Arise! It's the new People's Princess

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/jun/20/duchess-of-cambridge-diana

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The People's Princess is dead! Long live the People's Princess! The transformation of the Duchess of Cambridge into a public icon has undoubtedly been achieved at the expense of her late mother-in-law.

Diana, Princess of Wales (and sales), has been effectively airbrushed from history over the past year or so. Her image, once so prevalent in newspapers and magazines, both in life and since her death in 1997, has all but vanished.

Editors have seized on the sales advantage of publishing countless pictures of the former Kate Middleton. Among the leading Kate-oholics are the Daily Mail, of course, and the Daily Telegraph - it even managed a portrait picture of the Duchess on the front of its business section today.

The latest issues of OK! and Hello! both feature the same cover picture of the Duchess and the Queen "sharing the joy", as OK! puts it. That picture is a story in itself.

For the new, young Windsor, the obvious warmth of her relationship with her husband's grandmother suggests more than merely her acceptance into the royal fold. It is set against the failure of Diana to gain a similar acceptance.

For the Queen, there is the reflected glory of being beside the glamorous, photogenic and newest member of her "firm". For once, I find myself agreeing with a Hello! cover line: "Why they both have so much to smile about"

Anyway, the rise of Kate and the deletion of Diana is the subject of my London Evening Standard column today, Our Kate-mania means Diana is now laid to rest.