While she was alive Diana Spencer had the power to turn stolid middle-aged men into gibbering idiots (c.f. Alastair Campbell’s toe-curling accounts of his encounters with the dysfunctional aristo). But even beyond the grave, she exerts her dangerous gifts on hacks of a certain age–particularly those charged with sharing their pensées with the great unwashed several times a week.

In today’s Irish Independent, Kevin Myers channels the waspish spirit of Kenneth Clarke in an effort to pad out a half-page of aesthetic meditations on beauty. Although by the end of the column the connection between the golden ratio and poor Diana’s conk still eludes me:

“They eyes didn’t have it by themselves. The nose was central to their effect, for together they achieved the mystical golden mean, that mathematical conjunction which, for reasons no-one [sic] has been able to explain since it was discovered 2,500 years ago, seem to convey a compelling sense of beauty. She hated that nose: but it made possible the perfectly astonishing face […]

Ten years on, we should remember not just the eyes, far finer than anything Hollywood has ever produced, but also, and most of all, the imperial nasal ridge which so devastatingly defined them: Goodbye England’s nose.”