The Diana Chronicles

Audiobook read by Rosalyn Landor

Published in 2007 and written by one of her close friends, this (very long) biography dives into the details of Princess Diana's life, from her ancestors to her funeral.

I decided to read this now (well.... in January) because of the big to-do about Prince Harry and Meghan (kind of) leaving the royal family. (Remember back in January when things like that counted as news??) I found myself wishing I knew more truth about Princess Diana. I remember her death when I was 9 but I don't really know much about her life before that. I had a vague sense that she was treated pretty badly by the royal family and surprise! I was right. The book provides a lot of context for what Diana's early life was like that would show more otherwise be completely incomprehensible to me. For example, it was very cool at the time for rich young people to have very trivial, low-paying jobs (like cleaning houses or walking dogs) because the fact that you could work hard and get paid almost nothing for it showed how much money your family had. While she was first dating Charles, Diana was a nanny for an American family living in England and they had zero idea who she was. Ah, life before 24/7 news media.

One must obviously be very careful when selecting a book to read about such a big (and profitable) pop culture figure/event. The 90s were a golden age of cheap fan publications and "unauthorized biographies". The things I think make this a worthwhile pick are:
Firstly - It was published 10 years after Diana's death. It's obvious that Brown was not trying to capitalize on a recent event, and also a decade of hindsight really changed what the public knew about her life and death, and the way we view it.
Secondly - Tina Brown was Diana's close friend and had a view of her private life that many others don't, but she is also an award-winning journalist and editor of Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and creator of The Daily Beast. She's a highly-credentialed, very good writer.

In conclusion, I highly recommend reading books about events published 10 or more years after the fact, and if you're going to read a book about Princess Diana I recommend this one. And Rosalyn Landor is a good narrator. show less

The Diana Chronicles is a pacey and snazzily-written book: Jackie Collins would be proud to put her name to it – although at times she might be concerned that her fiction was straying into the realms of fantasy.

But premiere journalist Tina Brown has not written a novel; despite the fact her biography of Diana is as trashy, exciting, corrupt and scandalous as a soap opera, it purports to be an honest and no-holds-barred account of the life and loves of the Princess of Wales.

Dubbed ‘Shy Di’ by the press in 1981, Diana Spencer had a cult following never seen before, and was a media and marketing sensation: self-professed ‘Queen of Hearts’, she certainly captured the hearts of most, including South Africans – as late as 1985 show more the was a popular dress shop in central Pretoria called ‘Lady Di’, although the lady herself wouldn’t have been seen dead in those frilly frocks with coffee and lime lace inserts.

Tina Brown, somewhat of an insider in Royal journalistic circles, is remarkably even-handed and fair in her treatment of the dramatis personae forming the central cast of The Diana Chronicles. They are all awful.

Petty, shallow, egotistical and self-indulgent, the Royals and their protective buffer-circle of leeches, sycophants, brown-nosers and hangers-on are revealed as flawed and contemptible excuses for human beings.

Dianaphiles, who still abound, tend to regard Shy Di as a noble heroine, fighting bravely against incredible odds in a war that eventually destroyed her: the villains, the enemy, were the Royal Family, Camilla parker-Bowles, and Diana’s own mother Frances Shand Kydd, who was considered to have betrayed her daughter.

But there are no villains in The Chronicles and no heroes either. The whole boiling is remarkable for being entirely unsympathetic. Smutty, disloyal, arrogant, mean, vain, underhand, licentious, immoral, cold, greedy, unfeeling, abusive, proud, unfaithful, malicious – oh, they are a shabby lot indeed!

Although some might be indignant at the brown exposé, the book is everything a biography should be: pithy, well-researched and scurrilous, the Schiaparelli pink cover – perhaps an ironic reference to Barbara Cartland, famed for her love of pink, whose novels formed the young Diana’s mindset – says it all.

Charles remained faithful to his mistress Camilla [he performed his tour of duty in his wife’s bed just long enough to produce an heir and a spare – Brown hints he closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and thought of England while he did it] but the previously virginal Diana sewed belated wild oats with an unacceptably large number of men.

She was no intellectual – ‘thick’ was the word she used to describe herself – yet her manipulation of the media was masterly, as anyone who watched the famous Di TV confessional can verify. Head charmingly and characteristically dropped, she looked up at the camera with tear-filled eyes, openly admitting to an affair with James Hewitt, declaring tremulously that she had loved him madly, but in the end he too let her down…

After sharing the indignity and heartbreak of her three in a bed sham of a marriage, the cold indifference of her husband and in-laws, their contempt for her suicide attempts, her depression and her bulimia, who could not be sympathetic? Only the worst kind of cad could be so heartless as to question her about the rest of her list of lovers.

Diana exited the marriage a bereft, tragic figure, betrayed by her adored husband and her lover, a lonely and forlorn woman sitting on her own in front of the Taj Mahal, contemplating her melancholy future with sad, quiet dignity.

Charles on the other hand emerged as a brutish and unsympathetic buffoon, a guilty, somewhat potty figure of fun, a man with the avowed ambition of being a feminine hygiene product, and whose mistress was not only old, married, and common, but blessed with none of the style, glamour, beauty and charisma Diana exuded so effortlessly.

Camilla might be something of a battle axe in appearance – she signed her letters to Charles ‘your old bag’ – but Tina Brown reserves her hatchet for Diana, whose reputation and sweet façade she hacks to shreds with merciless blows. Great stuff – if only all biographies were this much fun!

The list of misdemeanors committed by the Queen of Hearts is a long one: she pushed her stepmother down the stairs, and had her evicted from the house the day after her father died, she leaked damaging information about the Royals to the media to further her own agenda, she hunted and trapped Charles into marriage with guile and deception, she was addicted to publicity and a shameless self-dramatist, she was mercenary and after the divorce she went shopping for a billionaire husband – and much more besides.

The Princess was also a shameless lair, neurotic, self-indulgent, malicious, vain, petty, very jealous, it goes on and on. It seems that Diana was really not a nice person at all.

But do we take any of this seriously? The truth, to repeat a cliché, is always the first casualty: she has been dead for 10 years now and while there will always be a small market for Di Hagiographies, most of us have moved on and will be tempted only by scandalous titivation.

Now, apparently, under deep regression hypnosis James Hewitt revealed he lied about the real timing of his sexual relationship with Diana: is started long before either of them admitted to, and he could indeed have fathered Prince Harry – who looks very like him. How about that?

I look forward to the next tell-all biography because I am curious about Prince William’s paternity: some have suggested Prince Andrew – who was quite dashing before he became Duke of Pork – but in view of the fact William got a degree, I assume at least one of his parents was reasonably bright. It could have been Charles I suppose, but a far more likely candidate would surely be the mystic guru and lady killer of note, Laurens van der Post…? I can’t wait for more revelations! show less

I once tried wallowing through Andrew Morton's early 1990s biography, "Diana: Her True Story." It was a miserable exercise. No analysis, just a brain-dump of sorry facts about the woman's life.

Brown's attempt, on the other hand, succeeds exactly where Morton's failed. She absorbed many times more information in her research for the book than Morton did, but did the reader the very great favor of digesting it, analyzing it, and giving it some much-needed context. She critiques everyone with a skilled, knowledgeable eye. Her insider knowledge of the media and her insight in scrutinizing everyone involved in the Princess's life (Spencers, Fayeds, Windsors, media, friends, enemies) distinguish this book from the ones that came before show more it.

Unfortunately there is little hope of reading a book on this subject without finding it tawdry at best, and sordid at worst. The Royals have gone through a series of crises in the past few decades that have tarnished their image as pedestal-perching role models, and at times made them look like little more than well-heeled, English-accented characters on a working class soap opera. Yet I would say that Brown treats all of the characters in this ensemble drama with a healthy balance of criticism and fairness. She declines to engage in conspiracy theories, but addresses--then dismisses--each one (including the one about the alleged ineptitude of the French emergency medical services).

I was interested, while reading the book, to find that I wavered between thinking of what wonders this woman could have achieved if she hadn't died so soon, and thinking that perhaps the monarchy and the media (and perhaps we) would have been better off if she had remained in obscurity. This paradox, and the complicated story it reflects, are recorded with nuance and flair (this is Tina Brown, after all) in this engrossing book. show less

I don't have any particular interest in Princess Diana or the British royal family. However, I saw a very favorable blog recommendation (can't remember where) and decided to read this book. I'm really glad I did. It's extremely well written. The book is really good on the social and tabloid media structure of Britain 80s and 90s. It probably helps that Brown is British and apparently traveled in overlapping social circles as Diana in the 80's.

The marriage was a trainwreck from the beginning. She was too young and immature for marriage. The portrait of Diana is a person with high emotional intelligence but who was otherwise an airhead.

I have two copies of this book because I forgot that I had already read it, so that must mean something? It's a good book and I really like Tina Brown. The New Yorker and Vanity Fair were never better than when she was editor. I guess my expectations may have been too high. Well written but Princess Diana was just not that interesting of a lady really. She was nice. She was pretty. She was not too smart. I guess her circumstances are what make her notable but not exceptional.

I liked this
It's gossip and largely unsubstantiated or already reported gossip.
This books takes a very jaded view of Princess Di. She doesn't seem to dislike her so much as see her in a less 'royal' light.
I like the authors tone with the royals

Given the huge amount of print about Diana, I didn't hold out much hope for this book and I was surprised to find it more interesting than I expected. Tina Brown's perspective as a part of the media brings a new eye to the story and adds depth to the pictures that Diana created for herself and the one that we created about her.