Taste, Tact and Racism

Ian Hamilton

  • Assassination of a Princess by Ahmad Ata
    Dar Al-Huda, 75 pp, £5.00, September 1997, ISBN 977 5340 23 3
  • Diana: A Princess Killed by Love by Ilham Sharshar
    Privately published, 125 pp, £10.00, September 1998, ISBN 977 5190 95 9
  • Who Killed Diana? by Muhammad Ragab
    Privately published, 127 pp, £5.00, September 1998, ISBN 977 08 0675 7
  • Harrods: A Place in Knightsbridge by Tim Dale
    Harrods, 224 pp, £35.00, November 1995, ISBN 1 900055 01 5

The Di Castro Travel Agency in mid-town Alexandria has an eerily compelling window display: a shrine to the memory of Dodi al-Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales. The shrine has as its centrepiece the front cover of the magazine al-Musawwar depicting Di and Dodi on their wedding day that never was. The couple are shown hand in hand: she in a white bridal gown, clutching a bouquet; he in a dark morning-suit with a carnation in his buttonhole. They both seem very happy – or, shall we say, they don’t in the least seem to mind having their heads mounted on some other couple’s torsos. Di might not have been too thrilled with the mass-market-looking dress that she’s been made to wear, but Dodi looks straightforwardly elated. What neither of them knows is that, printed in bold red letters across the bottom left-hand corner of their wedding pic, a headline asks: ‘Who killed Diana?’

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Vol. 20 No. 2 · 22 January 1998 » Ian Hamilton » Taste, Tact and Racism (print version)
Pages 16-21 | 8949 words