Flashback to a royal tragedy

Diana was the same age as the Duchess of Cambridge when she was photographed.

Magazine cover recalls a princess who changed the way we think.

Can you remember the last time a magazine cover made you do a double-take? Was it a naked, pregnant Demi Moore? Liz Hurley in a piano clinch with Elton John? This week chances are your head will be turned by Tatler's latest issue. It's a simple black and white portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales taken in 1994, when she was 33 years old.

She's wearing bold monochrome tailoring and that inscrutable, faintly lopsided smile. If you didn't know better, she could be a receptionist in an airline's elite lounge. But this picture reminds us of who she was and what we have been missing for almost 20 years.

There's something astonishingly unstyled about her (Diana was not shy, and "when she came into the studio, she just got undressed). Yet any image of Diana during this period, after the Prince of Wales had admitted his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, but a year before her own Martin Bashir coup, is freighted with sadness, intrigue and the knowledge that she would be dead by 36.

Anecdotal evidence says this issue of Tatler is already a collectable - one newsagent said he has had to reorder copies twice.

The timing feels right. Last week, the Duchess of Cambridge wore Diana's favourite tiara to a Buckingham Palace reception. William, speaking at an event to mark the 21st anniversary of Child Bereavement UK, reminded us of what he went through at the age of 15. "Grief is the most painful experience that any child or parent can endure," he said. "As a father of two young children, I now appreciate it all the more."

It is as if we all appreciate her more now than we did when she was alive. Her story seems more extraordinary and her contribution as a moderniser more significant and courageous. This is what Tatler's acting editor, Gavanndra Hodge, was banking on when she decided to put her on the magazine's cover.

"Diana is electrifying - all the emotion in her face, you still just can't help looking at her," says Hodge, who was searching for a cover image to compete with a previous archive bestseller, Audrey Hepburn. "These are women with powerful personal narratives; ones whose lives you can see in their faces."

In the magazine's portraits, many previously unseen, Diana is the same age as the Duchess of Cambridge now. Diana at 33 seems more grown-up than Kate, more relaxed in her skin. "She's almost passed into the realm of being a historic figure," says Hodge, "yet nothing about Diana feels dated because of the way she approached her life. She was a disrupter who loved mischief."

With hindsight, we can see how extraordinary her journey was from the shy daughter of an earl into an independent force for change.

"Diana changed the way we think about the royal family, but also how we feel about being vulnerable and acknowledging that vulnerability can be a strength," says Hodge.