingdom's highest viewing figures ever. An estimated 2 to 2.5 billion people watched the event worldwide, making it one of the most-watched televised events in history.
Funeral
Diana's coffin, draped with the royal standard with a differentiating ermine border (i.e. the Other Members' standard), had been brought to London from the Salpêtrière Hospital, via Vélizy – Villacoublay Air Base, Paris, to RAF Northolt by Diana's former husband Charles, Prince of Wales, and her two sisters on 31 August 1997. After being taken to a private mortuary, it was placed at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, and later taken to Kensington Palace the night before the funeral.
The funeral plan for the Queen Mother, codenamed "Operation Tay Bridge", had been rehearsed for 22 years and was used as the basis for Diana's funeral. However, the event was not a state funeral; instead, it was a royal ceremonial funeral that included royal pageantry and Anglican funeral liturgy. A large display of flowers was installed at the gates of Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace. Eight members of the Welsh Guards accompanied Diana's coffin on the one-hour-forty-seven-minute ride through London streets. On top of the coffin were three wreaths of white flowers from her brother, the Earl Spencer, and her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. There was also a letter from Prince Harry on her coffin addressed to "Mummy". The coffin bore a weight of a quarter of a tonne (250 kg / approx 550 lb) as it was lined with lead, as is tradition with British royalty.
At St James's Palace, Prince Philip, the Prince of Wales, her sons, and her brother joined to walk behind. Five hundred representatives of various charities the Princess had been involved with joined behind them in the funeral cortège. Alastair Campbell later revealed in his diaries that the government and the royal household feared for the security of Prince Charles, believing that he would possibly get attacked by the crowd, thus they ensured that he would be accompanied by his sons. Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, initially opposed the idea of William and Harry taking part in the funeral procession, but ultimately decided to walk besides them, telling his grandsons "I'll walk if you walk." William later described the experience as "one of the hardest things I've ever done", and Harry mentioned no child "should be asked to do" what they did. Nevertheless, William saw the act as a necessity to maintain "balance between duty and family" and Harry said that he was "very glad" that he took part in the procession. In his 2023 memoir Spare, Harry claimed that the idea of having the boys walk behind their mother's coffin horrified several adults, in particular their uncle Lord Spencer who described it as "a barbarity." Spencer has previously stated that he felt he was lied to about the boys' desire to do the task. Harry also claimed that there were suggestions that William should walk behind the coffin alone, but Harry refused to allow it as had the roles been reversed William would have done the same.
The coffin then passed Buckingham Palace where members of the royal family were waiting outside. Queen Elizabeth II bowed her head as it went by. More than one million people lined the streets of London, and flowers rained down onto the cortège from bystanders. Two screens were erected to relay the Westminster Abbey service in Hyde Park.
The ceremony at Westminster Abbey opened at 11:00 BST and lasted one hour and ten minutes. The royal family placed wreaths alongside Diana's coffin in the presence of Britain's living former prime ministers – John Major, Margaret Thatcher, James Callaghan and Edward Heath – and former Conservative MP Winston Churchill, the grandson of World War II-era Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. British personalities who attended included Sir Cliff Richard, Sir Elton John, George Michael, Chris de Burgh, Michael Barrymore, Richard Branson, and Richard Attenborough; international guests included US First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, William J. Crowe, French First Lady Bernadette Chirac, Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak, Queen Noor of Jordan, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Mariah Carey, Luciano Pavarotti, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Ruby Wax, Imran Khan and his then wife, Jemima Goldsmith. The prime minister, Tony Blair, read an excerpt from First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 13: "And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love". Among other invitees were the King of Spain, Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Japan, the deposed King Constantine II of Greece, and South African president Nelson Mandela.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, and the Dean of Westminster, Wesley Carr, were also present in the abbey and delivered the bidding, the prayers, and the commendation. The service was sung by the Choir of Westminster Abbey and conducted by Organist and Master of the Choristers, Martin Neary; the organist was Martin Baker. Music before the service included the hymn tune "Eventide", "Adagio in E", the hymn tune "Rhosymedre", Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639, "Fantasia in C minor, BWV 537", "Adagio in G minor", "Symphony No. 9", Pachelbel's Canon (which was misidentified by the commentator as "Albinoni's Adagio"), and Variation IX (Adagio) "Nimrod". The Anglican service opened with the traditional singing of "God Save the Queen". The funeral started with the choir singing the Funeral Sentences, composed by William Croft and Henry Purcell. Pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonín Dvořák, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gustav Holst, and other composers were played throughout the ceremony. The hymns were "I Vow to Thee, My Country", by Sir Cecil Spring Rice to the tune by Gustav Holst; "The King of Love My Shepherd Is" by Henry Baker to the tune Dominus Regit Me by John Bacchus Dykes; "Make Me a Channel of Your Peace" to the tune by Sebastian Temple and "Guide me, O thou great Redeemer", by William Williams to the tune Cwm Rhondda by John Hughes. The chant Libera me was sung by the BBC Singers, together with Lynne Dawson, to the tune by Giuseppe Verdi.
I thought it was very important to project it from a nation's standpoint. I wanted to make it sound like a country singing it. From the first couple of lines I wrote [which began "Goodbye England's Rose"], the rest sort of fell into place
During the service, Elton John sang a 1997 rendition of "Candle in the Wind", with new lyrics written as a tribute to Diana. He had contacted his writing partner Bernie Taupin, asking him to revise the lyrics of his 1973 Marilyn Monroe tribute song "Candle in the Wind" to honour Diana, and Taupin rewrote the song accordingly. Only a month before Diana's death she had been photographed comforting John at the funeral of their mutual friend Gianni Versace at Milan Cathedral. Files released by The National Archives showed that the Dean of Westminster, Wesley Carr, had personally appealed to senior aides at the palace to secure John's performance at the funeral, insisting on the "inclusion of something of the modern world that the princess represented". A solo performance by a saxophonist had been considered as a second option.
Diana's sister Sarah gave the first reading, a poem titled Turn Again To Life by Mary Lee Hall, and her other sister Jane gave the second reading, a poem titled Time Is taken from Music and Other Poems by Henry van Dyke Jr. Her brother Charles gave the eulogy, in which he rebuked the press for their treatment of his sister. "It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this – a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age," Spencer said during his speech.
"Song for Athene" by British composer John Tavener, with text by Mother Thekla, a Greek Orthodox nun, drawn from the Orthodox liturgy and Shakespeare's Hamlet, was sung as Diana's cortège departed from the main nave of Westminster Abbey. This was followed after a one-minute silence by half-muffled change ringing on the abbey's ten bells.
Burial
The burial occurred privately later the same day. Diana's former husband, sons, mother, siblings, a close friend, and a clergyman were present. Diana's body was clothed in a black long-sleeved, three-quarter length woollen cocktail dress designed by Catherine Walker which she had chosen some weeks before, a pair of black pantyhose, and a pair of black shoes. A set of rosary beads was placed in her hands, a gift she had received from Mother Teresa, who died the same week as Diana. In her hands there was also a photograph of her sons, which travelled around with her and had been found in her handbag. Her grave is on an island (52°16′59″N 1°00′01″W / 52.283082°N 1.000278°W) within the grounds of Althorp Park, the Spencer family home for centuries. The ground was consecrated by the Bishop of Peterborough prior to the burial.
At the ceremony, the Royal Standard which had covered the coffin was removed. Paul Burrell, Diana's former butler, claimed that the standard had been removed by her brother moments before she was buried, and replaced with the Spencer family standard. He claimed the Earl said that "She (Diana) is a Spencer now." Burrell also condemned the move, telling the Daily Mirror that "It had more to do with his Spencer v Windsor war than doing what Diana would have wanted. It was inappropriate and disrespectful. I knew it was not what Diana would have wanted. With that act, her brother was depriving the Princess of her proper status in life – a status of which she was proud." Lord Spencer called Burrell's comments "hurtful lies" and said in a statement: "The Queen's standard was removed as part of the ceremony by her own officer in a dignified and pre-agreed manner".
The original plan was for Diana to be buried in the Spencer family vault at the local St Mary's Church in nearby Great Brington, but Lord Spencer said that he was concerned about public safety and security and the onslaught of visitors that might overwhelm Great Brington. He decided that Diana would be buried where her grave could be easily cared for and visited in privacy by William, Harry, and other Spencer relatives.
The island is in an ornamental lake known as The Round Oval within Althorp Park's gardens. A path with thirty-six oak trees, marking each year of her life, leads to the Oval. Four black swans swim in the lake. In the water there are water lilies, which, in addition to white roses, were Diana's favourite flowers. On the southern verge of the Round Oval sits the Summerhouse, previously in the gardens of Admiralty House, London, and now adapted to serve as a memorial to Diana. An ancient arboretum stands nearby, which contains trees planted by the family. The Spencer family's decision to bury the Princess in this secluded – and private – location has enabled them to visit her grave in private.
The burial party was provided by the 2nd Battalion, The Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment (Queen's and Royal Hampshires), who were given the honour of carrying the Princess across to the island and laying her to rest. Diana was the Regiment's Colonel-in-Chief from 1992 to 1996.