agonising

Five weeks after giving birth to her son, the singer-songwriter Lucy Rose had a pressing question for the other new mothers at her NCT baby group. “I was like: is anyone else’s back killing them?” None of the women were able to empathise but Rose still managed to persuade herself that the excruciating pain she was in must be a normal part of the gruelling postpartum experience.Until a few days later. Rose was lifting her son Otis out of his cot, when “my whole body collapsed, then my back started spasming. That’s probably…

She has not grown old as those who are left grew old: the “royal watchers”, the journalists, the charity workers, the prime ministers, the paparazzi, the ex-husband and the two sons, both now older than she was when she died. Maybe Ed Perkins’s documentary about Diana, Princess of Wales’s operatically exciting public life shouldn’t really be as fascinating as it is, but I spent much of it on the edge of my seat. It tells the story using only existing archive footage and some video material, perhaps inspired by film-maker…