In an unusually candid display of his emotions, Prince Charles told the British people that he will always feel the loss of Princess Diana and thanked them for their support in the weeks since her death.
Friday's comments were the first time Charles has spoken publicly about his former wife's death, and he was greeted by sympathetic applause, warm handshakes and tender inquiries about the welfare of his two sons."I think he's good - I think he is underestimated," said Patricia Bea-cock, standing outside a center in Manchester where Charles was ad-dressing community leaders about public housing projects.
Before giving his prepared speech, Charles looked out rather uncertainly from the podium and told the audience "how particularly moved and enormously comforted my children and I were - and indeed still are - by the public response to Diana's death.
"It has been really quite remarkable and indeed in many ways overwhelming," Charles said.
Displaying a vulnerability that could only have been guessed at in the past, the 48-year-old prince said that while grief is always hard to bear, it is even more difficult "when the whole world is watching."
"I can't tell you how enormously grateful and touched both the boys and myself are," he said.
"Also, I am unbelievably proud of the children," Prince William, 15, and Prince Harry, 13, who have managed "with quite enormous courage and the greatest possible dignity," the prince said.
"They are coping extraordinarily well, but obviously Diana's . . . death has been an enormous loss as far as they are concerned, and I will always feel that loss."
Diana's death in an Aug. 31 car crash in Paris convulsed the nation with an outpouring of feeling seldom seen before.