Death of Diana: Times journalists recall night of the crash

A totally unprecedented kind of mass anguish, a febrile convulsion of grief, had taken over

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on Aug. 31, 1997, shook Britain and the world. The New York Times asked five journalists who covered the deadly car accident, which also killed Diana’s companion, Dodi al-Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, to share their memories and reflections.

The crash in Paris

Craig R. Whitney, then The Times’s Paris bureau chief, now retired and an author: I was awakened at home in Paris sometime after 12:35 a.m. by a call from the Foreign Desk. The wires had just fired out bulletins saying that Diana had been seriously injured in an automobile