It was Diana's choice to give up her police protection. She dispensed with bodyguards (except at public engagements) in 1994 (before the Panorama interview, before the Queen's letter suggesting that the Waleses should divorce). There would be pictures of her running down streets, scowling, in gym shorts (but with finished make-up and primped hair) that seemed a little histrionic. But I was astonished to see her leave a London restaurant one afternoon in 1996, to run the gauntlet of a dozen young paparazzi in leathers.
They were very much in her face, to coin the phrase. Each of them yelling and catcalling at her, to prod a response. Some still straddled their motorbikes while they focused, others walked into her, pushing their lenses into her face, and fell over each other, barged into her and screamed nonstop. She was head down, tight-lipped, clutching her coat to her throat and blacked out by sunglasses.
It was a physical near-assault. (Under today's much more niminy-piminy health and safety protocols, it would be actual assault.) It was astonishing, cruel and bloody rude. We don't want that happening to Catherine. Ever.
"Why can't she do her shopping online, though?" asks a brisk neighbour. "Everybody else does – you can't move round here for Ocado vans." Because she wants – even if only in tiny part – to keep the life that late she led with William. I guess.
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