Re: the Taverner piece, I recall that he wrote it for a friend (female) who was killed in a cycling accident. Part of its interest is that it has some Greek Orthodox chant roots in it. The chilling part is the low continuous bass over which the higher voices move, and then there is the crescendo, very like the Beatles "A Day in the Life" (speaking of famous accidents). But I have no further reference to it. I wonder if it is a standalone piece, or part of a mass or requiem. I think the date is 1994. Re: the saga. I am with RS about the Diana part, anyway. The only additional point I would make is that the eerie part, the tragic part has to do with the fact that she had this strange relationship to the public space that killed her. She fled into the public space as a kind of shelter from the "bad" private life of the House of Windsor, and then discovered that it too was a kind of prison, and maybe even more inescapable. It is that sort of "flight onto the moors" (like in King Lear) that separates her from your usual celebrity use of public space. You can see her trying to find some new private space towards the end, and then being destroyed by the demons she had partly helped bring to life, and partly just found awaiting her in the perverse world of contemporary society. It is that that separates her from the simple (and sad) fact of a mother killed at an early age: there is something more terrible at work, sordid, funny, dark, dark.

Yours, Peter