Princes' farewell to Diana mother
OBAN, Scotland -- Princess Diana's sons were among hundreds of mourners at the funeral for Frances Shand Kydd, the mother of the late Princess of Wales.
Princes William and Harry bid their grandmother a final farewell Thursday at St. Columba's Cathedral in Oban on Scotland's west coast.
Diana's brother Earl Spencer and sisters Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes led about 600 mourners into the cathedral for the service.
Officers from Strathclyde police used sniffer dogs to comb the cathedral in a security operation Thursday morning.
Shand Kydd died at 68 at her home on the remote Isle of Seil a week ago after a long illness.
William flew in for the funeral from a university trip in Norway, while Harry caught an overnight flight from Botswana after a seven-hour road journey to the airport in the southern African country where he is doing a year's charity work.
William gave a reading from the Bible during the 90-minute Catholic Mass.
Local residents and media gathered outside the cathedral, which overlooks the Bay of Oban across to the green hills of the isles of Kerrera and Mull, to pay their final respects to Shand Kydd.
Other senior royals not related by blood to Shand Kydd, including Diana's former husband Prince Charles, were not present, Reuters reported. Palace officials said only immediate family had been invited.
Shand Kydd's second husband, Peter Shand Kydd, 79, and his son Johnnie were expected to attend the service.
Born Frances Ruth Burke Roche into an aristocratic world, she married Edward John Spencer, 12 years her senior, in 1954 at Westminster Abbey. They had three daughters -- Diana was the youngest -- and one son.
The marriage foundered in 1967 when she fell in love with Peter Shand Kydd, a married wallpaper heir.
They married two years later, but her second union also was to fail when Peter Shand Kydd left her in 1988.
