I stand before you today the representative of a family in grief,
in a country in mourning, before a world in shock. We are all
united not only in our desire to pay our respects to Diana, but
rather in our need to do so.

For such was her extraordinary appeal that the tens of millions of
people taking part in this service all over the world via television
and radio who never actually met her feel that they too lost someone
close to them in the early hours of Sunday morning. It is a more
remarkable tribute to Diana than I can ever hope to offer her today.

Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of
beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of selfless humanity.
All over the world, a standard bearer for the rights of the truly
downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended nationality. Some-
one with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the
last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate
her particular brand of magic.

Today is our chance to say thank you for the way you brightened our
lives, even though God granted you but half a life. We will all feel
cheated always that you were taken from us so young and yet we must
learn to be grateful that you came along at all. Only now that you are
gone do we truly appreciate what we are now without, and we want you
to know that life without you is very, very difficult.

We have all despaired at our loss over the past week, and only the
strength of the message you gave us through your years of giving
has afforded us the strength to move forward.

There is a temptation to rush to canonize your memory; there is no
need to do so. You stand tall enough as a human being of unique
qualities not to need to be seen as a saint. Indeed, to sanctify
your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being,
your wonderfully mischievous sense of humor with a laugh that bent
you double.

Your joy for life transmitted wherever you took you smile and the
sparkle in those unforgettable eyes. Your boundless energy which
you could barely contain.

But your greatest gift was your intuition, and it was a gift you
used wisely. This is what underpinned all your other wonderful
attributes, and if we look to analyze what it was about you that
had such a wide appeal, we find it in your instinctive feel for
what was really important in all our lives.

Without your God-given sensitivity, we would be immersed in greater
ignorance at the anguish of AIDS and HIV suffers, the plight of the
homeless, the isolation of lepers, the random destruction of
landmines.

Diana explained to me once that it was her innermost feelings of
suffering that made it possible for her to connect with her
constituency of the rejected.

And here we come to another truth about her. For all the status,
the glamour, the applause, Diana remained throughout a very
insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her desire to do good
for others so she could release herself from deep feelings of
unworthiness of which her eating disorders were merely a symptom.
The world sensed this part of her character and cherished her for
her vulnerability while admiring her for her honesty.

The last time I saw Diana was on July the 1st, her birthday, in
London, when, typically, she was not taking time to celebrate her
special day with friends but was guest of honor at a fund-raising
charity evening. She sparkled, of course, but I would rather
cherish the days I spent with her in March when she came to visit
me and my children at our home in South Africa. I am proud of the
fact that, apart from when she was on public display meeting
President Mandela, we managed to contrive to stop the ever-present
paparazzi from getting a single picture of her. That meant a lot
to her.

These were days I will always treasure. It was as if we had been
transported back to our childhood when we spent such an enormous
amount of time together, the two youngest in the family.

Fundamentally, she hadn't changed at all from the big sister who
mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school and endured those
long train journeys between our parents' homes with me at weekends.

It is a tribute to her level-headedness and strength that, despite
the most bizarre life imaginable after her childhood, she remained
intact, true to herself.

There is no doubt that she was looking for a new direction in her
life. She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly
because of the treatment that she received at the hands of the
newspapers. I don't think she ever understood why her genuinely
good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared
to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is
baffling.

My own, and only, explanation is that genuine goodness is
threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum.
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.

She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her
beloved boys, William and Harry, from a similar fate, and I do this
here, Diana, on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer, the
anguish that used regularly to drive you to earful despair.

And beyond that, on behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge
that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the
imaginative and loving way in which you were steering these two
exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed
by duty and tradition. but can sing openly as you planned. We
fully respect the heritage into which they have both been born, and
will always respect and encourage them in their royal role, but we,
like you, recognize the need for them to experience as many
different aspects of life as possible to arm them spiritually and
emotionally for the years ahead. I know you would have expected
nothing less from us.

William and Harry, we all care desperately for you today. We are
all chewed up for sadness at the loss of a woman who wasn't even
our mother. How great your suffering is, we cannot ever imagine.

I would like to end by thanking God for the small mercies he has
shown us at this dreadful time; for taking Diana at her most
beautiful and radiant, and when she had joy in her private life.
Above all, we give thanks for the life of a woman I am so proud to
call my sister - the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and
irreplaceable Diana, whose beauty, both internal and external, will
never be extinguished from our minds.