The Diana Chronicles
by Tina Brown
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Book Reviews of The Diana Chronicles
Book Review: Most interesting read
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Book Review: A biography of both Diana and the media coverage that shaped her
Summary: 4 Stars
I started THE DIANA CHRONICLES by Tina Brown by reading it in the store in parts. I figured it was ANOTHER Diana book, and I could pass some pleasant hours in the bookstore sitting in a chair going over some familiar ground. But I was surprised: Brown is an insightful, clear and unflinching writer who has the ability, due to her experience in print journalism, to view the famous through a cynical but knowledgeable media lens. This book was so good, that when I got 300 pages in to the 500-plus-page book, I bought it. It was getting hard to find, and I NEEDED to finish it.
The plotline of Diana's life does not need to be repeated here. What this book is good for is the way it examines her life and her responses to the events of her life as influenced by the media and the media coverage of the her every move. It's as if it weren't Diana and the media professionals who were in a relationship, but Diana and the media coverage who influenced each other. This study is a fascinating examination of how media attention can become a character in the narrative of a famous person's life. According to Brown, Diana made decisions not just in response to the other people in her life, but in reaction to press and how her actions might be reported and perceived. She lost the goal, at some points, of how press attention can influence individuals and became focused on the press itself.
This book presents a strong narrative, a plotline of a life that is compelling and cogent. Though we know the story well, Brown's reportage is complete and portrays not only a whole Diana, but a complete Charles and other royals who had to orbit her star while she was alive.
This was a fascinating book to read as an examination of a woman of fame who could not help but respond to the expectations of women in the times in which she lived. Reading THE DIANA CHRONICLES, one cannot help but think of the price some women pay to be the feminine, compassionate women the world wants them to be. When that world is personified by papparazzi and reporters in fragile woman's day-to-day life, her response can be astonishing.
Book Review: Surprisingly gripping despite the passage of time
Summary: 5 Stars
It seems that everything that could be written about Charles and Di has been written, and this last(?) book on the topic by Tina Brown may seem pointless in covering well-trod ground. However, her book does provide a readable, objective overview, combining others' writings with the author's own inquiries. Some historical perspective helps, and Tina Brown is able to place events in their broader historical and cultural context, in a way that earlier writers could not have done.
This author comes as close as anyone ever will to unraveling the mystery of how the intimate phone conversations of the key characters ended up in the public domain. (Secret agencies of the British government were indeed trying to humiliate Di by publicizing her intimate conversations; in contrast, the revelation of the Camillagate-tampon conversation seems to have been rooted in a genuine coincidence.)
Tina Brown points out that there is plenty of blame for everyone: For example, Di was not the dim, naive girl she was often perceived to be prior to the marriage. After the marital breakdown, it's amazing Diana was able to maintain the moral high ground even though her bedroom was as busy as Grand Central Station. This author's treatment of Charles is likewise scathing. Also, journalists such as Morton were manipulated by the key players to a greater extent than they realized.
I suspect that because of Tina Brown's reputation, no one dared edit her words. There were some klunky rhetorical missteps such as using Rose Mary Woods as a metaphor without any explanation (she was Richard Nixon's conveniently-forgetful secretary), and informal snide comments (example, "Big yawn when it comes to that!") which break the rhythm of Brown's otherwise artful writing style.
Brown's book also provides glimpses of the hidden inner world of British royalty and aristocracy. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the British monarchy has outlived its usefulness, and this will become particularly apparent when Charles accedes to the throne.
Book Review: Disappointing...Vulgar...Sad....Too Much Information...
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm only half-way finished with this book, but I must say I'm finding it profoundly disappointing. Oh, there's plenty of information; too much, in fact. We don't need to know all the things that Tina Brown puts out for us here. It could be presented in a more respectful and more empathetic manner, but perhaps that wouldn't draw so many to read it -- the almost cheap language and vulgarity in some passages are just what the dumbed-down public wants. I, for one, feel that this is more than a tragic story of a young girl looking for love in the wrong places, but a sad commentary on certain aspects of royal persons and their lives. I am a traditionalist in many ways, but after reading half of this book, I am truly wondering how the British royal family actually serves and benefits its subjects. What purpose do they serve living in unbelievable wealth, closed off largely from the modern world and the majority of British people? Diana, for all her faults (intimately described here!), at the very least had a true sense of duty to her countrymen and people the world over; she reached out with the hand of a warm human being so that suffering people wouldn't feel so alone. In any case, Diana was not the only one suffering; Prince Charles, it seems, has plenty of issues of his own and a (not surprisingly) rather large, dysfunctional family! I have always been interested in the British royalty, admiring of Diana's beauty and courage in the face of such difficulty, admiring of Prince Charles' intellect and thoughtfulness on environmental issues, among others, and mystified by what keeps the monarchy going, truly. But this book is a cheap version of something that could be compelling, sensitive, and informative. To me, Tina Brown is rude, cheap, and sensationalistic here -- not a responsible or truly caring treatment of the subject. Don't waste your money.Book Review: Good Insight
Summary: 4 Stars
I found Brown's book to be insightful and entertaining. I am a Diana fan and believe that she was badly used and abused by the RF. However, she was certainly responsible for her own mistakes, and some of them were doozies. I cannot help but make the connection (as Brown does) that the Spencer family dysfunction was a major reason for Diana's genesis into the powerhouse that she became. She was in large part (as was Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York) a "motherless child," poorly guided by well meaning but an absent father and a step-mother made from the worst of the fairy tales. She endured but at a great cost to her sanity and ability to ascertain what was healthy behavior for her vs revenge at the family he felt wronged her. Charles, William and Harry went on, the latter growing into handsome and accomplished young men. The major villain - one that everyone seems to now respect and love- is Camilla Parker Bowles It made me sad then and it makes me sad now. She was a great source of pain for Diana, and I hope that as time passes Camilla and Charles will remain tarnished with their selfishness. The fact remains that she had a husband and a family but was not content to let the POW be. Who knows what Diana could have become had Parker Bowles stayed away and she and Charles had remained married?