Memorial to Diana may help heal royal rift

Queen Elizabeth is expected to open the memorial fountain to Princess Diana in a high-profile and public gesture that will be seen as a step towards healing the rift between the royal family and the Spencers.

Buckingham Palace said that plans for the Queen to perform the official opening in July were "under active consideration''.

The opening of the principal memorial to the late Princess is expected to be attended by Prince Charles, Diana's sons princes William and Harry and members of her family including her brother, Earl Spencer, and her sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale.

The event, in Hyde Park, will mark the first public appearance together of the two families since Princess Diana's funeral in 1997.

In the days after Diana's death, the Queen and royal family were accused of being too aloof in remaining at Balmoral while a near hysterical public gathered at Kensington Palace.

At the funeral, Earl Spencer used his funeral oration in Westminster Abbey to launch an emotive and thinly veiled attack on Prince Charles and to appropriate the young princes for "their blood family''.

The strained relationship was exacerbated by the arrest of the princess's former butler, Paul Burrell, and his Old Bailey trial, at which he was acquitted of theft charges. Lady Sarah and the Princess's mother, Frances Shand Kydd, were the main prosecution witnesses.

By officially opening the £3 million monument, the Queen will be publicly acknowledging the importance of the position the Princess held in the royal family.

Work on the fountain, beside the Serpentine, began last year after a memorial committee chose a design by the American architect Kathryn Gustafson.

It is based on a large oval stone ring, with water pouring into the structure from the top of a hill at the Serpentine Bridge before running in two directions.