ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests how the public displays of mourning following the death of Princess Diana might be viewed within the context of mourning behaviour in contemporary cemeteries. It offers an interpretation of how the eighteenth-century Kensington Garden landscape was so readily translated into a 'landscape of mourning', which both gave to and also gained from the significance of this historic landscape. The linkage of death and the garden was continued in the nineteenth century with the promenades of visitors in the newly designed extra-mural cemeteries and with the opening to citizens of the royal parks with their memorial statues. The chapter explains the make-up of the 'Diana rituals' in terms of the deployment of the same repertoire of flowers, cards and actions which are used in London cemeteries. It argues that while extraordinary in terms of scale and intensity, these public memorializations are a part of, and contribute to, an evolving range of bereavement practices, particularly cemetery mourning rituals.
