The 25th anniversary of Princess Diana's death

It's a cliche to write it but there are certain moments in your lifetime where you will always remember what you were doing and where you were when something of historical importance or a catastrophe which affected everyone occurred. I can vividly recall as a child the incomprehensible (to me) but genuinely frightening day when I thought a nuclear bomb was going to land outside my school classroom window (the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis). I remember exactly where I was when the news broke on the TV that President John F Kennedy had been assassinated. I rushed home to tell my parents only to find them esconsed with an encyclopedia salesmen attempting to persuade them to buy half a dozen volumes. They hadn't heard and I couldn't tell them the breaking news because it would have been rude to interrupt the man's pitch. I was walking back from a cafe after lunch when someone from The Times said to get to the office quickly because something of huge moment was happening in New York. I arrived to find a cluster of reporters around a TV set about 12 minutes before the second hijacked airliner crashed into the Twin Towers. Princess Diana's death on August 31 25 years ago was another of those never-to-be forgotten moments. I was in bed but awake when the news broke from Paris. Today, a quarter of a century later, Diana remains one of the most famous and loved women on the planet. Everyone in the universe knows about Diana. Her extraordinary uniqueness and yet simple, naive, innocent persona affected pro- and anti-monarchists. She will always be an iconic figure and her life and death were in so many ways desperately tragic.