Diana
Authors: Bill Adler
Diana
A Portrait in Her Own Words
E
DITED BY
B
ILL
A
DLER
Public Life— “The Things I Do for England!”
To the entire world, she seemed born to be a princess. The endless reach of her charisma, her effortless glamour, and her eventual, unprecedented candor utterly transformed our notions of royalty—forever.
By the time her spectacular wedding was held, the words “fairy tale” were regularly used everywhere to describe the event. At her wrenchingly premature funeral, it seemed that the whole planet ground to a halt.
Between these two seismic events lived the most beloved royal presence of our century, and one that was surely as multifaceted as any present-day celebrity. The radical twists and turns in her brief life drew the fascination of millions. For surely no figure in our time has been the subject of more printed words in just sixteen years of public life than Princess Diana.
Yet the most photographed woman in history
was also the most seldom quoted. Indeed, other than her famous BBC
Panorama
interview in 1995, her actual words were rarely heard, and never gathered. Until now.
A scrupulous search for every significant recorded word has resulted in this book, the only collection of her revelatory remarks and insights that takes you through her magical and tragic life.
Behind the headlines, behind the highborn pedigree, behind the “Shy Di” veneer dwelled a woman of extraordinary resourcefulness, stamina, and—perhaps above all—excruciating vulnerability. Today, her frankness about the events and people around her is both disarming and startling.
Take her at her word—her
own
words—and discover the astonishing clarity, endless warmth, and surprising wit that she brought to her legendary life. This is an intimate self-portrait of the woman who became “the People’s Princess.”
This is the closest we will ever get to an autobiography.
On her happy early childhood
“A lot of nice things happened to me when I was in nappies [diapers].”
Her favorite childhood home, Parker House, was “endlessly explorable, and filled with wonderful memories of so many pranks. I can see myself now, seated on the nursery floor, playing with my toys, totally into my own thing.”
“I hated to be indoors [as a child].”
“My father said, ‘Treat everybody as an individual and never throw your weight around.’ I was brought up to look after others.”
On her differences
“I always felt very detached from everyone else. I knew I was going somewhere different, that I was in the wrong shell.”
“I was supposed to be a boy.”
When her mother and father each gave her a new dress to wear at a cousin’s wedding, she was rendered immobilized: “I can’t remember which one I wore, but I remember being totally traumatized by it because it would show favoritism.”
On her early ambitions
“I said to my father when I was thirteen, ‘I know I’m going to marry someone in the public eye,’ thinking more of being an ambassador’s wife—not the top one. I always had this thing inside me
that I was different. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t even talk about it, but in my mind it was there.”
She once wished to be a ballerina, but she grew too tall. “I rather overshot the mark,” she said.
On school
Diana’s memories of school were quite mixed. “There were a lot of tears, because I hated leaving home. But I’ve built up so much from it … maybe not in the academic world. I love being outdoors, and I was captain of this and that, and I won endless cups for diving and swimming, which I adore. That’s why I really enjoyed it, just having lots of friends.”