The Diana Chronicles
by Tina Brown
Published by Broadway Books
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Reviewed by Claire Vath
I had just returned from a dinner. The media was rife with the coverage: black metal gnarled from the unforgiving concrete pillars in a Parisian tunnel on a humid August night. A princess whose fate was unknown. With bated breath, I kept the news on as the “princess of the people” was laid to rest.
Three years later, I rode through the very tunnel, overwhelmed at the lives ended in this seemingly innocuous location.
The difficulty when reading a biography—or an autobiography, for that matter—is discerning fact from fiction. Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles, however, whether 100 percent accurate or not, seems to ring true in that she does an excellent job in making Diana three-dimensional.
We see Diana the lover, the mother, the humanitarian. We also see her as the woman—the princess—who knew how to groom the media to further her status. This affair became tragically toxic one night in a Parisian tunnel.
The Diana Chronicles, now available in paperback, enjoyed success on the bestseller lists upon its initial 2007 publication.
Tina Brown, who met Diana 10 months before her untimely death, has become an expert on the royals, candidly uncovering the prevailing attitudes and dalliances of Britain’s monarchy—and those in close proximity to its power.
Brown didn’t need much help in spinning a tale thick with twists: Diana’s life reads more like a soap opera script. We see Diana, the doe-eyed child, abandoned by a mother and raised by English nannies. Diana the teenager, who captivated a young Prince Charles. Then there’s the bride who captivated the world with her real-life fairy tale wedding turned sour divorce when the roving-eyed Charles falls back into the arms of Camilla.
Throw in a handsome Egyptian playboy, a handful of paparazzi and extravagance. Lies, betrayal, affairs –it was all a recipe for tragedy—a tragedy that made two rosy-cheeked blond children casualties in the war of the Windsors.
The bottom line is: Even more than a decade after Diana’s death, the princess of the people still has the ability to captivate.
Armchair Interviews agrees.