The Diana Chronicles

June 4, 2007
Princess Diana was "the best thing to happen" to the British royals "since the restoration of Charles II," concludes Brown in this dishy biography, and the royal family's error was not realizing that. It's tough to pigeonhole a peacock, but Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, tries, calling the late Diana a diva, "a siren of subversion" who "even as a small girl... had been dangerous when hurt." Brown shows how Diana excelled at manipulating the media; her in-laws could only stand by helplessly as she captivated the cameras by batting her eyes or lowering them in her trademark "Shy Di" look. So enamored of herself was Diana, according to Brown, that she claimed not to understand why a certain cardiologist preferred his work at the hospital to seeing after her. Brown interviewed more than 250 people, from Mikhail Baryshnikov (who found the late Princess "so much more beautiful than any photographs or TV") to a friend of Diana's late mother, who says that mum disapproved of her daughter's too hasty royal marriage and tried talking her out of it. In the battle of unpleasant revelations made by both sides in the Di-Charles battles, Brown speculates that Squidgy-gate was the product of MI5 bugging the royal phones. Brown gives her book a tabloid-lingo touch and can fall into melodrama (while everyoneo saw Di's life as a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, the author says, it "was becoming more like something out of Hitchcock"), but then, given the nature of the subject matter, a little melodrama is entirely fitting. However, the final portrait of Diana as a heroine who broke free of the royal bonds and changed the monarchy forever will be familiar to most readers.

September 1, 2007
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 ofTatler magazine, "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, Louisiana Audio Information & Reading Svc., Lafayette

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 24, 2007
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).