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Overview
Ten years after her death, Princess Diana remains a mystery. Was she "the people's princess," who electrified the world with her beauty and humanitarian missions? Or was she a manipulative, media-savvy neurotic who nearly brought down the monarchy?Only Tina Brown, former editor-in-chief of Tatler, England's glossiest gossip magazine, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker could possibly give us the truth. Tina knew Diana personally and has far-reaching insight into the royals and the queen herself.
In The Diana Chronicles, you will meet a formidable female cast and understand as never before the society that shaped them: Diana's sexually charged mother, her scheming grandmother, the stepmother she hated but finally came to terms with, and bad-girl Fergie, her sister-in-law, who concealed wounds of her own. Most formidable of them all was her mother-in-law, the queen, whose admiration Diana sought till the day she died. Add Camilla Parker-Bowles, the ultimate "other woman" into this combustible mix, and it's no wonder that Diana broke out of her royal cage into celebrity culture, where she found her own power and used it to devastating effect.
Synopsis
Celebrated editor Tina Brown reveals Princess Diana's tumultuous inner life as no one else has.
Ten years after her mysterious death in Paris, Princess Diana continues to haunt our imaginations. Now Tina Brown, who knew Diana personally, brings a fresh perspective to the questions that continue to surround the woman who became a beloved cultural icon. Was she "the people's princess," who electrified the world not only with her beauty, but with her moving humanitarian missions? Or was she a media-savvy neurotic, who nearly brought down the monarchy? As the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and as a fellow Englishwoman, Tina Brown brings a much needed authority and understanding to Diana's compelling story.
The Washington Post - Diana McLellan
Diana's tragicomedy is Shakespearean in scale, with its slippery royal machinations, its agonized ironies, its seething jealousies and heartbreaking inevitability. Brown is no Shakespeare. But she gives us a walloping good read.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The historical personages that intrigue us most are those who embody intense contradictions. No celebrity matches that specification better than Diana Spencer (1961-97), the late Princess of Wales. On one hand, this bundle of complexity was "the people's princess," a tireless activist concerned about AIDS and land mines; on the other, this candidate for sainthood was a self-absorbed, media-savvy neurotic who seemed intent on bringing down the British monarchy. In The Diana Chronicles, former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Tina Brown uses her formidable connections to establish who Diana really was and how she became that way.Caroline Weber
With The Diana Chronicles, Tina Brown breathes new life into the saga of this royal “icon of blondness” by astutely revealing just how powerful, and how marketable, her story became in the age of modern celebrity journalism.— The New York Times Sunday Book Review
Diana McLellan
Diana's tragicomedy is Shakespearean in scale, with its slippery royal machinations, its agonized ironies, its seething jealousies and heartbreaking inevitability. Brown is no Shakespeare. But she gives us a walloping good read.— The Washington Post
Janet Maslin
Like any writer examining the life and death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Tina Brown must peer into the world of British royalty with nose pressed to the glass. Unlike almost all of the others, Ms. Brown does not fog the windowpanes. In The Diana Chronicles — which is her “maiden foray into long-form nonfiction,” or first book — this celebrated editor, mover and shaker brings her own sort of privilege to the realm of aristocratic fairy tales. She knows this world much better than many who inhabit it.— The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Tina Brown's long-awaited biography of Princess Diana is read by the author-a British legend in her own right. Brown's recital is colorful but limited by her rushed, occasionally slurred delivery, which detracts from her prose. The abridged version of the book hits the high notes of this lengthy bio, offering a condensed but worthwhile version of Diana's journey toward British royalty and her eventual tragic end. But as a reader, Brown hurries through even this shorter version, occasionally dropping syllables or speeding through phrases that are thus nearly incomprehensible. On other occasions, she carefully enunciates each syllable, emphasizing her British diction but rendering her reading more actress performance than nuanced reading. Simultaneous release with the Doubleday hardcover (reviewed online). (Aug.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationLibrary Journal
Few modern women have been more adored, more loved, more photographed, and more written about than Princess Diana. Yet according to Brown, former editor in chief of Tatlermagazine, "England's golden child" struggled with psychic scars from childhood emotional traumas that were impacted by life in the tabloid-driven fish bowl that is the British royal family. The author has brought her journalistic experience and extensive Rolodex of contacts to bear on the late princess; she reexamines the tumultuous life of the woman the world thought it knew. Brown's book depicts a Diana who is more than a porcelain saint; her collusions with the media proved to be her undoing. Her championing of the less-fortunate is juxtaposed with her treatment of her staff and stepmother alongside her mercurial relationships with her mother, her former sister-in-law, Fergie, and men, single and married. Along with her English accent and actress's timing, Rosalyn Landor brings a cadenced elegance to the reading that is further enhanced by her beautiful diction and rich dramatizations. Containing entertainment as well as some journalistic value, this gossipy tramp through a life picked over too much will be in demand; recommended to libraries with medium to large collections of pop culture and biography.
—David Faucheux