Diana's STILL blowing cobwebs off the Royals: SARAH VINE says conversation Harry has engaged with the nation about mental health was first started by his mother

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Pictured: Harry is cuddled by his mother Princess Diana on holiday in Majorca in 1987

Harry was just 12 years old on that terrible August day his mother died — the same age my own son is now.

And I know from experience what a tender, vulnerable age it can be for a boy; a time of great change and turmoil even in the most stable of families.

No longer a child but not yet a man, there are seismic physical and mental changes under way. One minute they’re asking for cuddles, the next they’re telling you to wait two streets away, and preferably in disguise, so the other children don’t see you picking them up from school.

Boys this age (far more, in my experience, than girls) need the reassurance of a watchful maternal eye as they negotiate the complex and emotionally fraught passage into adulthood.

Poor Harry was deprived of his beloved mother 20 years ago at this pivotal moment in his development, and whatever faults Diana may have had, she was, by all accounts, the most wonderful and intuitive parent.

Instead of her love and encouragement, Harry suddenly found himself without the most important person in his life, and in the bleakest of circumstances.

To make matters worse, he was forced to endure his grief in full view of the world. I will never forget watching in horror as those two boys processed down The Mall behind their mother’s coffin.

Even though I had no children of my own at that time, I thought it was unforgivable to submit them to such an ordeal — exposing them to all those millions of prying eyes at the precise moment when they should have been protected.

No one who truly loved them would ever have allowed them to be paraded in public like that. Unless, of course, they happened to subscribe to an especially strict doctrine of stiff upper lip.

Perhaps that is why William added to his brother’s revelations this week by calling for an end to that culture of repressed emotions. He and his younger brother have clearly suffered a great deal of pain because of it.

No wonder William said he and Kate were determined to bring up George and Charlotte in a way that encourages them to speak openly about their emotions.

Pictured: Harry walks behind his mother’s coffin, between his father Prince Charles and his uncle Earl Spencer, in 1997

To some this might seem like wishy-washy therapy-speak. It’s certainly not the sort of thing my parents’ generation would have a lot of time for.

But while there is undoubtedly such a thing as emotional over-indulgence, Afghan veteran Harry is a long way from being the over-sensitive snowflake so many other young people seem to be today.

Of course, status, wealth and a fine education have helped cushion the blows that life has thrown at him. But I’m sure Harry would have given up all his privilege in a heartbeat to bring his mother back.

And that is the real joy of the Harry we have seen this week. Because, in a funny kind of way, he has brought her back. The conversation he has engaged in with the nation is the same one that Diana first began when she spoke honestly about her own struggles with bulimia.

Pictured: Prince Harry during an event for Heads Together - the mental health charity he launched with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

And today, we find her still blowing the cobwebs off that most arcane of organisations, the British Royal Family.

It is this ability to engage with the public at the most human level that will prove Diana’s legacy.

And Harry, with all his energy and empathy, may turn out to be her greatest achievement of all.

OUCH! WHAT A WAY TO SHOW YOUR LOVE, ELLIE

Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison honoured her partner of ten years, Matt Goodman, by having ten circles etched into her skin

How very sweet of Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison to want to honour her partner of ten years, Matt Goodman, a doctor, by getting something memorable for him.

As a medical man, however, he might have been somewhat alarmed when she presented him with what to the untrained eye looks like a bad case of ringworm spreading up her arm. 

In fact, it’s called scarification and involves having a design — in this case ten circles— etched into the skin using a knife and then prolonging the healing process so the wound forms a visible scar.

Apparently, it’s very painful and awfully mystical . . .

Maybe. But if you ask me, a mini break in the sun and some aftershave would have done the job just as well.

Gordon Brown always regretted not calling a General Election when he had the political advantage. 

Once again, Theresa May shows she has the cojones to beat the men at their own game.

A BLACK MARK TO BEAR

Bear Grylls has become the latest parent to advocate taking children out of school during term time.

That’s all very well if your father is a wealthy Old Etonian TV star and your alternative a Boy’s Own-style adventure somewhere exciting and educational.

But if you’re a young girl being carted off to Pakistan to be married to a distant uncle or a kid being pulled out of classes that could make all the difference to your future just so your parents can get a cheap deal to drink lager on the beach while farming you out to the iPad, it might not be such a life-enhancing experience.

Privileged middle-class parents might like to remember that it’s not all about them — and that for some children, the rigours of school can be infinitely preferable to what awaits elsewhere.

After a brief but glorious flowering, hopes for a flourishing liberal democracy in Turkey have withered after the country’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, narrowly won Sun-day’s referendum.

He now has carte blanche to award himself sweeping extra powers and to consolidate the country’s transition from progressive secularism to cultural and religious intolerance.

What’s really frightening, though, is how quickly he has managed it: it’s taken just three years. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

 SAVE YOUR CASH, KATE 

Why are William and Kate sending Prince George to posh prep school Thomas’s Battersea when there are excellent schools just around the corner?

I don’t know why William and Kate are wasting nearly £17,000 a year sending Prince George to posh prep school Thomas’s Battersea.

There are more than a few excellent schools just around the corner from their home at Kensington Palace, not least Fox Primary School (Ofsted rating: outstanding).

I’m sure most middle-class Londoners would sell a kidney to get their children into this successful school.

And, crucially, young George might then actually get to meet some real people.

Do they really want the Prince to grow up surrounded by the cosseted kids of Russian oligarchs and rich bankers?

Wouldn’t it be a lot better for him to have a slightly broader education — in every sense of the word?

Delegates at the National Union of Teachers conference in Cardiff have passed a motion asking for nursery age children — that’s two to five — to be taught about transgender issues. 

With such blatant politicisation, not to mention brain-washing, going on in our schools, is it any wonder that more and more children are declaring themselves confused about their gender?

First, he plays the Pope, God’s representative on Earth. Now he’s taking on the role of the young Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard the world has ever known, in the Fantastic Beasts sequel.

Is Jude Law’s ego trying to tell us something?

TEEN MISERY? IT'S NORMAL 

Barely a day goes by without another survey telling us how miserable our teenagers are, especially girls.

This week, we were solemnly informed that in the UK one in six 15-year-olds is unhappy at school — and that we, the parents, are to blame.

Sorry, but ‘teens miserable; parents to blame’ is not exactly headline news.

Teenagers are supposed to be unhappy; it’s their USP.

Along with pathological untidiness and knowing everything about everything — even when they are proved irrefutably wrong by their long-suffering mothers.

I've not watched ,the video of Steve Stephens, the so-called Facebook murderer, shooting dead 74-yearold Robert Godwin in the street. 

Nor do I intend to. To click ‘play’ would be to somehow make me complicit in his murder — just another s ick voyeur in a terrifying computer game that has somehow become reality.

The idea that his senseless murder — along with similar events such as the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl in Chicago earlier this year, also streamed live via Facebook — could end up as viral click bait shows just how far the depravities of the internet have twisted humanity out of shape.