Who killed Princess Diana? It's pretty much a case of choose your own conspiracy theory, unless you're Michael Burgess, Coroner of the Queen's Household, whose tedious task it now is to ascertain the manner of Diana's death. Entirely by coincidence, Burgess will also preside over the inquest into the death of Dodi Fayed, because Fayed is buried on the family estate at Oxted, in Surrey, and Burgess is the Surrey Coroner as well as the Coroner of the Queen's Household. It's not his job to lay blame, however, even in the unlikely event of his delivering a verdict of murder. Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi's father and the owner of, among other things, Harrods and the Paris Ritz, is vociferously convinced that there was foul play involved in his son's death, as are 85.1 per cent of the people who responded to a Daily Express poll in October last year. With the exhumation of the case, rumour is clashing with counter-rumour: Diana was pregnant; she wasn't; she'd had an abortion; she was desperate for a baby girl she would call Allegra. It strikes me that this is a case for FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper.

LRB 22 January 2004 | PDF Download