Princess Diana's death - the social impact

Princess Diana's death coincided with - and I think contributed to - the beginning of this downward trust cycle, at least here in the UK. More recently, events such as the Brexit decision - and people's reactions to it - have essentially been expressions of that same phenomenon.

In the end, the overwhelming reaction of the public to princess Diana's untimely death wasmore than a response to the passing of a notable and much loved individual. It was also a collective moment of confrontation with our own mortality.

Ours is a culture which is largely divorced, at least on a week-to-week basis, from the reality of death.

I live in a small village in South-Central England which has at its original centre a church. The church is surrounded on three sides by a burial ground. There was a time in the history of our village when people would have walked past or even through that graveyard on a daily basis.

It served them as a reminder that life is short; that we are all part of a continuum rather than the centrepiece of history.

That someone as young, vibrant and well-known as Princess Di could have passed away in such a dramatic and sudden way makes us collectively catch your breath and, perhaps for the first time in a while, confront death as a culture.

This moment twenty years ago today was a deeply shocking one for so many but it also -possibly had the effect of making us reflect on the brevity and therefore value of life and the values by which we live.