Diana, Princess of Wales

Country: England

Manufactory: Royal Doulton

Date of establishment: 2007

Sculptor: T. Potts

Height (cm): 20

Porcelain Story

Princess Diana was killed in a car accident on August 31, 1997. The whole world mourned for her. Elton John, a brilliant British composer and performer, suffered with all of them. Elton John has suffered unbearably. It so happened that a few weeks before this tragedy his close friend, the famous designer Gianni Versace, passed away. The death of Princess Diana, with whom Elton had a long-standing friendship, plunged him into a deep depression. So deep that he decided not to attend Diana's funeral.

The day of the funeral was approaching, and his close friends were afraid to ask Elton if he had changed his mind. They did not yet know that Elton John had called his former collaborator Bernie Topine with a request to rewrite the lyrics of Candle in the Wind, a song written on the death of American actress Marilyn Monroe and first heard in 1973. Topin responded immediately. And at the funeral ceremony for Princess Diana, held at Westminster Abbey in central London on 6 September 1997, Elton John appeared accompanied by George Martin, who produced a new version of the song. It was now dedicated to Diana. And only to Diana.

If you can find a few minutes and watch Elton John's rendition of this song at the Princess Farewell ceremony, you can surely feel how important this appearance in public was to him. The funeral was broadcast live to 2.5 billion people on all continents. It was one of the biggest broadcasts in television history. And the whole world, all those 2.5 billion people, listened with rapt attention to Elton John's song dedicated to Princess Diana.

Candle in the Wind became the fastest-selling single in the history of the United Kingdom. It sold 658 thousand copies on the first day, and more than 1.5 million copies in the first week. For a long time, the tune topped the charts in Europe and America. In the United States, the single, released there on September 22, 1997, stayed at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks. And in the first 7 days, it sold 3.5 million copies in the States.

"I could never quite understand," Elton John would later write, "how anyone would want to listen to that song. Under what circumstances could I ever have played it? I never played it again." And that was very true. He only played the song once. But it was enough to make it one of the most popular songs in the history of music on October 21, 1997. With 33 million copies sold, it made it into the Guinness Book of Records. "I'm not really sure Diana would have wanted it, and I didn't want it to go on," Elton John said. But no one could stop the tune spreading around the planet.

"Farewell, English Rose.

One day you will rise in our hearts...

Life has passed,

Like a candle in the wind..."