Twenty-four years after her death at the hands of a drunken driver, pursued by paparazzi in a Paris tunnel, the former Princess of Wales continues to divide opinion.
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The emerging controversy is over the interview she gave to British journalist Martin Bashir in 1995, two years before her death.
The interview was one of the great journalistic scoops. Diana dished the dirt on Prince Charles, the then-and-still future king of Australia, and changed perceptions of the monarchy.
It wasn't so much a hatchet job, but more a very efficient, fine wielding of the scalpel - or a single thrust to the heart with a stiletto.
In the interview, she declared that there were "three of us in this marriage", in reference to Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall and now wife of the future Australian head of state.
She looked up from under her big eyelashes and with a coy smile, stuck the knife in.
It was a devastating performance. It really is fair to say that the image of the monarchy was transformed. The dirty linen was there flapping in the wind for all to see. Where once royal scandal stayed private, suddenly it was right out there there and fair game for the tabloids. Other scandals have followed - some of them genuine, others confected.
But before the BBC interview, the journalist Martin Bashir was dishonest, certainly with Diana's brother and perhaps with Diana herself.
He had bank statements faked to seemingly indicate that people close to Diana were in the pay of British newspapers. All that emerged after the interview was aired. There was an internal BBC inquiry, and no more was done beyond a slap on the wrist.
Martin Bashir went on to have a glittering career in America, where he interviewed Michael Jackson, among others. He then returned to the BBC as its religion correspondent. He resigned a month ago as his dubious methods came under scrutiny.
He is a sick man, recovering from major heart surgery.
He has much more to recover from. There is a new inquiry, undertaken by a former judge and commissioned by the BBC. His reputation is in shreds.
But it is emerging that there are two views - and they tend to divide on gender lines. Women tend to think one thing and men think the opposite. It isn't a clear-cut division, but that's the split I detect.
It's a split which reveals much about how men don't always get why women are so annoyed about the way they are treated. To my mind, it reveals an often unconscious patronising view that Diana didn't have control of her own life. I mistrust the overused word, but the idea of patriarchy comes to mind.
Men, in my experience, tend to say: "Well, Diana was crazy. She shouldn't have been taken seriously. The interview counts for little. And Martin Bashir fed that craziness, so the interview is worthless." It is a male view which devalues Diana's ability to make her own decisions.
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But women often react differently, angrily even, when that view is put. They say that Diana had agency - she was an adult who was able to speak for herself. She didn't need male permission.
On this view (which is also mine), her alleged sin was to not play the royals' game where women are expected to be seen and not heard - smile for the cameras, but don't you dare have an opinion (Meghan take note).
Diana produced an "heir and a spare" and that should have been the silent end of it. It's never put like that, but that is the unspoken establishment assumption in this patriarchal view.
On what we might call the contrary female take, Martin Bashir's behaviour remains reprehensible - but the result remains that Princess Diana took her situation into her own hands. She wanted to talk, so she did. She refused to do the male establishment's bidding.
And she spoke truth. She said it, and nobody disputes what she said.
But there is an establishment fightback, and that is to dish the interview - and by implication to dish Diana, too.
She was just a crazy woman, is the argument. Forget about Prince Charles' affair. Forget about the way Diana was simply used and then discarded. Forget about how she was disowned, with her official security removed so she had to rely on the non-security of a drunken driver employed by her lover.
But I say: don't forget. Whatever dishonourable means were used, Diana spoke the truth. Don't let her truth be rewritten.
- Steve Evans is a Canberra Times reporter.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
