“When they say ‘its time
To separate sheep from goats’
It doesn’t mean that they will keep
The knife from either’s throats!”
From Bakriana by Bachchoo

Harrods is England’s homage and monument to the retail trade. It used to be, they say, the place where British monarchs, or at least the people who looked after that sort of thing for them, shopped. Harrods used to have the right to display a crest of his or her Imperial British majesty which was one of the things Napoleon Bonaparte noticed when he invaded and subdued England and coined the phrase “a nation of shopkeepers” to describe the brave and unconquerable population of this sceptred isle. That was, of course, in Bonaparte’s dreams and not in Knightsbridge.
The crest of royal appointment no longer adorns the shop. The Bank of England, some miles away in the City, is known as the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street and whenever I enter the refreshed air of Harrods, kept at exactly the right temperature to absorb the sweat of teeming millions who pass between its showcases, I think of it as the Musty Aunty of Knightsbridge.
Not that I go there often. One only does when the less wary Indian friends or relatives are visiting and want to go where all the visiting rich of India, Pakistan, Arabia and Russia go. Occasionally they may even come across an American, easily identified by their clothes and accents. The other places my friends and less-wary relatives insist on visiting is Madame Tussauds, the morbid museum of wax works. There can really be no confusion between these two landmarks of memorable London visits. For one thing, Madame Tussauds doesn’t have anything but souvenirs of the less-wary’s visit to sell. And Harrods doesn’t or didn’t till a few years ago have statues on display. I don’t use the present tense, because on my last visit I saw two very publicly displayed statues there.
As one enters the hallway from the side street on the right in the alcove of the staircase is a statue in white marble of the late Princess Diana of Wales and Dodi Fayed, late son of the late owner of Harrods Mohammed Al Fayed. The first two are late because they are dead and the latter is late because he has sold the shop to the royal family of Qatar for £1.5 billion.
The statues of the Princess Diana and Dodi whose arms are suggestively entwined and reaching into the air as if to grasp a fugitive dove of peace or some bird representing an elusive happiness, are on a plinth which proclaims that they were murdered.
The world knows that Diana and Dodi died in a car crash in Paris in a traffic tunnel at the Pont D’Alma because their car was travelling at the speed of 120 km per hour when the driver lost control.
There was an inquest and there have been two enquiries, all of which concluded that the crash was an accident and was probably caused by travelling too fast through the tunnel in order to get away from paparazzi who were lurking around the hotel from which Di and Dodi emerged and later followed them on motorbikes. There was evidence that Dodi and Di had been taking cocaine and urged the driver to go even faster.
There was also evidence that the driver, on Al Fayed’s staff, had been drinking and had an excess of alcohol in his blood which may have impaired his driving ability.
Mr Al Fayed has always alleged, with no solid evidence to back any of it up, that the crash was in some way caused by the dirty tricks of a shady secret British agency on orders from Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and perhaps even from Prince Charles who divorced Diana. Al Fayed has given public evidence that he believes that Diana and Dodi were engaged to be married, that Diana was wearing an engagement ring at the time and was carrying Dodi’s child. She was murdered on royal orders because the royal family could not allow Prince William, Diana’s eldest child and the heir to the British throne, to have a Muslim stepbrother or sister.
It is not known whether Mr Al Fayed snorts cocaine himself but he has spent millions of pounds on investigations and legal fees to establish this conspiracy theory. The statue in the Harrods vestibule is part of his campaign to win sympathy for it.
As one climbs the staircase behind the statue to the upper floors of the store, there is a large ledger of a book set out on a landing in which visitors to the store can record their reactions to the statuesque allegation.
I stopped and leafed through the last signed pages. There was no queue to sign up to the cause. Most of the entries are mawkish, if sometimes illiterate, notes of sympathy for Mr Al Fayed and his undoubtedly sad and deranging loss. That he should invite comment for his conspiracy theory is in very bad taste. I felt impelled to say so in his book and to sign it “Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh”.
That’s not the only statue in the house of horrors. As one enters the store from the Di-Dodi vestibule, one encounters a larger than life statue of Mr Al Fayed himself, dressed in a suit and smiling benignly beneath his bald head to welcome the customers to his retail empire. The statue loses humility by being surrounded by ancient Pharaonic figures who seem to be paying homage to the store boss.
It was William Morris who said that only keep in your home those things that are beautiful or useful.
If the new Qatari owners find it in their aesthetics or pragmatics to apply the dictum to department stores, they will get rid of the two statues and the book of commentary on conspiracy. And while they are at it, they may consider re-pricing the glass of Sauvignon Blanc one may buy at their sushi bar because at present, it costs over £11 a glass even though one sits on an uncomfortable bar stool while drinking it. A bottle of reasonable Puilly Fume costs less at High Street wine shops.