Rent: The Diana Chronicles

This is a well written and compulsively readable book, which captures the essence of Diana better than any other biography I've read - and I've read many. Most books about Diana seem fall into one of two camps: either they are overly gushing and sympathetic (eg Andrew Morton, Paul Burrell) or they are critical in the extreme (eg Lady Colin Campbell, Patrick Jephson). Tina Brown is neither. She calls Diana out on her untruths (it's highly unlikely that Diana deliberately threw herself down the stairs) but also points out where her paranoia was justified (yes, the Squidgeygate tapes were deliberately released).

There's not a lot of new material here (what was there left to find out?), but it's a very comprehensive look at Diana's life that pulls together all the various things that are known about her in such a way that you feel that you are viewing the truest and most complete picture yet. It also gave me a strong sense of what life behind the Palace walls is actually like and why Diana felt so isolated and uncomfortable there.

Tina Brown is particularly good at getting inside Charles and Diana's heads: explaining Charles's misgivings at the time of the engagement or Diana's thoughts when she agreed to the divorce. At one point she refers to Diana being a tactician rather than a strategist (always going for the short term win rather than thinking of the long game), which I thought was a very astute observation. She discusses the Charles/Diana/Camilla triangle at great length, and ultimately concludes that quite possibly the marriage could have worked had Camilla not been ever-present (Camilla doesn't come across very well at all).

This is a long book which starts a little slowly, but from the time that Diana meets Charles it races along. It's entertaining, it's insightful and it leaves you wistful for what could have been.

I loved this book because there was a lot to read, and it was all well-researched. I enjoyed it from start to finish. Diana got married when I was 5 years old, so I grew up reading about her. As a teenager, I devoured a lot of what was written about her. With these references floating around in my head, I was pleasantly surprised when I found the events I had read about in the papers described in greater detail, or when I read about events I didn't actually know about. Ms. Brown's accounts of a typical summer holiday at Balmoral were insightful and helped me to appreciate the lifestyle of the British Royal Family much better. When I watched The Queen, I noticed that much of the information in Ms. Brown's book was corroborated. I finished reading the book without taking sides. If anything came away with the impression that if Diana and her relatives were less arrogant, they would have been more compassionate or intervened more forcefully. Diana might have received counseling that would have saved her life. I can't quite understand why I was so taken with Diana as the mythological princess come to life. This incisive biography definitely broke the spell.

I bought the book as a gift.
The person got really happy with the book.

The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown do not add much to our knowledge of the life and death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Nonetheless, Tina Brown's access to people and the 2007 publication date which allowed her to review all that was known before the inquest of that year and the next, does provide us with the most extensive compilation of quotations yet assembled in one place.

While venturing to comment frequently on Diana's psychological state, Brown refers to but does not take into account her mother's alcoholism, the double-dealing of her sisters especially Jane Fellowes or similar bonding difficulties in Diana's life. Brown does, however, clearly emphasize the princess's astounding isolation in her early palace years.

Brown also seems a bit bemused by the continual reports, from those who were present, of the healing touch the Princess seemed to have had, and of the gift of light Diana so willingly brought to so many. Brown does agree that Princess Diana always `rose to the occasion' and never disappointed those waiting for her, regardless of her personal state, even from the earliest days of her marriage.

One of Brown's main contributions is the clear statement that El Fayed's ten-year shouting campaign about a murder conspiracy has almost obscured the fact that it was his son, his hotel and his staff that in the end were responsible for the death of the Princess of Wales.

The other point Brown makes is that, on the evidence, Diana and Charles liked each other, cared for one another and that without Camilla might have made a go of their reationship. Thus Brown hints at but again does not develop the story of Camilla's tenacity. Perhaps especially because of Charles' inability to resist Camilla, it seems impossible for Brown to paint a picture of Charles as someone fit to be king and defender of (the) faith, at least according to the standards set by his mother and grandfather. Brown reluctantly, and almost in spite of herself, reveals Charles' failure to be courteous to the young woman he was escorting as she struggled to cope with their early engagements.

Roy Strong, the fastidious director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, met the couple at the unveiling of an exhibition at his museum and told Brown « I don't think he - Charles - looked after her enough. » Patsy and David Puttnam, a film producer, were present at a dinner in 1984 at the London home of Lord Waldegrave and his wife Caroline. While Diana was being `watched' and reported on to the palace, Brown tells us that « In fact, it was Charles' bad behaviour, not Diana's, that made an impression on the Puttnams that night. While Diana was solicitous and affectionate towards the Prince, he was openly dismissive towards her. `He behaved as if she were an irritant,' said Patsy. `He would have liked her to be invisible and she knew it.' »

Brown is, overall, another Charles apologist, but then Diana is dead, Charles is alive and likely will be king and Brown is still a working girl in need of the next good job. Still, on two key issues of interest - was it Diana or Camilla who rendez-vous'd with Charles in the train before the marriage, and is it Charles or Hewitt who fathered Prince Harry - Brown only repeats already aired information and gossip, without even trying to put the pieces together in ways that might suggest new readings.

In places the book seems poorly edited or awkwardly written, trying to `bridge the pond' in a way that sometimes leaves it stranded in the mid-Atlantic. Nevertheless, if you are a gossip hound who loves to know what key players in any drama `really said' this book will probably be of interest. If you have not read the « Diana literature » as it has emerged, this book offers a very good summary overview.

This book was a little too long, and could have dispensed with some of the endless trivia about England's nobility. But the saga of Princess Di is otherwise written in an entertaining style, and I believe the subject herself would have approved. The book shows just how stultifying royal life really is, and how difficult it was for a young woman to adjust to what she thought she wanted. It also gives me some qualms at the thought that Charles might someday become king. From what Tina Brown writes, he doesn't seem like the kind of person who should be given any real power...luckily, the monarchy doesn't have much!

This book was a little too long, and could have dispensed with some of the endless trivia about England's nobility. But the saga of Princess Di is otherwise written in an entertaining style, and I believe the subject herself would have approved. The book shows just how stultifying royal life really is, and how difficult it was for a young woman to adjust to what she thought she wanted. It also gives me some qualms at the thought that Charles might someday become king. From what Tina Brown writes, he doesn't seem like the kind of person who should be given any real power...luckily, the monarchy doesn't have much!

It's your typical modern-day fairy tale gone horribly wrong. A young, beautiful princess marries her prince in a dream wedding watched by millions. But soon the princess's life becomes more harrowing than anything imagined by the Brothers Grimm. Amidst a sea of recent books on the subject, THE DIANA CHRONICLES by former Tatler, Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown sculpts a more honest, posthumous portrait of the troubled Princess, whose life was tragically cut short in a tunnel in Paris on August 31, 1997.

Lady Diana Spencer --- beautiful, titled and reared on the romance novels of Barbara Cartland --- had no idea what she was in for when she married Prince Charles in July 1981. Being from a privileged past, she had been raised around royalty and was somewhat accustomed to it. (Her maternal grandmother was lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother.) After a whirlwind courtship, handled more by Buckingham Palace PR representatives than by the couple, there wasn't much time to get to know each other. By Diana's own count, "she only saw him (Prince Charles) a total of 13 times from the beginning of their courtship to the day of their wedding." But after that long walk down the aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral, the starry-eyed 20-year-old found life irrevocably changed.

Unlike Prince Charles and his family, those who had grown up in "the Firm" (their nickname for the family business), Diana was thrown into her role as Princess of Wales with little or no formal training. Worst of all, she had to deal with the throngs of constant paparazzi who tracked her every move, not to mention a stern Royal Family who never appreciated how she single-handedly revitalized the monarchy. She desperately wanted to be adored by her husband and accepted by his family but quickly learned that hers was an impossible lot in life. Soon, she would buckle under the pressure of a cold, distant husband and an insatiable public that couldn't get enough of her.

According to Brown, who fervently covered Princess Diana from her first appearance on the scene, the cracks in the façade of the royal marriage appeared quite early. Prince Charles still pined for Camilla Parker Bowles, his ex-girlfriend now married to a military officer. Despite ending their relationship years earlier, it was quite clear that the connection had never been broken. For all of Camilla's wealth and landed gentry ways, she was not the sort of woman the Palace would allow Prince Charles to marry. One is left wondering if he ever loved Diana, and apparently Diana wondered the same thing. Her paranoia and feelings of betrayal and abandonment led the Princess to self-destructive behavior as she developed bulimia, an illness that would plague her for years.

During those first few years of marriage, Diana dutifully fulfilled her role, making official appearances, hosting charity events, and most importantly, providing the Crown with Princes William and Harry --- the "heir and the spare," as they were sometimes callously referred to. She did her best to hide her hurt feelings as her husband grew more and more isolated. But soon, having no other outlet, the Princess of Wales indulged in some extramarital affairs of her own, usually with bodyguards or handsome military men who must have fed her romantic fantasies of rescue and escape. After a while, even those dalliances could not quell the desperation she felt. In 1992, the Prince and Princess divorced. She would never be Queen, but in her tenure with the Royal Family she garnered something they never managed. Diana, once referred to as "Shy Di" and "thick as a plank," deftly learned how to handle and manipulate the media in her favor.

In her last few years, Diana reinvented herself as the caring "People's Princess" with her work with AIDS charities and landmine victims. Out of the shadow of the Palace, she attempted to sort out her personal life but not with great success. Although brief, her last liaison with Dodi Al-Fayed, a womanizing and questionable jack-of-all-trades and son of Mohamed Al-Fayed (owner of Harrods, London's largest department store), seemed to show the Princess in a new light --- confident and fun-loving, though sadly not for long.

THE DIANA CHRONICLES is a well-researched and riveting read. Unlike other biographies on the doomed Princess, we get to see Diana's life through Brown's prism in the tabloid trenches, as she watched this shy, retiring girl become a world-wide superstar. Far from being a saintly portrait, Brown attempts to paint a more human likeness, flaws and all. There are no major reveals here, but the author does redress inaccuracies in Diana's own spin on her troubled marriage in her candid but self-serving autobiography written with Andrew Morton and in her landmark TV interview with journalist Martin Bashir.

From a fairy tale beginning to a modern-day cautionary tale, the life of Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, truly demonstrated that old expression "live by the sword, die by the sword." She courted and flirted with the media all her adult life --- a flirtation that ultimately would prove deadly.

--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller

I bought the book as a gift.
The person got really happy with the book.

The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown do not add much to our knowledge of the life and death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Nonetheless, Tina Brown's access to people and the 2007 publication date which allowed her to review all that was known before the inquest of that year and the next, does provide us with the most extensive compilation of quotations yet assembled in one place.

While venturing to comment frequently on Diana's psychological state, Brown refers to but does not take into account her mother's alcoholism, the double-dealing of her sisters especially Jane Fellowes or similar bonding difficulties in Diana's life. Brown does, however, clearly emphasize the princess's astounding isolation in her early palace years.

Brown also seems a bit bemused by the continual reports, from those who were present, of the healing touch the Princess seemed to have had, and of the gift of light Diana so willingly brought to so many. Brown does agree that Princess Diana always `rose to the occasion' and never disappointed those waiting for her, regardless of her personal state, even from the earliest days of her marriage.

One of Brown's main contributions is the clear statement that El Fayed's ten-year shouting campaign about a murder conspiracy has almost obscured the fact that it was his son, his hotel and his staff that in the end were responsible for the death of the Princess of Wales.

The other point Brown makes is that, on the evidence, Diana and Charles liked each other, cared for one another and that without Camilla might have made a go of their reationship. Thus Brown hints at but again does not develop the story of Camilla's tenacity. Perhaps especially because of Charles' inability to resist Camilla, it seems impossible for Brown to paint a picture of Charles as someone fit to be king and defender of (the) faith, at least according to the standards set by his mother and grandfather. Brown reluctantly, and almost in spite of herself, reveals Charles' failure to be courteous to the young woman he was escorting as she struggled to cope with their early engagements.

Roy Strong, the fastidious director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, met the couple at the unveiling of an exhibition at his museum and told Brown « I don't think he - Charles - looked after her enough. » Patsy and David Puttnam, a film producer, were present at a dinner in 1984 at the London home of Lord Waldegrave and his wife Caroline. While Diana was being `watched' and reported on to the palace, Brown tells us that « In fact, it was Charles' bad behaviour, not Diana's, that made an impression on the Puttnams that night. While Diana was solicitous and affectionate towards the Prince, he was openly dismissive towards her. `He behaved as if she were an irritant,' said Patsy. `He would have liked her to be invisible and she knew it.' »

Brown is, overall, another Charles apologist, but then Diana is dead, Charles is alive and likely will be king and Brown is still a working girl in need of the next good job. Still, on two key issues of interest - was it Diana or Camilla who rendez-vous'd with Charles in the train before the marriage, and is it Charles or Hewitt who fathered Prince Harry - Brown only repeats already aired information and gossip, without even trying to put the pieces together in ways that might suggest new readings.

In places the book seems poorly edited or awkwardly written, trying to `bridge the pond' in a way that sometimes leaves it stranded in the mid-Atlantic. Nevertheless, if you are a gossip hound who loves to know what key players in any drama `really said' this book will probably be of interest. If you have not read the « Diana literature » as it has emerged, this book offers a very good summary overview.

I loved this book because there was a lot to read, and it was all well-researched. I enjoyed it from start to finish. Diana got married when I was 5 years old, so I grew up reading about her. As a teenager, I devoured a lot of what was written about her. With these references floating around in my head, I was pleasantly surprised when I found the events I had read about in the papers described in greater detail, or when I read about events I didn't actually know about. Ms. Brown's accounts of a typical summer holiday at Balmoral were insightful and helped me to appreciate the lifestyle of the British Royal Family much better. When I watched The Queen, I noticed that much of the information in Ms. Brown's book was corroborated. I finished reading the book without taking sides. If anything came away with the impression that if Diana and her relatives were less arrogant, they would have been more compassionate or intervened more forcefully. Diana might have received counseling that would have saved her life. I can't quite understand why I was so taken with Diana as the mythological princess come to life. This incisive biography definitely broke the spell.