'Probably the most public occasion the world has ever known': 'Public' and 'private' in press coverage of the death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales

This paper presents analysis of the distinctions between public and private life that were drawn and reflected upon in the London press coverage of the death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales (who died on 31 August 1997). This corpus is notable because journalists and other commentators had unprecedented opportunity and incentive to reflect, in print, on how and where the line between public and private ought to be drawn. In so doing their efforts served to expose more clearly the difficult, controversial and fuzzy nature of this distinction. The corpus is also notable because it contains considered accounts of the nature of public life, the role of 'the public', and the constitution of political rule in Britain. The material therefore prompts analytic reflection on the concept 'public'; it is here suggested that within the context of normative political theory 'reflexivity' must be a key component of 'publicity'. The analysis also shows how in discursive genres such as broadsheet print journalism a variety of contrasting and even inconsistent conceptual analyses and social theories can be integrated. In the material analysed here the feminist and the psychoanalytic critiques of liberal and conservative 'public' versus 'private' distinctions are prominent. To some degree they destabilize the meanings of public and private that liberal and conservative commentators deploy; to some degree they fail to do this. Discourse, it seems, can contain contradiction without much discomfort.