Of all the countless photographs of Princess Diana, it’s far from the most memorable.
It has neither the significance of her seated alone at the Taj Mahal, nor the symbolism of that walk through an Angolan minefield.
It most certainly has none of the indelible glamour of her dancing with John Travolta at the White House.
But the image of the Princess cuddling a gravely ill seven-year-old boy was among Diana’s favourites and she kept a copy of it always.
It was taken amid the chaos of a Pakistan cancer hospital in 1996 and was a reflex action on her part.
Never once did the little boy look directly at the woman holding him close because he could not. He was blind and had weeks to live.
To Diana, the picture represented everything about how she wished to be seen: compassionate and ready to break down the barriers of protocol.
Since her death, that baton of royal informality and spontaneity has been picked up by her sons, most notably by Prince Harry in Africa last month.
Now it is William’s turn as he and Kate arrive in Pakistan today, the country that in the last year of her life Diana was more closely identified with than any other.
It will be the first time a member of the Royal Family has set foot there for 13 years because violence and terrorism had made it dangerous and unstable.
Inevitably, their five-day visit will bring back memories of the visits made by the Prince’s mother.
In all, Diana visited three times, once when still married to Prince Charles and twice more after her separation when she was deeply in love with the Pakistan-born heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.
At the time, she was considering marriage to him and even moving to his homeland.
During her trips, she managed to slip away privately to meet his family. There will be no such cloak-and-dagger antics for Prince William, of course.
It is far more likely that he and Kate will follow the template of Diana’s 1991 tour, her first solo visit representing the Queen to a Commonwealth country.
It was widely expected to be a failure. Indeed, there were some in her then- husband’s camp who were actively hoping it would be.
As one of her key aides from the tour recalls: ‘I knew that many of them expected/wanted us to f*** it up and we didn’t. The opening line of the High Commissioner’s post-trip telegram was, ‘The Princess of Wales took Pakistan by storm.’ And she did.’
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