The book tells the story of Diana’s early childhood and explains where many of her personality quirks may have come from.
Her mother running away with her lover made and indelible mark on the choices that Diana would make for the rest of her life. Her father’s decision to marry Raine against the wishes of his children would also affect her life in ways that showed up in her anorexia and bulimia.
Tina Brown’s description of how Diana came to marry the future King of England is telling of her need to be loved and her need to be noticed. The description of Charles’ love for Camilla almost makes you sorry for the bad media Camilla has endured from the moment Charles married Diana. Diana’s marriage is explained in detail and told from every point of view. Ms. Brown tells a story of a boyish Charles who doesn’t know how to love and a love starved Diana who can’t live without being loved. Once the marriage breaks down and it is clear that they will not make it Diana becomes a malicious, conniving and almost demented person. So desperate is she to be loved that she has affairs with married men, social climbers and mentally unstable men along the way. She continually makes bad choices by trusting men who clearly are untrustworthy.
Once the divorce is finalized and Diana meets the man that she calls the love of her life you feel that perhaps things didn’t end the way you remember. I was reading and hoping that the story was different. That perhaps she had found the love she always longed for. Ms. Brown draws a correlation between the choices Diana made in what charities and causes she would take up and in her love for the surgeon. She did so many things in an effort to show him that she was compassionate and could live in his world. She had a dream of the two of them jetting around the world doing philanthropic works, she as a catalyst and he as a doctor. I loved the part of the story where Ms Brown speaks of Diana wanting so bad to be a part of a stable family but always choosing families that didn’t want her. Her love affair with the heart surgeon was not to be because he was a Pakistani from a family that would never allow marriage with a woman who was not one also. Their ultimate downfall was his staunch refusal to play her media games and her inability to stay out of the media. This breakup was the catalyst for her friendship with Dodi Al Fayad. This relationship is shown by Ms. Brown to be one of convenience and companionship but certainly not love. She enjoyed him and liked that he smothered her with gifts but she had no intention on marrying him. Diana had found her cause. She had championed the cause of anti-personnel mines and was making huge strides in helping to educate people all over the world of their effects. She was at the peak of her public life but still so lonely that she was spending time with a man that her sons didn’t approve of in order to not be alone.
It was at this point that the events surrounding her death and the days afterward are explained. Ms Brown tells this story with such class and tact that I literally wanted to cry for Diana and for Charles and for her boys. I could almost feel the agony of the guilt felt by Charles after her death. I could feel the pain her felt when fighting his family for the burial he felt he had to give Diana even though it went against royal protocol. Finally, I cried for the fact that Diana is buried at Althorp, her childhood home. The one place she tried to escape and grow above her whole life. I don’t believe that she would have chosen this place as her burial place. I think her family buried her there in an effort to keep her safe from the prying eyes of the public and to prove to the royals that she was THEIRS. Wonderful book! I would so recommend it to anyone who has any interest in Diana. It is a rather long book but once you get to reading it you will not want to put it down.