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by Peter Barker
LONDON, July 22 (Xinhua) -- For Britons waiting for the birth of the royal baby, many are able to cast their minds back to the days of Diana and the births of her two sons, now Princes William and Harry.
Social and digital media now make the wait for Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge to give birth in a London hospital an event on which everyone can comment.
In the early 1980s, the public relied on four TV channels, BBC radio, and a dozen or so national newspapers to relay the latest news.
But the appetite for news about the royal family on almost any subject is insatiable and the media was careful to keep it fed then as it does now.
Diana had a tough time with the media from the beginning, when her naivety and inexperience at handling the press were exposed.
Before her engagement to Prince Charles was announced she was regularly door stepped by media at her home in central London and posed for back lit photos while still a children's nanny, innocent of the fact that the lighting exposed her shapely legs through the material of her dress.
Editors loved Diana because they could use her beauty to sell their newspapers, and after her marriage Diana was never far from the headlines.
She was better protected from the media once married, and also learnt how to use them -- making sure they knew of photo opportunities which suited her. Later on she used the media in her divorce from Charles.
DIANA & CATHERINE
Parallels exist between Diana and Catherine -- with both women being beautiful and glamorous and getting a lot of media attention, but the media presentation of Catherine is more developed than Diana.
However, the biggest difference may be that very weighty expectations were placed on Diana's shoulders from the very beginning.
While a lot is expected of Catherine, there is also a realization that the demands of media and duty played a part in her early death in a car crash fleeing paparazzi in Paris in 1997.
Diana's first pregnancy was announced in November 1981, just over three months after her wedding to Prince Charles in St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Diana gave birth in June 1982 to Prince William at the same St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, which Catherine was admitted to.
Charles was 34 by this time, and there had been mounting calls in the media during the 1970s for him to get married.
His marriage and the swift birth of Prince William afterwards meant that the British royal family now had a successor to the throne that reached for two generations.
William is 32, but there was less pressure on him to get married, and less on Catherine to get pregnant than there had been with Diana.
Public and media felt there were still two generations of the Royal family waiting to succeed to the throne before it would be the turn of any of William's children.
Both mothers-to-be suffered mishaps during the pregnancy. Diana fell down the stairs at the country home of Queen Elizabeth II at Sandringham, while Catherine suffered morning sickness.
But it is the differences in the circumstances of the marriage and of their backgrounds and characters that stand out.
Catherine had a kind of apprenticeship to the role of royal wife with a long period as William's girlfriend.
This gave her chance to decide if she really wanted to be a royal duchess, with experience of the media and of the royal family and life from the inside.
Catherine had also been to university and came from a stable family background. And she was older than Diana when she married -- 29 to Diana's 19.
Diana came from a broken home, where her parents had divorced and fought a bitter custody battle over her and her brother and sisters.
TIMES CHANGING
The marriage of Prince Charles and Diana had come at the end of great social change in Britain through the 1960s and 1970s and was right in the middle of a period of serious economic crisis.
Members of older generations that had fought throw at least one and maybe two world wars were often staunch in their support for the royal family.
But younger generations born after the war had been formed by greater individualism in the 1960s and challenges to social hierarchies. They were more ambivalent about royalty.
For the generation leaving school and beginning their working lives in 1981 and 1982 the royal family and royal babies sometimes seemed a irrelevance from another planet, with nothing to do with real life.
For that generation, unemployment had risen from just over 1 million in 1979 when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher won power, to 2.5 million in 1981.
It was to continue rising for another five years to over 3.5 million as the British economy's industrial base shrank and restructured. Old manufacturing jobs disappeared, and with it whole communities and ways of life which had lasted for 150 years were destroyed.
Charles and Diana were to have a second baby, Harry, in September 1984.
The Queen's second oldest son, Prince Andrew, was to marry in 1986 and they in turn had two princesses, Beatrice born in 1988 and Eugenie in 1990.
While many industrial regions of the country were devastated by unemployment, the royal family produced a counter-narrative of marriages and babies that seemed far removed from real life.
Parallels can be made with today, with the British and world economies suffering the after-effects of the Lehman Brothers crash in 2008.
The British economy is still behind its 2007 peak, wage growth is at 0.9 percent against inflation of 2.7 percent.
Catherine and William's royal baby will only be a momentary distraction from the everyday worries of most people.
EVOLVING ROYAL FAMILY
Catherine also has come to symbolize the change of royal institution, partly because she is from an ordinary family, unlike the royalty and aristocrats which the royal family used to marry.
She is also a product of a more equal age for women, and is part of a monarchy that is looking ahead to the next 50 years. This means changes in the way things are done.
Charles Kidd, editor of Debrett's Peerage, told Xinhua, "There have been changes I think, even since Diana's time. Diana did have ladies in waiting -- it is a rather old-fashioned expression."
The ladies in waiting were to help Diana in her duties, but they were also part of a strict social and court hierarchy that seemed remote from the public.
There was a perception that the royal family was distant from real people and issues.
Kidd said, "Kate has chosen to have a rather useful staff around her. Her closest female aide is not called a lady in waiting. Kate has a very useful secretary, whom she shares with her husband. She has a very effective but small staff."
Both Kate and William are able to have a notably more streamlined approach to their royal lives than the Queen or Prince Charles, partly because the bulk of royal duties don't yet fall on their shoulders.
Kidd commented, "Kate's staff is very different to, for instance, Prince Charles' who has a really very large staff because he obviously needs it with his patronages. He takes his role very seriously."
LONDON, July 22 (Xinhua) -- For Britons waiting for the birth of the royal baby, many are able to cast their minds back to the days of Diana and the births of her two sons, now Princes William and Harry.
Social and digital media now make the wait for Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge to give birth in a London hospital an event on which everyone can comment.
In the early 1980s, the public relied on four TV channels, BBC radio, and a dozen or so national newspapers to relay the latest news.
But the appetite for news about the royal family on almost any subject is insatiable and the media was careful to keep it fed then as it does now.
Diana had a tough time with the media from the beginning, when her naivety and inexperience at handling the press were exposed.
Before her engagement to Prince Charles was announced she was regularly door stepped by media at her home in central London and posed for back lit photos while still a children's nanny, innocent of the fact that the lighting exposed her shapely legs through the material of her dress.
Editors loved Diana because they could use her beauty to sell their newspapers, and after her marriage Diana was never far from the headlines.
She was better protected from the media once married, and also learnt how to use them -- making sure they knew of photo opportunities which suited her. Later on she used the media in her divorce from Charles.
DIANA & CATHERINE
Parallels exist between Diana and Catherine -- with both women being beautiful and glamorous and getting a lot of media attention, but the media presentation of Catherine is more developed than Diana.
However, the biggest difference may be that very weighty expectations were placed on Diana's shoulders from the very beginning.
While a lot is expected of Catherine, there is also a realization that the demands of media and duty played a part in her early death in a car crash fleeing paparazzi in Paris in 1997.
Diana's first pregnancy was announced in November 1981, just over three months after her wedding to Prince Charles in St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Diana gave birth in June 1982 to Prince William at the same St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, which Catherine was admitted to.
Charles was 34 by this time, and there had been mounting calls in the media during the 1970s for him to get married.
His marriage and the swift birth of Prince William afterwards meant that the British royal family now had a successor to the throne that reached for two generations.
William is 32, but there was less pressure on him to get married, and less on Catherine to get pregnant than there had been with Diana.
Public and media felt there were still two generations of the Royal family waiting to succeed to the throne before it would be the turn of any of William's children.
Both mothers-to-be suffered mishaps during the pregnancy. Diana fell down the stairs at the country home of Queen Elizabeth II at Sandringham, while Catherine suffered morning sickness.
But it is the differences in the circumstances of the marriage and of their backgrounds and characters that stand out.
Catherine had a kind of apprenticeship to the role of royal wife with a long period as William's girlfriend.
This gave her chance to decide if she really wanted to be a royal duchess, with experience of the media and of the royal family and life from the inside.
Catherine had also been to university and came from a stable family background. And she was older than Diana when she married -- 29 to Diana's 19.
Diana came from a broken home, where her parents had divorced and fought a bitter custody battle over her and her brother and sisters.
TIMES CHANGING
The marriage of Prince Charles and Diana had come at the end of great social change in Britain through the 1960s and 1970s and was right in the middle of a period of serious economic crisis.
Members of older generations that had fought throw at least one and maybe two world wars were often staunch in their support for the royal family.
But younger generations born after the war had been formed by greater individualism in the 1960s and challenges to social hierarchies. They were more ambivalent about royalty.
For the generation leaving school and beginning their working lives in 1981 and 1982 the royal family and royal babies sometimes seemed a irrelevance from another planet, with nothing to do with real life.
For that generation, unemployment had risen from just over 1 million in 1979 when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher won power, to 2.5 million in 1981.
It was to continue rising for another five years to over 3.5 million as the British economy's industrial base shrank and restructured. Old manufacturing jobs disappeared, and with it whole communities and ways of life which had lasted for 150 years were destroyed.
Charles and Diana were to have a second baby, Harry, in September 1984.
The Queen's second oldest son, Prince Andrew, was to marry in 1986 and they in turn had two princesses, Beatrice born in 1988 and Eugenie in 1990.
While many industrial regions of the country were devastated by unemployment, the royal family produced a counter-narrative of marriages and babies that seemed far removed from real life.
Parallels can be made with today, with the British and world economies suffering the after-effects of the Lehman Brothers crash in 2008.
The British economy is still behind its 2007 peak, wage growth is at 0.9 percent against inflation of 2.7 percent.
Catherine and William's royal baby will only be a momentary distraction from the everyday worries of most people.
EVOLVING ROYAL FAMILY
Catherine also has come to symbolize the change of royal institution, partly because she is from an ordinary family, unlike the royalty and aristocrats which the royal family used to marry.
She is also a product of a more equal age for women, and is part of a monarchy that is looking ahead to the next 50 years. This means changes in the way things are done.
Charles Kidd, editor of Debrett's Peerage, told Xinhua, "There have been changes I think, even since Diana's time. Diana did have ladies in waiting -- it is a rather old-fashioned expression."
The ladies in waiting were to help Diana in her duties, but they were also part of a strict social and court hierarchy that seemed remote from the public.
There was a perception that the royal family was distant from real people and issues.
Kidd said, "Kate has chosen to have a rather useful staff around her. Her closest female aide is not called a lady in waiting. Kate has a very useful secretary, whom she shares with her husband. She has a very effective but small staff."
Both Kate and William are able to have a notably more streamlined approach to their royal lives than the Queen or Prince Charles, partly because the bulk of royal duties don't yet fall on their shoulders.
Kidd commented, "Kate's staff is very different to, for instance, Prince Charles' who has a really very large staff because he obviously needs it with his patronages. He takes his role very seriously."
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