Advance word
"Intensely well researched and an unputdownable read, Tina Brown's extraordinary book parts the brocaded velvet, lifts the expensive net curtains and allows us an unprecedented look at the world and the mind of the most famous person on the planet. It is a tragi-comedy, a soap opera, a social commentary a historical document and a psychological examination, written by a superb investigative journalist."
– Helen Mirren, Academy Award®-winning actress
"There has never been a biography of Princess Diana like this one -- honest, unsparing, witty, elegant, crammed with delicious gossip and detail, and yet withal fiercely sympathetic, and not only towards poor Diana. I read Tina Brown's book non-stop, filled with admiration for her crisp style, her deep understanding of human nature, and her ability to convince the reader that the Diana she knew and writes about is the real thing, not the usual invention of journalists and pseudo-biographers. This is not only first-rate biography, but a marvelous social history, and a bitingly accurate portrait of the English upper classes, the like of which I haven't read since the publication of the glorious letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh to each other -- and how they would have loved every word of this!"
– Michael Korda, author of "Charmed Lives" and "Ike"
"As one who favors a British republic and dislikes celebrity culture, I did not believe that anyone could write a book about the Spencer girl that would absorb and even stir me. But Tina Brown has produced something that is, as well as absorbing and stirring, witty and penetrating. Everybody knows that Tina comprehends the world of charisma, but here she proves that she understands how 'fairy tale' can also mean the Brothers Grimm. As an incidental pleasure, this book is also the final verdict on that sordid menace Mohammed Al-Fayed."
– Christopher Hitchens, author of "God is Not Great"
"Tina Brown has produced a delightfully smart and insightful book that captures both the personal tale of Princess Diana as well as the astonishing cultural phenomenon that she became. Nobody has a better feel for both aspects than Tina. With great reporting and savvy judgments, she weaves a compelling human drama into a rich social history."
– Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and author of "Einstein: His Life and Universe"
"With "The Diana Chronicles" the story of the world's favorite tragic princess at last leaves the realm of soap opera. Nothing comes close to Tina Brown's book for its tight grip on the dark human comedy that was Diana's life and death. Brown knows the ritual dances, the shouts and whispers of the tribes of Britain -- the Sloanes, the paparazzi, the aristos, and the cocktail lounge lizards -- better than anyone who has ever written this story, but she also has a perfect ear for the way ordinary people responded to the doomed Princess. The result is a compulsively page-turning trip to the poisoned place where class met glamour and the result was catastrophe. At last we have a book that measures up to its subject -- not just the wide-eyed, long-legged, good-hearted, muddle-headed woman at its center -- but the endlessly fascinating peculiarity of Britain itself."
– Simon Schama, University Professor, the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University and author of "Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution," "A History of Britain" and "Citizens: A Chronicle"
Reviews
"With 'The Diana Chronicles,' Tina Brown breathes new life into the saga of this royal 'icon of blondness' by astutely revealing just how powerful, and how marketable, her story became in the age of modern celebrity journalism... Brown offers an insightful, absorbing account of the pas de deux into which, to her eventual peril, Diana joined with the paparazzi."
– Caroline Weber, The New York Times Sunday Book Review
"Tina Brown's 'The Diana Chronicles' sets out to put us right not only on the central point -- minx or martyr; victim or vixen -- but on a whole collection of subsidiary mysteries, such as whether it was Diana who smuggled herself onto the royal train for a pre-wedding tryst with Charles, or his favorite mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles. Ms. Brown is in an ideal position to sort out fact from factoid. She, too, is a glamorous blonde who famously upset the decorum of a venerable institution and its devoted followers, though her dynamic editorship of The New Yorker has left a more lasting impression upon the accessibility of Manhattan's house magazine than the petulant Lady Di had on the accessibility of the House of Windsor.
...Ms. Brown's sophisticated approach, a triumph of reporting, makes 'The Diana Chronicles' a candy feast of royal gossip to be consumed preferably at a single sitting. It will bring the summer to a standstill. Every last quip and quote, snip and sneer, joke and jape about this disastrous marriage is recorded with elegance and interpreted with wise understanding."
– Nicolas Wapshott, The New York Sun
"Brown has a phenomenal contacts book and has interviewed, among others, the hitherto silent Sabrina Guinness, former girlfriend of Prince Charles; Diana's American boyfriend in the Nineties, Ted Forstman; and Dr James Colthurst, a friend of the Princess who fatefully helped Diana to go public about the Royal Family by acting as intermediary with the author Andrew Morton.
...The book sparkles with never-before-revealed gems about the Royals. For instance there is Prince Philip's remark to Diana in a meeting before the divorce: 'If you don't behave, my girl, we'll take your title away,' he said, referring to her HRH title. To which Diana replied: 'My title is a lot older than yours, Philip,' referring to the lineage of the Spencer family."
– Sarah Sands, The Daily Mail
"'The Diana Chronicles' does its share of detective work, as when it considers the possible ways private conversations were made so public. But its more important thoughts concern the changing role of the press. As in the film 'The Queen,' which this book resembles in its calm, credible, quietly shattering view of life inside the royal hothouse, the ability of press coverage to change history is treated seriously. And the evolution of the media's treatment of the crown, from hands-off to no-holds-barred, is all too clearly understood.
– Janet Maslin, The New York Times
Profiles and multimedia
Maria Puente, USA Today, "Tina Does Di"
Spencer Morgan, New York Observer, "Tina Brown Is Topic A"
Read Tina's online discussion, on washingtonpost.com, Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Watch Tina's appearance on Charlie Rose
