The Real Diana
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The Real Diana
Buy Now for £16.99
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Narrated by:
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Sophie Roberts
About this listen
Who was the real Diana? What was it like to be so privileged yet so anguished, so beloved yet so self-loathing, so spoiled yet so despairing? The Princess of Wales was all these things--far more complicated, conflicted, and intriguing a person than the wildly disparate saint or lunatic she is frequently portrayed to be.
Royal insider Lady Colin Campbell sets the record straight on many of the most controversial aspects of Diana's turbulent life: how Charles and Diana's engagement came to pass, though it seemed ill-advised to those closest to both of them; what their honeymoon was really like; the truth behind Diana's bulimia, her widely reported suicide attempts, and her obsession with Camilla Parker Bowles; Diana's search for love and fulfillment with numerous men before, during, and after her marriage; her brilliant manipulations of the press; and her relationship with Dodi Fayed.
Lady Colin Campbell's New York Times bestselling biography Diana in Private was the first to expose the truth about Diana and her troubled marriage. In The Real Diana, she reveals that the reason she knew so much about what went on behind the palace gates was because Diana herself was the source. Drawing upon these confidences--as well as on conversations with countless people who knew Diana and with Diana herself in the final years of her life--Lady Colin Campbell combines true insight with true compassion to bring us the most intimate and revealing portrait of the Princess of Wales that we will ever have.
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Lady Colin Campbell, brings real humanity and life to a complex woman, whose life and death are deeply misunderstood, surrounded by myths and mystery, still to this day. Diana's immortalisation in press, history and repeated court inquests, is as elusive as her public face in life. This book opens up the elusiveness to let the reader into the secret world -- internal and external -- which Lady Diana inhabited.
There is an immense empathy with which Lady Colin gently explores the realities of a mismatched marriage doomed to fail from the honeymoon onwards; a woman too young to understand the complexities of long term adult relationships left long behind for friendships drove her to jealous suspicion; again too young to be thrust into a job too difficult for someone lacking the wisdom of time, live experience, or training from birth. There is great sensitivity describing the true extent of Diana's mental illness, and how it invaded to make her marriage and work all the more unstable, and her mind all the more vulnerable to manipulation by external actors, seeking to make their name from exploiting her paranoia: bringing her to smear the current King Charles in unfair ways; leading to the legacies damaging Prince Harry and earlier William, along with many others who have been left confused as to objective reality.
Lady Colin alludes to the deep tragedy that Diana's illnesses only quietened after divorce, reaching a stability in her 30s: her relationship with Charles became cordial, no longer competitive, no longer paranoid suspicion of all those around her. Wonderfully, she finally found the deep love she dearly needed, and fulfilling happiness, with Dodi Fayed: with their death occuring just as they became engaged to marry. If Dodi was her true love to whom she would have partnered for life, for her sake, it was a mercy she was spared grieving his loss by her failing to wear a seatbelt. However, the far greater tragedy is the loss is for those left alive missing her: her sons' lives, family, friends, have been devastated, and each have dealt (or not dealt) with that trauma in different ways....
.... In this way, this book is vital reading to understand The Truth which has shaped both her sons alongside the contemporary monarchy: and therefore Lady Colin's work is a must, before anyone picks up the books about (or by) the brothers, their wives, and their courtiers.
Lady Colin writes from the rarified vantage of being part of the aristocratic circles, her class status affording insights others lack, and most importantly with tapes and notes made with Diana herself (amongst a wealth of other sources who knew her in familial, friendship, private, employment, associate, and public capacities).
She further researched not only all three inquiries and inquests, but furthermore spoke directly and researched the car accident herself: far more thoroughly and with far greater explanation, logic and evidence than any of the inquiries and inquest's went into: this was both important for integrity of Lady Colin as a writer, but more importantly as she genuinely cares -- a care which can be felt from every word.
The one question I have left, whilst there was the ramblings of the SAS officer who presented a story, this concords with a story told by the runaway mi5 desk officer David Shayler. Whilst both are largely written off as deluded, trading on their positions to make a living from the gullible, they do leave open one loose end which should be tied: whether the flash of a speed camera, the planned flash of a Strobe, or a disloyal protection officer or driver, a loose end is a loose end: where perhaps Diana was not the intended target afterall, given she would have survived with a seatbelt.
However, whilst some accidental deaths will always remain a painful mystery, leaving pain as deep as the black hole of a singularity, and maddening questions circling inside the heads, of those closest... the more important mystery is of Diana's life: answered here in Lady Colin's book -- the good, bad, beautiful, ugly, but always the truth to the best of her capacities as a brilliant writer and both women entwined as compassionate humans.
Empathic, comprehensive and exceptional depth
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A real insight
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Has stood the test of time
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Superb factual
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Interesting, but….
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