Diana by Sarah Bradford

Princess Diana that is…

I finished the biography written by Sarah Bradford and I have to say, it was written very well, seemed unbiased and gave some definitive facts. The issue that I had with it was that it also portrayed Diana in all of her insecure glory, and I wish I had remained ignorant and awed by her as I had always been.

Born into a rich, aristocratic family and being thrown into the turbulent divorce of her parents at a young age, Diana formed some impressions that stayed with her all her life, only increasing in her the insecurities as she got older and found herself, by some twist of fate, to be the Princess of Wales. At the heart of the book lies the story of Diana’s courtship, engagement, marriage and divorce to Prince Charles, who admitted that he had never loved Diana. He was attracted to her but had always been in love with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Being so young and naive, she had not known of the incredible hold that Camilla had on her future husband, and everyone else knew about it.

The book portrays expertly the atmosphere of Buckingham Palace and the Royal Family and its temperament towards Diana, as things got rough and the public began to take her side versus the Queen and her royal subjects. The parts of the book, although fairly accurate, that I always seemed to wish I could skip over, were the parts where Diana is portrayed as manipulative, playing people off each other, obsessed with the media and then hating them – a lifelong flirtation with them that eventually took her to her death. She was so insecure, jealous of Camilla, highly temperamental – being friends with people one minute and cutting them off forever another if they offended her or did not see her side of things. She was desperately in need of love and acknowledgment and it was sad to see how she was being used and she was using people to feed her need for love and protection.

The genuine things about Diana were her boys and her love and compassion for the poor, the weak, the hungry and those in need. The compassion was genuine and shined through even when the cameras weren’t around clicking away and chronicling her every step. She truly loved people and the people loved her back. She instilled in her sons the ideas that they should have a normal life not the stuffy kind that the Palace tended to raise the children with. So, she took them with her everywhere, when she went on trips to feed the hungry, hold the hand of an AIDS victim, or do a documentary on landmines. This has helped the Princes be very grounded and have relatively normal lives.

It was a fairly large book to read – 464 pages, interspersed with some photographs, and an interesting biography. She was beautiful and changed the world in a way that it had not expected to change. Her memory will always love on fondly in the hearts of the people for she was The People’s Princess.