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Ingrid Seward, a prolific writer on the English royal family, was the last journalist to interview Princess Diana before her death in August 1997. In this intriguing book, Seward gives a worm's-eye view of Diana's trouble-plagued life, layered with episodes of betrayal and illness, and she accords full sympathy to the minor noblewoman who became "the people's princess." She is still more sympathetic to Diana's sometime nemesis Queen Elizabeth II, who, in Seward's account, labored endlessly to preserve the dignity of the monarchy in the face of a family that behaved in anything but a dignified manner.
Rising above the caricatures that color the popular press, Seward depicts a queen who tried her best to accommodate Diana--who was, it seems, never shy in voicing her displeasures and had an undeniable flair for recruiting the media in her cause, all the while protesting the press's intrusion into a fairy-tale life that "turned into a Gothic nightmare." Diana's insistence on airing her dirty laundry in public was bound to irritate the ever-sensitive queen, but more, Seward writes, "in her demands for love and sympathy, she gave self-fulfillment precedence over duty"--and for Elizabeth, dereliction of duty was the greatest possible sin one could commit. Their relationship could end only in tears; and so it did, taking much of the English public's good will toward the royal family with it.
Sometimes racy and breathless, but intelligent all the same, Seward's account enlarges our understanding of the internal dynamics of the modern court while delivering no end of scandalous news, just as a palace chronicle should. --Gregory McNamee
Seward, editor of
Majesty magazine and an esteemed royalty watcher, presents an understanding dual portrait of the present British sovereign and the glamorous but troubled woman who, until her violent and untimely death, was the wife of the heir to the throne. The author naturally looks into the lives of the queen and the late princess of Wales before they came into close contact with one another, but the primary focus of the book is the nature of the relationship between the two women as mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Seward displays no rancor toward anyone involved in this complicated story, but neither does she whitewash what happened or attempt to downplay anyone's involvement in the headline-grabbing events. Diana was unhappy in her marriage very early on, which she did not hesitate to share with the queen. And, for her part, Her Majesty, according to Seward, was far more sympathetic to her daughter-in-law's problems than generally has been presumed. Amid a sea of salacious books about Diana and the royal family, this one is most credible.
Brad HooperCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
