Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales Althorp. Two thousand people attended the ceremony in Westminster Abbey while the British television audience peaked at 32.10 million, one of the United Kingdom's highest viewing figures ever. An estimated 2.5 billion people watched the event worldwide, making it one of the biggest televised events in history. Diana's coffin, draped with the royal standard with an ermine border (i.e. the Other Members' standard), was brought to London from the Salpêtrière Hospital, via Vélizy – Villacoublay Air Base, Paris, by Diana's former husband Charles, Prince of Wales and her two sisters on 31 August 1997. After being taken to a private
Death of Diana, Princess of Wales a walk around the lake. All profits are donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. Some criticised the reaction to Diana's death at the time as being "hysterical" and "irrational". As early as 1998 philosopher Anthony O'Hear identified the mourning as a defining point in the "sentimentalisation of Britain", a media-fuelled phenomenon where image and reality become blurred. Oasis bandleader Noel Gallagher responded to the reaction with "The woman's dead. Shut up. Get over it". These criticisms were repeated on the 10th anniversary, when journalist Jonathan Freedland expressed the opinion that "It has become an embarrassing memory, like