IT is not easy to get a grip on the events of August 31, 1997. In some ways, Diana's life and death seem to belong to another age. Yet as soon as you think back, the memories that return are so vivid you can almost smell the floral tributes.

Because Diana, Princess of Wales, died in the early hours of an August Sunday morning, many of us heard the news the same way. A sleepy flick of the radio switch, the sombre tones of the news reader, the incongruous strains of the National Anthem; I was not the only one to jump to the conclusion that the Queen Mother had died.

The truth was more shocking. Diana, the woman whose life was reality TV before the term was invented, had been killed in a car crash in a Paris subway. She was 36.

From the moment she was first linked with Prince Charles, the world was transfixed by Diana Spencer. First by shy Lady Di, then by the fairytale princess, the mother, the wronged wife, the glamorous divorcee, the media manipulator. We now had to come to terms with her last role: tragic icon.

More astonishing than the news from Paris was our reaction to it. The iceberg of British reserve melted in moments. People wept and clutched one another in the street. A river of flowers outside Diana's home in London became a flood that engulfed every town.

People queued to sign the condolence books in London and at the Mansion House in York. The Minster became the focal point of local mourning, with special services before and after Diana's funeral.

In those volatile few days following her death, mass opinion seemed to swoop and lurch almost hourly. First there was the numb shock, then the grief. Soon anger was directed at the press and the paparazzi in particular, who had followed Diana and Dodi Fayed's car into the tunnel that night.

Later, people were furious that flags over Buckingham Palace and other royal residences were not flying at half mast. And the Queen remained hundreds of miles away in Balmoral, having failed to pay a fitting tribute to her ex-daughter-in-law.

Protocol, the palace press officers insisted. Uncaring royals, the public cried.

And so the Queen came to London and made a statement on the teatime telly. It was just enough just in time. The hostility subsided.

The Queen's remarks were a turning point. Although the Royal Family were not out of the dock - Earl Spencer's biting funeral oration was enough to keep them there a while longer - their popularity had hit its lowest point.

Prince Charles was said by many to have blood on his hands in the immediate aftermath. But with a brilliantly-managed public relations campaign, it was he who led the Windsors out of those difficult times.

Five years ago, the idea that he might wed his long-time mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, would have caused outrage. Today, most of us are quite untroubled by the notion of them marrying.

Meanwhile, the Royal Family is now more popular than since the early Eighties. The monarchy, which seemed very shaky in 1997, is secure.

This year, another royal icon, the Queen Mother, died during another holiday weekend - Easter Saturday. No one was expecting Diana-like grief for the 101-year-old. And yet people queued through the night to pay their respects.

Subsequently, the Queen's Golden Jubilee, widely predicted to be a flop, was a triumph.

So what was it about Diana, Princess of Wales, that was powerful enough to turn a nation to mush, and reconfigure an ancient Royal Family?

When we look back five years, the image that immediately comes to mind is the carpet of flowers: it was a busy time for every florists.

One of them was Angela Ellis, now 27 and owner of the Garden of Eden shop in Bootham. Back then she worked at another York florists, Rachel Challis.

She confesses to being caught up in the emotion of the time.

"The radio came on at home, and I heard them talking about Diana in the past tense," she recalls. "When I heard them say that Diana had died I was stunned.

"I wasn't a great follower of Diana, but I just burst into tears. It was immensely emotional.

"I fully remember thinking, how strange. My other half said, 'Don't be so daft'.

"When I turned on the telly and saw all the other people affected in the same way, it was so strange."

During that week, she sold a lot of single roses to people on a pilgrimage to the Minster. She even took one herself.

The tributes on the cards to go with floral tributes were mostly simple, she said: God Bless; Rest In Peace. "They had me in tears."

Yet there was a positive side to the grief. "It brought everyone together. I would really have loved going down to London."

Angela is sure that week left an indelible mark on the rest of the Royal Family. "It did a lot of good. It made them go out and update themselves. I think it's probably brought them together more in a strange way."

At the time it seemed as though all of Britain was in mourning. But the Right Reverend Humphrey Taylor, the Bishop of Selby, saw it differently.

On the Sunday of Diana's death, he conducted two church services.

"In the morning, I was at St Chad's in South Bank in York. The news had just come out and people were quite stunned.

"In the evening I went to take a service in the little village of Leavening up in the Wolds. It had made much less of an impact there.

"We prayed for her and her family, but there was no question of anything being steered by it, and absolutely nothing in Leavening to correspond to the emotions evident in London and in York Minster."

Bishop Taylor said that Diana's death "touched something in all sorts of people" for reasons "I don't think we yet fully understand".

But he thinks it was very much an urban phenomenon: "Country people, on the whole, took it in their stride."

As the school year began days after the crash, many opened their own books of condolence. These included Archbishop Holgate's, and 15-year-old pupil Andrew Bracegirdle was pictured in the Evening Press with the book.

Despite this appearance, he was unfazed by the entire kerfuffle. Although Diana was said to be particularly popular among the young, her allure had passed him by.

"Me and my mates were just interested in football and girls. That was it, really," he said.

He saw the news about Diana after returning from his paper round. The public reaction surprised him.

"There was just this outpouring of emotion for someone who never had any effect on their lives. It was weird."

Andrew, now a chef at swish York restaurant Rish, can take or leave the Royal Family, he said. Although he did feel some affinity with Prince Harry when he was caught smoking cannabis.

It seems Diana's ability to connect with the public through an act of mischievous defiance might yet live on through her sons.

Updated: 10:25 Thursday, August 29, 2002