After Diana: Irreverent Elegies

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was met by the deepest mourning of the twentieth century. Two and a half billion people worldwide watched the funeral on television, floral tributes flooded London’s royal parks and sprung up, too, in small towns in Texas, conspiracy theories ricocheted around the Internet, commemorative stamps were issued in newly communist Hong Kong.

Press coverage of the death was also unprecedented in both its scale and uniformity. Yet, in an enormous welter of schm...