Rating: Summary: Spin, from the Mistress thereof Review: Andrew Morton's book, written in collusion with the late Diana, is a well-written, cleverly confected polemic designed to undo the very people who made her what she was (or, as some in the UK were wont to say, "After all, she's just a royal by injection"). Purportedly the daughter of a famous alcoholic (Lord Spencer), she exhibited all the classic symptoms of an adult child of an alcoholic; low self-esteem, poor boundaries, poor impulse control, chronic depression, a pattern of blaming others for her problems, etc. Of course, one can add on bulemia (from which she suffered before she married her poor husband), and other deep-seated psychiatric disorders. All this is clearly shown in the book to any critical reader. My daughter's godmother, the late Ouida Huxley, used to regale us with stories told her by one of the Queen's closest confidants, who herself witnessed how during the height of her omnipotence Diana would disparage her husband to his face, in front of the family, on his lack of charisma compared to her. She pulled cute pranks like screaming and rolling about on the floor when she didn't get what she wanted (in this particular case, to go to Majorca instead of Balmoral) in a fine impression of a grand mal epileptic seizure, in front of the Queen at a family meeting. For some reason (and it wasn't Camilla, who re-entered the scene only after all efforts at marital repair were exhausted), Diana felt as if the ungrateful royals needed to be paid back for her psychic pain, not realizing that the source of her suffering was in her own head. Andrew Morton's book is the result. It's as one-sided as an autobiography by a narcissist. Morton was either duped, or a willing collaborator in the tearing down of Britain's primary civic institution, the Monarchy. This work (if such it may be called) is about as accurate as Soviet propaganda. It is a fantasy woven from scraps of truth. If Diana had lived, and married the dreadful Dodie Fayed, she would have lost her titular "Princess" title, and reverted to merely the (alleged) daughter of an earl, and would have once again been "Lady Di". Dodie's dad was planning to lugubriously install the two love-birds in the Windsors' old place in the Bois de Boulogne. Eventually, no doubt, she would have tried out one of her famous emotionally wracking "turns" on Dodie (an Egyptian man, mind you) and would have infallibly been kicked out on her coutured posterior. During that time anyone who knew her, even from a distance, could see that Diana's life was on an inexorable and endless downward cycle (remember, even her brother, who so "courageously" dissed his own godmother, the Queen, on international television, refused to have Christmas dinner with D the last year of her life). Andrew Morton's book is a classic celebrity bio. Poor Diana. She was never happy, she would never be happy, and she was going to sow chaos and destruction wherever she went. Death, however, mercifully came for Diana before her life got even worse.
Rating: Summary: The real Diana at last Review: Diana's authorized, however covertly, biography finally tells the truth about this remarkable human being from her own lips. Morton's frank, honest telling of the grief behind the glitz shows us a very vulnerable woman who isn't all that different from the rest of us. Diana, young girl, schoolteacher, princess, wife and mother should have been embraced by the royal family instead of frozen out. One can only hope that her sons will follow the trail she fought so hard to blaze for them and live real lives instead of rigid imitations. The world is a poorer place without the people's princess.
Rating: Summary: Diana, the "People's Princess Review: I enjoyed reading this book, and found it to be fascinating. However, I have since read "A Royal Duty" by Paul Burrell. Some of the statments made in these two books are conflicting. In "Diana, Her True Story", it is made to sound like Princess Diane was always at odds with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. In "A Royal Duty", Paul Burrell tells a different story. He maintains Diana had a loving and close relationship with the Queen and Prince Phillip right up until the time she died. It is a very interesting book, but after reading almost everything written about Princess Diana, there are so many different views and stories, it is hard to know which to believe.
Rating: Summary: This IS Diana's Book Review: I enjoyed reading this book, and found it to be fascinating. However, I have since read "A Royal Duty" by Paul Burrell. Some of the statments made in these two books are conflicting. In "Diana, Her True Story", it is made to sound like Princess Diane was always at odds with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. In "A Royal Duty", Paul Burrell tells a different story. He maintains Diana had a loving and close relationship with the Queen and Prince Phillip right up until the time she died. It is a very interesting book, but after reading almost everything written about Princess Diana, there are so many different views and stories, it is hard to know which to believe.
Rating: Summary: GOOD READ BUT NOT ENTIRELY TRUTHFUL Review: I first read this book when it came out in 1992. Like everyone else, I was shocked and blamed Prince Charles for the marriage falling apart.
Since she died, there's been a number of credible stories come out that shows Diana to be manipulative, emotionally immature, stubborn and just plain bizarre. While her devotion to her children is unquestionable, and her charity work obviously came right from her heart, there were too many other aspects of her character that were not so glossy.
I mean come on, if your wife was pregnant and threw herself down the stairs to get your attention, would you not seriously question her mental stability? Anyone who can cut themselves with a lemon peeler or smash themselves against a glass cabinet is obviously a few bricks short of a load and in serious need of help. When she did the Panorama interview in 1995, she declared that she felt "betrayed" when her former lover James Hewitt did a tell-all book.............uh, well didn't she do the exact same thing to her husband when she told Andrew Morton all the dirty details of their marriage?
While I despised Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles for their affair, I understand now (a decade later) why he would turn to her: for some NORMALCY in his life.
Be that as it may, the one fasinating thing about Diana is her uncanny ability to predict things. In this book, it tells of her conversations when she was young that she was going to marry someone "in the public eye". She also apparently predicted her father's stroke in 1975. But what was fasinating to read in 1992 was Diana's belief that "while she knows that William will one day be King, she is firm in her belief that she will never become Queen" and "I am performing my duty as Princess of Wales, but I can't see it for much longer than 15 years." As we all know, she was Princess of Wales for 16 years. She made these statements 6 years before she died.....
Rating: Summary: VERY GOOD! Review: If you need to read just ONE book rehardsing Princess Diana... This is THE one you must pick!
You will be delighted with all the details and will admire even more this wonderful person.
A book you MUST have on your shelves!
Rating: Summary: NO PREDICTIONS OF IMPENDING DEATH HERE Review: Now that she is gone and the word is out that Diana did cooperate with the telling of this story the book is all the more interesting. Having never read a book about Diana, I found this to be very informative and tragic. Diana appears to have been a very misunderstood and lonely person, caught up in circumstances she had no control over. You just want to reach into her life and comfort her. Prince Charles was clearly the villain in the relationship as much of his behavior has been confirmed in the media since her death. His refusal to discontinue his relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles speaks for itself. How anyone could pick CPB over Diana in unfathomable. What was never addressed was what Andrew Parker-Bowles thought about the relationship between his wife and Prince Charles. Both Camilla and Charles denied there was a relationship. What a crock. The book provides a great back-story to Princess Diana's untimely death. But there is no prediction about an impending car accident as Diana's Butler Paul Burrell now claims. However she did make a haunting prediction in 1992 on page 220 that did come true, "I am performing a duty as the Princess of Wales ... but I don't see it any longer than 15 years." A good introduction to someone who knows nothing about Diana.
Rating: Summary: The Book that Ended the Royal Fairytale! Review: This book contains royal revelations... -Diana's troubled childhood -Charles and Camilla -Diana's eating disorder -Charles' and Diana's turbulent marriage -Diana's relationship with HM the Queen and the Royal Family -the future of the House of Windsor
Rating: Summary: This IS Diana's Book Review: This book is probably the foremost and authoritative book on who the real and true Diana, Princess of Wales was. Just as Candle in the Wind is her song, this IS Diana's book. I give this book 5 stars because this is historically accurate biographical information told by the woman that was behind it from the beginning, Diana. This is a classic biography.
Rating: Summary: The book that ended it all Review: This was the book that put the nail in the coffin of the Waleses marriage in 1992. Charles and Diana tried to make a P.R. show of togetherness on an overseas trip shortly after the book's publication and failed miserably. In December of that year, now-former P.M. John Major announced their separation in the House of Commons. This is an interesting read on the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and about as close as anyone ever got to writing an authorized biography of her life. Only a few years after her death was it revealed that Diana, indeed, made audiotape interviews of herself spilling the Windsor's secrets and passed them to Morton through a third party (so he could never say he interviewed her). The pictures are very interesting and the information on the state of Charles's and Diana's marriage were indeed juicy. A great read.
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