‘Thirteen minutes after the note came the tweet. “Following further evaluation this morning, the Queen’s doctors are concerned for Her Majesty’s health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision,” wrote Buckingham Palace. “The Queen remains comfortable and at Balmoral.”

“When the statement dropped about her health it was obvious, and suddenly no MPs would talk,” the Whitehall correspondent says. Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs stopped responding to messages.

Across at what was once known as Fleet Street, time stopped.’

The next great rupture in Britain’s national life has, in fact, been planned to the minute. It involves matters of major public importance, will be paid for by us, and is definitely going to happen. According to the Office of National Statistics, a British woman who reaches the age of 91 – as the Queen will in April – has an average life expectancy of four years and three months. The Queen is approaching the end of her reign at a time of maximum disquiet about Britain’s place in the world, at a moment when internal political tensions are close to breaking her kingdom apart. Her death will also release its own destabilising forces: in the accession of Queen Camilla; in the optics of a new king who is already an old man; and in the future of the Commonwealth, an invention largely of her making. (The Queen’s title of “Head of the Commonwealth” is not hereditary.) Australia’s prime minister and leader of the opposition both want the country to become a republic.

Coping with the way these events fall is the next great challenge of the House of Windsor, the last European royal family to practise coronations and to persist – with the complicity of a willing public – in the magic of the whole enterprise. That is why the planning for the Queen’s death and its ceremonial aftermath is so extensive. Succession is part of the job. It is an opportunity for order to be affirmed. Queen Victoria had written down the contents of her coffin by 1875. The Queen Mother’s funeral was rehearsed for 22 years. Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, prepared a winter and a summer menu for his funeral lunch. London Bridge is the Queen’s exit plan. “It’s history,” as one of her courtiers said. It will be 10 days of sorrow and spectacle in which, rather like the dazzling mirror of the monarchy itself, we will revel in who we were and avoid the question of what we have become.

Shortly after Tony Blair and Robin Cook had been added to Fayed’s list of conspirators, Richard Horwell QC, a note of incredulity rising in his voice, said: “So that’s MI5, MI6, the CIA, the DGSE – the French intelligence service – Judge Stephan … the French ambulance service … Lord Condon, Lord Stevens … Mr Burgess, the Surrey coroner and Lady Sarah McCorquodale?” He could have added several more: two bodyguards; the French pathologists; a photographer called James Andanson, who was allegedly driving the white Fiat Uno that brushed against the Mercedes shortly before it crashed in the Alma tunnel in Paris on August 31 1997; Henri Paul, the chauffeur; a reception clerk at the Ritz hotel; Sir Michael Jay, the then British ambassador; Sir Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary, who was Diana’s brother-in-law; Lord Mishcon, her solicitor; and – of course – Prince Philip and Prince Charles. Time and again, Fayed answered: “Definitely.”

• Diana in the Mavel Universe — from Newsarama … ‘It was later confirmed for Newsarama that Diana would join, in some form or another, X-Statix.’
• Princess Diana, Superhero — Peter Milligan Comments … ‘Diana comes out of it a lot better than the British establishment. Indeed, a couple of old palace eminence grise types arrange for this resurrected mutant zombie to be killed. “And this time, let’s do it properly,” one of them says.’ [via I Love Everything]
• Guardian’s Pass Notes: Princess Diana, the Superhero … ‘Next up from Marvel Comics: Camilla Parker Bowles as Catwoman; Prince Philip as the Joker; Derry Irvine as Judge Dredd.’
• Diana in ‘Sick’ Comic — Daily Mail Article … ‘Marvel editor- in- chief Joe Quesada said: “Princess Diana is a mutant. Like every good superhero, she’s coming back from the dead. She’s going to join one of the X-Men teams. “If comics are anything, we’re subversive. This is really a wonderful story.” The monthly comic is already on sale in America and Britain and is expected to sell around 150,000 copies worldwide.’

• Wilful, charming, grumpy and regally badly behaved — ‘…deference died, and if ever there was a princess who needed deference, it was Princess Margaret, implacable believer in the ancient and divine right of royalty to behave badly. In this, she might be blamed for a lack of intelligence and sensitivity; there can be little doubt either that she and her life led the move downmarket into the unforgiving public glare. But whatever else you might feel, there must be admiration for the gusto with which she threw herself into the plot. If life resembles nothing so much as a bad movie on Channel 5, Margaret is its queen. ‘
• The final days at the personal court of Britain’s alternative Queen — ‘The problem was very much one of the institution of the Royal Family, permanently stuck, it seems, in a 1950s version of Britain. “The Queen Mother, and to some extent the Queen herself, have very little time for illness,” says another source. “When Princess Margaret used to take to her bed, her mother would come in and pull back the covers, saying, ‘What’s all this nonsense? Get up!’.”‘