Earl Spencer has been talking about the pain of losing his sister, and about the pride he has for his two nephews as the fourth anniversary of Princess Diana's death approaches.
In an exclusive live forum with BBC News Online, Earl Spencer said Princes William and Harry "had flourished into fine young men" and Diana "could not have done a better job as a mother".
The earl, who this month opened an exhibition commemorating Diana's life on what would have been her 40th birthday, said: "The pain lessens but the realisation is ever-constant with you."
Talking about his sister, he said he believed there had been a newfound "steel" about her just before her death, and was convinced there would have been "fascinating times ahead" for the princess.
During the online interview with BBC Royal Correspondent Jennie Bond, online viewers were able to e-mail their questions on a range of topics.
These varied from whether the earl thought Prince Charles or Prince William should be the next king to his views on Charles' relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.
'Unique funeral'
Looking back to Diana's funeral, Earl Spencer said it had been a unique funeral with unique tensions".
He said: "Obviously there was what my family thought was appropriate and there were the normal ways that the Royal Court would deal with things and obviously a compromise had to be found.
"At the end of the day I was very happy with the service as it happened."
He said that prior to her death, Diana had reached a stage of maturity and direction that she had never experienced before.
"There was a sort of steel about her that hadn't always been there. It was tragic that she was taken when she had reached such an equilibrium in her life."
Has she still been alive today, he believed her good work would have continued.
The earl said: "She would have seen the landmine issue through as far as it could have gone... carried on pioneering difficult causes... taken enormous in her sons and where they have got to now...also I hope she would have found happiness in her private life too."
Proud uncle
He said he took great heart in the promising development in his two nephews, whom he said "needed extra care and attention" now they were without their mother.
He said both princes had "an incredible sensitivity and caring nature" which so reflected that of their mother's.
"She would have been immensely proud of them," he added.
In the weeks following the fatal crash in Paris, Earl Spencer had been very public about his distaste for the press and the way they had "hounded" the princess.
But in Thursday's forum he said he was not one to harbour resentment, and was relieved that the press now respected the privacy of his nephews.
No comment on Camilla
Asked what he thought about the relationship between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, the earl said it was not his place to comment.
He said he had never met Camilla but had heard she was "a very pleasant lady", and he would be happy with any "situation" as long as his nephews were.
Asked if he felt hurt by the fact Charles has never visited Diana's grave at the Spencer's family home in Althorp, Earl Spencer said that was the prince's personal choice but he would always be welcome.
Fitting tribute
Asked what he thought would be the best permanent memorial to his sister, the earl replied: "I can understand people's impatience to honour Diana but certainly in this country there has always been a way of doing things and things tend to take time.
"I am sure at the end of the day there will be more public memorials."
But he believed a statue, which many have called for, would not be the best tribute.
"Diana was very photogenic but I've never seen a successful statute of her.
"A lot of Diana's appeal was her energy and you can't capture that in stone," he said.
He said he much preferred the idea of a fountain.
He said: "I like the fountain because the spirit and the freshness of the water seems to symbolise a lot more of what Diana was about."
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Dry Bush gets soaked while daughter has a sniff of the port
BY ALAN HAMILTON
BARBARA BUSH, 19-year-old twin daughter of the US President, in casual denim jacket and trousers, was not exactly dressed for lunch with the Queen. She had all the appearance of a girl travelling light, and on a last-minute whim.
White House officials, mildly thrown by Barbara’s late decision to join her father on his first visit to Britain and to lunch at Buckingham Palace, insisted that no undue fuss should be made of the girl, and that carefully laid arrangements should not be upset.
It takes more than an unexpected guest to bat a Palace eyelid and a solution was already in place. While George and Laura dined with the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and 11 senior officials in the grandeur of the 1844 Room, Barbara and a dozen lesser members of the presidential suite were entertained in the slightly less grand Billiard Room by Vice-Admiral Tom Blackburn, the Master of the Household.
The menus were identical: salmon terrine, roast lamb and raspberries. So, too, were the wines, including a 1994 Puligny-Montrachet and a 1960 vintage port.
George W. no longer drinks, and the Queen only sips, but Barbara, at 19 still below the legal drinking age back home and recently in trouble with the law for under-age drinking and driving, could legally indulge herself to her heart’s content.
Palace officials declined to disclose whether the presidential daughter availed herself of the chance of a legal snifter. “It was a private lunch,” they said stonily. Barbara stayed out of the limelight — and out of sight of the cameras.
At the lunch above the salt Mr Bush, in dark business suit, sat with the Queen, while his wife Laura, in a bright red dress, was placed between the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duke of York. The President was no doubt hoping that, under the table, his trouser legs would hurry up and dry.
As a regular visitor to Scotland, Mr Bush clearly knows all about the weather, and yesterday it got him.
As manners now matter at the White House, the presidential motorcade of 16 vehicles, including the huge bomb-proof black Cadillac, swept through the palace gates exactly on time at 1pm.
The Bushes stepped from the Cadillac under the cover of the Grand Entrance, offering warm handshakes, but no hint of a bow or curtsey; Americans just don’t do that.
As the Band of the Coldstream Guards played The Star-Spangled Banner, Mr and Mrs Bush stood with right hands on hearts, while the Queen and the Duke stood to attention.
Then, leaving the women to some private amusement, the President walked with the Duke of Edinburgh to inspect a guard of honour drawn up in the quadrangle. At that moment a heavy shower descended and, when the President rejoined the Queen, he gestured expansively, but good-humouredly at his damp trousers and wet shoes. The Duke found it hilarious.
Police were less amused at an incident as the presidential limousine approached the palace gates from The Mall. From a crowd of about 200 environmentalist demonstrators corralled on the pavement behind a heavy police presence, an entirely naked man streaked from the throng. He looked briefly as if he might make it to the motorcade, but was grabbed by the arms and arrested.
It was the highlight of a day of low-key demonstrations and, at some locations, no demonstrations at all. When the motorcade arrived at the British Museum from the US Ambassador’s residence in Regent’s Park, where the Bushes had spent the night, the small crowd was entirely friendly; they even managed to raise a cheer when, in the confusion of trying to squeeze so many vehicles through the museum gates, a police Range Rover hit the back of a White House press bus.
In the museum Mrs Bush read to a group of children from Morningside Primary School in Hackney, East London. Her chosen text was The Legend of Bluebonnet, an old Comanche tale now told to Texan schoolchildren.
Mr Bush gave the children a brief pep talk on the advantages of reading over watching television. One child asked him what the White House was like. “It is white,” the President replied.
Invited to sign the museum visitors’ book, which includes the signatures of other famous men, the President said: “Karl Marx, Lenin, Mark Twain, George W. Bush — from one side of the spectrum to the other.”
Outside, Mr Bush told reporters he was enjoying London, describing it as “diverse and clean”. He also extolled the merits of his hero, Sir Winston Churchill, before being driven off to tour one of the great man’s shrines, the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall. There, a rumour of a possible walkabout surfaced. A group of ten Republicans Abroad were brought by police to the front of the small crowd, but Mr Bush spent so long admiring Churchill that he was in danger of being late for his royal lunch. The Republicans waved the Stars and Stripes at him as he emerged, and he waved back from a distance of 200 yards.
Dick Wallingford, 53, from California, but currently living in Oxshott, Surrey, was quite satisfied. “We were hoping he’d come over, but we’re happy about the wave. We’re here to give him confidence and support him in his meeting with Tony Blair. He knows we’re on his team.”
A short distance away a protester waved a banner: “Wanted for crimes against the planet — the outlaw known as the Toxic Texan.”
By yesterday afternoon the Texan was safely aboard his US Marines helicopter on the short flight from Regent’s Park to Chequers, and the real purpose of his visit.
With the 16-car motorcade disbanded and bits of it already on their way to Genoa, London returned to its normal state of traffic chaos.