Princess Diana: The royal death that shocked the world

Many people are reflecting on where they were when the news of Diana Princess of Wales's death was announced.

For me it's easy.

I was in bed at home and woke when the 'pager', which Sky News insisted I carry at all times, buzzed into life. Bleary eyed, I reached for it and read the code words I half expected "Royal Down".

All broadcasters had for some time prepared themselves to respond to the Queen Mother dying. She seemed eternal but was then in her 97th year.

Seconds later, my mother came into the room and told me what she had just seen on the television.

The shock was intense.

Diana was my age.

Her life had seemed agonisingly complicated and public in the months preceding this jolt, but this development was beyond all fathom.

As Sky's Commentator of National Events, it was not immediately clear what my role might be. After all, the marriage between Prince Charles and Diana had been over for some time and it didn't seem likely that a Royal Ceremonial Funeral would follow.

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My instinct (how wrong I was), leant towards a Spencer family funeral. The only part of this that arguably did transpire was that the Spencer's retained a strong lead in presence and style and, after 10 fraught days, Diana found her eternal rest on the island in the lake of her family home.

Diana was a phenomenon and so, as frequently happens in Britain, events took hold of protocols and made them bend to a ferocious public expectation and utility.

By the time I was sat in the studio at Osterley at 9am on the morning of the funeral - the audible apex to a gargantuan team effort by Sky - the United Kingdom had writhed through a heart attack of sorts.

In the middle of this wounded lion's cage stood the courtiers at Buckingham Palace, who had zero precedent to draw on and must have had to fumble in search of the right solution.

While this evolved, the newly elected and exceptionally popular Government had a strong influence, the media's views were everywhere and Diana's family must have fought for space.

The Armed Forces were put on standby but, for what?

Lieutenant Colonel Malcolm Ross was the Queen's principal adviser on ceremonial matters. We had both served in the Scots Guards and I'm sure his training must have helped. His team, in what is called the Lord Chamberlain's Office, worked through the nations emotions to fix upon a ceremonial and an Order of Service.

Any family that faces bereavement, especially a shock one, must recognise that there can be difficulties. I'm sure errors of approach must have been made by all sides, many might have been disappointed by stands taken or ideas posed but, in the end, the book of protocol produced a unique ceremony for a unique person.

The template for Diana's funeral, at Westminster Abbey, was indeed that held for the ageing Queen Mother but marching servicemen were replaced by representatives of countless charities and great organisations, which this great icon of a mother had championed.

And there in the centre, where in 1920 for the State Funeral of the Unknown Warrior the King Emperor, George V walked, were Diana's two boys. Men now, but boys then. And the impression upon crowd and world was intense.

Ceremony and event are the servants of emotion, though sometimes they can tweak it. On 6 September 1997, as the King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery and Welsh Guards Bearer Party stepped off from Kensington Palace, the global catharsis of mourning and healing began.

In the seconds before going live to commentate the event, I thought much of the young girl whose father had been a school friend of my father's in the war. The young woman who had been friend to so many I knew.

It was a grim duty, but to be a part of what was actually a striking and internationally profound event was a privilege.

And the funeral ceremony itself was a conduit for every view, opinion, anger and sadness that boiled about the world.

Twenty years on, some of these emotions still unsettle many, but the nation delivered Diana, Princess of Wales from an imperfect world into the peace of her Althrop island grave, perfectly.