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| The Diana Chronicles | 
 enlarge | Author: Tina Brown
Publisher: Anchor Books
Category: Book
List Price: £5.23
Buy Used: £1.40
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Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 444499
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 720
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 030738876X
Dewey Decimal Number: 941.085092
EAN: 9780307388766
ASIN: 030738876X
Publication Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Ships from the USA! Expected delivery 7-21 business days. {Condition Text)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 An insightful and highly readable account of Diana's life April 12, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
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 amusing, it's insightful and it leaves you wistful for what could have been.
An Assemblage of Detail February 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
 is it possible to write a brilliant book about diana? January 20, 2008
this is not just a good book but a great and intelligent read.i did not think it was possible or necessary to write another diana book but this one goes into social and political discussions and appears not to be full of specialation. i found the book gripping, rather like a historical novel which at some point it might well be.but in the hands of such and intelligetn journalist writer its great.. Ms Brown deals with the very disturbed childhood,the role of women in the upper classes, and maes the Diana story comassionate and believable.
Well-written, fair-minded, intelligent and sane October 7, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I'm not a Diana fan, but after reading this gripping book I am no longer her critic. And I take my hat off to Tina Brown for her superbly researched, finely-written, and fair-minded treatment.
I can see the book will not go down well with those who thought Diana a martyred saint, or those who thought she was assassinated.
It is the one book that I hope Diana's sons will read one day.
Fascinating inside look into the 20th Century's Great Soap Opera September 7, 2007
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
Always was absorbed by the ongoing tragedy of Diana, and alway interested in the Royals, and in British history. Diana, and now her sons, are just the latest in the story line which starts when a bastard Knight from Normandy conquered England and changed his name from Guillaume Le Batard (the Bastard) to William the Conqueror. Anyway...his direct descendents include both Charles and Diana. She was fond of telling Charles AND his father she had more royal blood and an older title (that of the Spencers)than Charles had. Not so shy!! From this book and others I've read it seems clear that if the royal SOB Charles could have been honest with himself, his parents, & the Royal apparatus, he would never have married Diana, who was married solely as a virgin brood mare. She would have had a chance at happiness, so would have he. The marriage was doomed from the start as he had no intention of ever giving up his mistress, the married mother of 3 or 4, Camilla Parker-Bowles (whose husband was the occasional lover of Princess Anne-- all in the family...) For a young 18- 19 yr old girl, very romantic, who always lived in a fantasy world, apparently, she had no clue until the honeymoon of Charles' other life... Then, and from then on, it was a battle to the death, literally. Tina Brown insists Diana never stopped trying to win Charles' love. I don't know what she bases this on, there is no proof, and once Diana had "done her duty" and produced two children, she had affair after affair, as Charles did, as well as his long lasting affair, almost a marriage, with Camilla. It was an accepted thing in their cynical social circle, but how well the eternal romantic child Diana coped with all that is one of the questions. She appears to have wanted to be in love and be loved, not just to have lovers.
Brown does do a good job explaining how the seeds of Diana's death were planted when she fired the palace guards after her death, feeling they spied on her. That left her unprotected except by such "guards" as people like Dodi Fayed hired. He appears to be a playboy, not much more than the male equivilent of "cute and dumb" but very rich, so he could protect her and take her away from the constant the harrassment of London. The accident definitely seems to have been caused by an equal combination of driver Henri Paul's drunkeness, and the aggressive paparrazzi, ( and any of us who have ever paid for a tabloid or any shiny photo-mag with pics of her or any celebrity are feeding into that machine and I myself feel guilt over it.) The book does describe very well and in a sickening way the lengths they would go to to get photographs or certain facial expressions from their "prey". They mobbed after she took her sons to the movie "Jurassic Park", trying to be a normal family, and the photographers used such methods as calling her "c..t" and other words of the sort to get her attention and her head up. When she yelled back at them their headline was that she was a "Loon". This was the atmosphere she and Dodi were fleeing from in Aug '97. The tabloid publishers were said to be ecstatic that the chauffers' (Henri Paul's ) blood level for alcohol and pills was several times over the legal limit. They then happily printed headlines that he alone was to blame, and some momentum building up in Britain to curtail the paparazzi's aggressive activities was stopped in its' tracks.
After her death, the most interesting chapter in the book was the chapter on how the Royal family handled the death. I've seen the movie "The Queen" and enjoyed it, but it is startlingly untrue to the tone of the Royal Family's rationale for staying out of London. It seems the director made sure to show the Queen and Prince Phillip and Prince Charles as emotionally cold and distant, among themselves, and the boys are never shown and barely mentioned. The Queen and Prince Phillip are seen as cold, emotionless, out of touch people. The chapter in the back of the book talks about how the family as a whole rallied around the young boys who had lost their mother, although the family as a whole had learned to dislike her due to her Andrew Morton book and TV interviews. Prince Charles pulled out old photo albums and went though them with the boys; Princess Anne his sister brought her 20 yr old son and 16 yr old daughter to Balmoral to keep the boys' company, and everyone was involved in horseback riding, hiking, hunting, all the outdoorsy things the family enjoys, and also to "wear out" the young teens so they didn't have time to dwell on threir loss. Not necessarily what every family might have done, but one way to show love and concern. Princess Anne apparently took young 12 yr old Harry under her wing and spent much time with him at that time, hiking and walking and riding with him, as he was clearly bereft. The Queen, rightly or wrongly, ordered all TV's and radios removed from Balmoral except her own, so the boys would not be deluged with the maudlin broadcasts around the clock. Prince Phillip, their grandfather, was particularly affectionate in a "gruff, tender" way; it seems William was the son he'd always wished he'd had. At one point during funeral arrangements, (and as shown in the movie it is true Tony Blair played a huge part in convincing the Queen of the importance of the State Funeral), the negotiations were going on via intercom between London and Balmoral. The London people thought they were speaking to an official. Suddenly Prince Phillip "boomed" over the intercom : "These boys... have lost their mother! You're talking about them as if they are commodities" and his "voice was full of emotion, a true voice of the grandfather speaking." Another time he broke in on the conference and said: "Our worry at the moment is William, he's run away up the hill and we can't find him. Thats the only thing we are concerned with at the moment." These were things, along with some others, that totally changed my view of Prince Phillip from other books and stories I have read. Of course, people are multi-faceted, and clearly he is a human being, not just the gruff old man who walks two steps behind the Queen.
It was Prince Phillip who also talked the boys into walking behind the casket along road to the Cathedral in honor of their mother. Willliam didn't want to and was in tears. Prince Phillip reportedly said: "If I walk, will you walk with me?" All along the route, he kept up a soft stream of talk to the boys, discussing all the landmarks they were passing as they walked. A moving moment for all of us, and a tough moment for any father or grandfather. (It is interesting to me that Phillip did this, not Charles, their father, or Earl Spencer, their uncle.)
All of this was left out of "The Queen" however, I suppose too much humanity in the Royals is non-PC.
On major complaint is the lack of photographs. It seemed very cheap on the part of the book's editors, considering the book's cost.
Overall, a tough read if you cared about Diana, it does show her warts and all. It gave me a higher opinion of Prince Phillip than from anything I've ever read, and great sympathy for William and Harry who are already being treated as their mother was by the out-of-control press and the public who has learned nothing and keeps buying the same trash that essentially killed Diana; and I hope I'm wrong, but I hope they can survive their version of it.
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