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Home , Andrew Parker Bowles, Diana (musical), Frances Shand Kydd, Hasnat Khan, Tina Brown

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THIS STORY ALWAYS HAD everything, didn’t it? The blushing young innocent who transformed herself into the most adored – and most hunted – woman in the world. The Cinderella who found her Prince Charming – or thought she did – and then entered the palace via the golden carriage. The fairytale but fraudulent wedding of the century, followed by that grim parable of death in the Paris tunnel. The romance, the adultery, the royal intrigue, the eternal, hopeless quest for love, the media’s crazed preoccupation and pursuit. TIn her lifetime, was the People’s Princess who, in death, became the Sleeping Beauty and the Lady of the Lake. She was the stuff that myths are made of and, like her or not, believe it or not, hers was a tale of epic, monumental proportions, that mesmerised the world for 16 years – from the time she walked down the aisle in St Paul’s Cathedral to the time of her funeral in Westiminster Abbey, witnessed by, what was it, a quarter of the world’s population? permafrost and the duke’s Teutonic coldness Think of Marilyn Monroe, Princess Grace, to Diana’s single-minded pursuit of Prince Greta Garbo, Jackie Onassis, perhaps even Charles and her elder son, William’s, interest Mother Theresa, and roll them into one in becoming governor-general of Australia. iconic figure, and you might approach the The Diana Spencer that emerges from fame, the celebrity of Diana Spencer, the pages of Tina Brown’s The Diana Celebrated editor Tina . As , the Chronicles is at once childish, scheming, Brown’s sensational new writer, once said, “ sings. Grace manipulative, vain, spiteful at times, Kelly acted. Diana simply breathed.” tempestuous, confused, neurotic, endlessly book The Diana Chroni- Now, 10 years after her death, after all kind and hopelessly romantic. And Tina cles reveals Diana as the that’s been said and speculated upon, after Brown had an extraordinary time of it trying all the biographies and hagiographies and to assemble this portrait, interviewing more princess has never been documentaries devoted to her life, Diana has, than 250 insiders for the book, many of seen before. In an exclu- in a sense, begun to breathe again, courtesy whom had never spoken publicly before. of Tina Brown, a woman once hailed as the “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever sive interview, David “best magazine editor alive”, the “hardest done,” she tells The Weekly in an Leser talks to the author and hottest act to follow in journalism”. exclusive interview in . “I consider It is quite a match, really, Diana Spencer, it harder than editing four magazines. about her controversial the Queen of Hearts and Tina Brown, the It was tenacious stuff in the sense that portrait of the princess so-called Queen of Buzz. The result is I would have to – as one does – spend a suitably controversial – a sensational lot of time getting people to say yes [to and the royal world she rollicking page-turner that explores being interviewed]. That was very, very loathed so much. everything from the queen’s emotional hard, particularly having been an 

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feugait am, vullut PIC CREDIT 2 | WW JULY 2007 DIANAWW JULY 2007 | 3 “I sea bewty as saying yes to lyfe, to the ups and downs of living in Japan”

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editor for 20 years … you’re used to sending affairs stories. (Think of the famous cover , actor and wanted to be able to see through it, to get “What Camilla actually said that day ‘What are you talking about?’ And she said, writers off to do that.” photo of a naked and very pregnant Demi writer Martin Amis, among others, before right back to the human that was there.” spoke more deeply – and more arousingly ‘Your memories of Diana. The Princess Moore. Think of the Dominick Dunne marrying the legendary Sunday Times editor, And despite what, at times, is a savage – to Prince Charles than that oft-quoted of Wales is dead’, and I thought she was TINA BROWN WAS JUST 20 years old dispatches on O.J. Simpson. Think also , in 1981,at the Hamptons assessment of Diana, Tina Brown was and apocryphal come-on. Sizing up his kidding. I thought she was out of her mind. when, in 1973, she was named Britian’s of Tina Brown’s own story on Diana, summer home of and Ben to find herself deeply sympathetic to the horse with an expert eye, she told the It was like ... I couldn’t believe it.” best young journalist of the year and given The Mouse That Roared,which rocked the Bradlee, the then even more legendary late princess, not least because of Diana’s prince in her warm baritone, ‘That’s a Tina and Harry sat bolt upright in bed, drama award for her one- palace in 1985 because of its revelations of executive editor of . boundless sorrow, her huge capacity fine animal you have there, sir’. The fine turned on the television and sat glued to it act play Under the Bamboo Tree. Five years the full extent of the marital disharmony Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Tina for empathy and – at least in the early animal in Charles responded with a leap for the rest of the day. The editor in Tina later – at the age of 25 – she was the editor between the Prince and Princess of Wales.) Brown and Harold Evans (now Sir Harold) days leading up to her wedding – her of intimate recognition.” was also savvy enough to set in train a of the 270-year-old British society journal, In 1992, Tina moved to the editorship became one of the most talked about couples breathtaking naivety. Today, sitting with Tina Brown in special New Yorker commemorative issue, , whose circulation she managed to of and proceeded – in America, the subject of endless speculation On the eve of her wedding to Charles, her impossibly chic hotel in the centre of which she decided to bring out the day quadruple within three years, much of it much to the horror of her detractors – and Manhattan gossip, as well as a spiteful she’d ridden a bicycle through Clarence London – just one-and-a-half kilometres before the funeral, on a Friday instead of a thanks to the growing fame of Diana herself to transform America’s most venerable book entitled When Harry and Tina Come House, the Queen Mother’s home, singing due north of Buckhingham Palace and Monday, thereby causing the magazine’s and Tatler’s obsession with her. literary institution into a magazine more To America. At one time, both of them out, “I’m going to marry the Prince of Clarence House, home to Charles and more traditional readers further apoplexy. It was during her time as Tatler editor resembling, well, Vanity Fair. were touted for positions in ’s Wales tomorrow, I’m going to marry the Camilla – it is clear she is delighted with “I could see immediately it was going Tthat Tina Brown first met Diana, once briefly “Once, [The New Yorker] was a church,” cabinet, such was their power and reach. Prince of Wales”. this choice revelation, among others. to be a huge thing,” she recalls now. “That when the princess was turning on the wrote one of her critics. “Suddenly, it is In 1999, Tina left The New Yorker to For Tina Brown, it was one of those “I love it. I love it,” she enthuses. “I it was going to be massive. It’s probably Christmas lights in Regent’s Park, the nothing more than a cheap booth on a start a new magazine called Talk, owned emotional epiphanies. “It really went love the whole thing. I’ve always known fair to say that the death of Diana was [at next occasion at the American Embassy, sidewalk.” Tina’s response was that she partly by Films, which in turn straight to my heart,” she says now. “I she just never said, ‘I’m the great grand- that time] the biggest media story the where she left playwright Tom Stoppard had no interest in being the “curator of was owned by the Disney company. The really found that a tragic, joyful, sad, daughter of Alice … how about it? That’s world had ever seen.” speechless with her ethereal beauty and a stuffed bird”. ill-fated venture folded after three years, but endlessly sad, vignette … I cried for her just so naff, you know. She would never Eight years later – at the urging of her Tina Brown deeply impressed by the Tina Brown has always had a way with reinforced Tina’s ties to – and fascination on the bicycle that night.” have said that.” American publishers, Doubleday – she visible sparks of her humanity. words. Daughter of a film producer father with – Hollywood. Tina then went on to Not so Camilla Parker Bowles, who How did she come to regard Camilla began researching the phenomenon that Searching for something to say to the and a mother who once worked as Laurence write a Washington Post column and host comes across in Tina Brown’s estimation then? “A piece of work. I like her. She’s was Diana. Her over-arching objective “tall, soft-cheeked English rose”, Tina Olivier’s press agent, the young upstart a weekly talk show on politics and culture as, well, horsey. “Women who love horses fun. I have [met her] several times and was to try to find the real person, to try Brown informed the princess she’d just was expelled from three English boarding called Topic (A) With Tina Brown. Her usually love sex,” Tina ventures about the she’s fun. And I see exactly why he and sort out the human being from the returned from a wonderful trip to Venice schools, once because she had the temerity contact book was so exhaustive she could – current . “The adrenalin, [Charles] finds her attractive. She is really confection of media impressions and by train. “I can’t sleep on trains, can you?” to describe her headmistress’ bosom as an and did – have virtually anyone she liked the fresh air and the tally-ho exhilaration fun and sexy in her own way, but she’s images that had bombarded the world for Diana replied breezily, in itself an innocuous “unidentified flying object”. on the show: Tony Blair, , are all big libido boosters, to say nothing also a piece of work and tough as old so long, especially given the fact Diana had reply, but to the rising star of magazine- Long before she became the most talked- Cate Blanchett, US Senator John McCain, of all that throbbing, galloping animal boots. Tough, tough, tough.” become – in Tina’s considered opinion – land an early indicator of Diana’s acute about editor in Britain and America, she Patrick Jephson, Princess Diana’s former vitality between one’s thighs. Camilla the most artful practitioner of playing the emotional antenna. “She broke through by was one of the most talked-about journalists private secretary ... Shand loved horses all right.” TINA BROWN’S FIXING moment on media game the world had ever seen. And if offering a shared little experience of her in England, a fetching blonde prepared to Then, in 2005, she departed the job – And, in fact, contrary to all the tabloid Diana Spencer came in the early hours of anyone would know, it would be Tina Brown. own that immediately communicated she work as a stripper in Soho or a go-go dancer with the help of a purported $2.4million accounts of Camilla’s first meeting with the morning on August 31, 1997, when At Tina and Diana’s last meeting – a was human,” Tina decided. in New Jersey in order to get a story. She advance – to begin work on the Diana book. Charles, where Camilla is supposed to she was at her Long Island house with lunch in July 1997 at New York’s Four By 1984, Tina Brown had become editor- was fearless and she possessed, as one so “It sat on my head like a whale,” she tells have said, “You know, sir, my great- husband Harry. “I got the phone call,” Seasons restaurant which included Vogue in-chief of Vanity Fair, where, over the aptly put it, “a wickedly accurate pen”. The Weekly now, laughing with the palpable grandmother [Alice Keppel] was the she recalls now. “I was woken up by an editor-in-chief, – Tina next eight years, she was to again quadruple She was also extremely well-connected, relief of having finished it. “[Diana had] mistress of your great-grandfather NBC reporter saying, ‘Would you like Brown, the then unrivalled magazine circulation with a tantalising mix of celebrity a priceless gift for any ambitious young been so covered by so many journalists [Edward VII], so how about it?” Tina to share your memories of Diana?’ supremo, had been struck by how much  interviews, fashion and in-depth foreign scribe. In the 1970s, she dated columnist and it had all been so turned over, and I PIC CREDIT Brown has another take on it. “It was like 5 o’clock in the morning. celebrity had actually transformed

4 | WW JULY 2007 T WW JULY 2007 | 5 come? From the “luminous pain” of her own life says Tina. “Diana would have always been a beautiful, warm and empathetic woman, but her tribulations gave her the incentive to become extraordinary. And what made her so riveting to the British people is the way they saw this transformation happening before their eyes.” Tina Brown’s portrait of Diana reveals a catalogue of loss and longing, some of which we knew already, some of which is now revealed for the first time. We knew, for example, that Diana’s parents had an acrimonious separation – and bitter divorce – when Diana was six years old. We didn’t Caption Intro to go here is nulla amet know that Diana used to sit on the steps Diana’s physical appearance. The tall, wisi. Faccum ver se facil ute core core of her home “week after week, soft-cheeked English rose had become “as tie modiam, conulla feugait am. forlornly imagining her mother’s return phosphorescent as a cartoon”, a towering to live with them again”. “Barbarella-like” figure. At the same time, Tina’s own words – could turn sceptics We knew that Diana’s maternal grand- ironically, she’d also begun to shake off around with “her porous quality of empathy”. mother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, was a woman the more “toxic elements of celebrity Diana Spencer mightn’t have had too much of outrageous pretension. We didn’t know culture” for a daring social activism. intellectual firepower, but on the emotional she was quite the “manipulative, self- “In the course of writing the book,” front, she was in a class of her own. absorbed snob” she proved to be. She had Tina tells me now, “I’d begun with the “I still feel that the great root of her issues one main priority in life – to advance her departure point of thinking perhaps I was was no education,” Tina says in her dulcet own cause and to marry off her two daughters going to wind up not liking her. I came Manhattan-soaked, Oxford-schooled tones, (including Diana’s mother, Frances) to the to like her enormously. I came to see “but she was thrown into a situation for best-connected men in the kingdom. her as such a human, brave, courageous, which she was so ill-equipped and the only To Tina Brown, she was the worst of muddled, heart-felt, vain … all of these thing that could have saved her was if she the women in Diana’s life. “When she things. She’s a great big mix of things, had had an education, or acquired one. [Lady Fermoy] was told that her son had but ultimately, a woman of great aspiration, “But she was really very intellectually committed suicide,” Tina says now, “she a woman of great moment, if you like. limited and then had absolutley zero education was having dinner at the Queen Mother’s An important woman, someone who on top of it. I mean leaving school at 16 to house and she received the news and went genuinely did achieve a great deal. become a cleaner, a nanny, is so incredible back and finished dinner, and then went to “I think that when Diana did her today when you think about it. mourn in her room. I just thought, ‘Who landmines thing at the end, it was not in any “But the thing that was interesting are you?’ I mean, what is that thing that way a stunt. It was the bringing together of about her was that, in the end, what we call they can do – the English classes – where everything that was important to her. She EQ in America, the emotional quotient, form has such an iron grip. Where does had found a cause that was an overlooked was enormous. It was her biggest thing the emotion come into play?” cause, that had been disregarded. She going. She had it in spades. I mean she And, of course, there was the hated brought the full beam of her celebrity really did have this incredible intuition. And, stepmother, Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, to it and she threw her heart into it. in a way, it was her inferiority complex who, ironically enough, happened to be the “And she did something very, very that made her so good at identifying with daughter of , the “queen brave, which was to walk in an uncleared the weakest in the room.” of swoons”, whose romantic fantasies minefield [in Angola] and she did it for the press because she knew she could bring her celebrity to bear. It was like a “I came to see her as such a human, snapshot of the woman she was becoming. She was growing up.” brave, courageous, muddled ... ” The most revealing early indicator of enraptured Diana’s impressionable mind LET IT BE ADMITTED here that it is Diana’s acute emotional intelligence came from an early age. It was practically the one of life’s more surreal – and charmed – when she was a 14-year-old schoolgirl only form of literature Diana ever read. experiences to fly to London to meet arguably visiting a mental hospital with her friends. One of Diana’s favourite Cartland books the world’s most famous living editor Diana would dance with the patients in was Bride to the King, prose which, Tina for the purposes of talking about arguably their wheelchairs. says, rotted her brain and became, for the the world’s most famous dead woman. “The other girls,” Tina says, “were future Princess of Wales, a “diabetes of the In other circumstances, it might be a intimidated by the patients, scared of them soul”, leaving her “spiritual bloodstream little intimidating, given that Tina Brown and bored … but Diana struck everybody permanently polluted with saccharin”. has been called many things in her career, by the fact that she seemed to come into Had there been some secure female figures including “Stalin in high heels”. Today, in her own in the mental hospital. in Diana’s life to ground her dreams in reality, black pants, crisp white shirt, soft leather “She found a way to dance with them, who knows what might have happened? jacket, pearl earrings, she is nothing if not facing them, so she could look at the patients. For Diana, there was emotional loss Lelegant and arresting company. She did it by dancing backwards, which at every turn. Her mother showed up for It helps, naturally, that we are discussing was a hard thing to do. It was a wonderful only one dress fitting in the lead-up to her her book, analysing the psychology of an thing and I was so touched by it.” momentous wedding, a fact Tina Brown  PIC CREDIT endlessly fascinating woman who – in And where did this moral imagination still finds incredible.

6 | WW JULY 2007 WW JULY 2007 | 7 Caption Intro to go here is nulla amet “This is a dress that was going to be “Too young, too hasty, too incompatible, wisi. Faccum ver se facil ute core core tie modiam, conulla feugait am. seen by 60 million people and it was a too great an age gap, with too many wedding to the Prince of Wales … and she responsibilities,” she told her. never even came to the last fitting [to say], Diana apparently responded, “Mummy, TINA BROWN HAS NEVER been ‘Oh darling, let me look at how wonderful you don’t understand. I love him”, to which to Australia, despite a hankering to you look …’ I mean, my mother would Frances replied, “Love him, or love what he come and despite the fact that her film have been there the whole way.” is”. And Diana said, “What’s the difference?” producer brother, Chris, has been living In the absence of strong, loving support, It is tempting at this juncture to join on the Gold Coast for the past 12 years. Diana Spencer was left to pursue her hopeless Diana’s many critics in wondering aloud Still, she might as well have been here, fantasies. When she met Prince Charles how Diana could ever have been so stupid. given what she’s been able to serve up for the first time at the age of 16 – at a Didn’t she know what she was getting to us about the ’s shooting party weekend in Althorp – she herself into? Tina Brown disagrees with relationship with its sometimes restless came home radiant with excitement. “I’ve this view. “At 19, you have no idea what former dominion. In March 1983, Charles and Diana left for a six-week tour of Australia with a “I’ve got no fi llings in my teeth and no specific brief – to extinguish the still- Tburning embers of discontent following O-levels. Do you think that matters?” the dismissal in 1975 of the Whitlam met him,” she squealed with delight to her you’re getting into. You know, you fall government. (Not that Prince Philip ever piano teacher. “I’ve met him at last.” in love and you’ve got your prince and had much truck with Gough Whitlam. As Three years later, when the palace was you’re mad about him, and you think it’s Tina discovered, much to her fascination, casting around for a suitable bride for the all going to be marvellous.” the Duke of Edinburgh’s attitude towards heir to the throne, Diana was desperate to What then of the notorious royal train Whitlam was so hostile that, when a impress the prince-of-her-dreams. At a story, in which Diana was reported, in member of the royal household once party in Sussex, she had, according to one 1980, to have had two secret assignations tried politely to temper his views, the eyewitness, sat on his lap, looked up at him with Charles prior to the wedding. Was duke flew into a rage, called him [the and said, ‘I’ve got no fillings in my teeth and it her on the train or, as later reported, retainer] a “socialist arsehole” and no O-levels. Do you think that matters?” Camilla? Tina believes it was Diana refused to ever speak to him again.) It did to Diana’s mother, Frances Shand and that she colluded with the palace Charles and Diana were given the Kydd. Tina says now that, for all Frances’ to present a false picture of a virginal enormous challenge of turning the mood shortcomings, she at least managed to show maiden leading up to the wedding. around in Australia. The country’s new some good sense prior to the wedding “Who knows actually what went on in Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke was announcement by whisking her daughter the royal train,” she says now. “Maybe epitomising well the churlishness of the away to a remote hideout in Australia, everything … but I’m convinced that it populace when he said, “I don’t regard where she warned her against the union. was her. I became really good at figuring welcoming them as the most important She could see the parallels between her out, I think, where Diana was telling thing I’m going to have to do in my first own disastrous first marriage to Diana’s the truth and where she wasn’t, because nine months in office”. father, the 8th , and the like everybody, she mythologised her  decision Diana was about to make. own story.” Continued on page 258. PIC CREDIT

8 | WW JULY 2007 WW JULY 2007 | 9 Continued from page xxx. the same time, behind the scenes, she was Bulimia, in a way, is the polite girl’s hunger throwing up. She was bulimic. She was strike. First, you please your host by eating having the most awful rows with Charles with gusto, then you purge your sin by because he felt hugely left out. sneaking off and throwing up. “Australia was supposed to be his “After a time, it’s the purging, not the turf. This was the place he really wanted eating, that’s the craving. Diana always to be governor-general of. He had this said it made her feel ‘quieter’, almost Australian girlfriend, Dale [‘Kanga’] sedated, afterwards.” Tryon, who really had always made him feel Australia was his place. He was IN RETROSPECT, it was always always being photographed at Bondi going to prove an impossible task for Beach with a pretty girl. He had done his Diana Spencer to shoulder both the gap year in Australia and loved it. burden of her own childhood dream “So he felt very kind of mortified and with that of the nation’s. What pressure started to write letters home to people on a young woman, especially when the saying, ‘I spent the time retreating into prince to whom she was betrothed wasn’t Jung’. He couldn’t understand what was really in love with her. happening. Suddenly, this girl, this young As we all came to learn in graphic girl, had become this superstar and detail, Camilla Parker Bowles was, from when she danced with him at GovernmentI the outset, the ghostly presence in the “Suddenly, this girl, this young girl, had become a major superstar ... ” House, those famous pictures, she looked Charles-Diana marriage. She was the so ravishing. I mean she even got Bob woman inside whom Charles wanted to – Hawke’s wife to curtsy.” yes, it’s still so hard to say – re-incarnate To Buckhingham Palace, she might as as a tampon. She was his mistress within well have been invisible, given the royal two years of him saying “I do” to Diana. cold shoulder she received on her return. And Diana knew this before, during The queen, according to Tina Brown, was and immediately after the wedding – that clearly far more threatened by Diana’s in her husband’s heart-of-hearts he was Caption Intro to go here is nulla amet popularity than had previously been married to another. Yet how silly to let this wisi. Faccum ver se facil ute core core supposed. “Here, from the outset, was a bother her, especially given her own mother’s tie modiam, conulla feugait am. rival,” Tina believed. “Here was the adultery and the fact that her maternal embodiment of the way ahead.” grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, had “There was a real chippiness – as we Yet it was more than that. The royal married a “committed philanderer”. Lady say – in Australia because of this [1975] family was so stuffy, so hidebound, that Fermoy had never been able to comprehend coup,” Tina tells The Weekly now, “which Diana had begun to “shrivel into silence” why her grand-daughter was always so you would know more about than I would, in their presence. And it was a silence which “childishly unwilling” to accept a similar but that really scuppered Charles’ chances incensed the Queen of Great Britain. On one arrangement with her own husband. of having that job [of governor-general]. occasion at Balmoral, she cornered a dinner Similarly, Camilla’s tolerance for Charles really wanted that job because he guest and erupted, “Look at her sitting at the unfaithfulness had already been tested saw it as a way to get the hell out of the table glowering at us! The only time she and fine-tuned. In 1973, she’d married grip of Prince Philip and the queen. bucks up is when Charles speaks to her.” , always the true “There is also something else that The guest ventured, “If you look love of her life, according to Tina Brown, you might like to know for your audience around the table, Ma’am, they’re all so as opposed to Charles. Parker Bowles which hasn’t been said, which I happen to much older than her.” Queen Elisabeth’s was a major in the prestigious Household know, and that is that it has been thought reply was like an icy blast from the Cavalry and a man, Tina suggests, who up in regard to William, too.” North Sea. “I don’t care. She’ll just seemed to have had the gift “of bringing What, that he might become the governor- have to buck up.” out the delicious worst in every woman”. general of Australia, I ask? “Yes, they Diana was by no means the only recipient One of his earlier distractions had been a would like that and he would like that of the British monarch’s particular brand young Princess Anne, whom, Tina says, very much. It has been discussed.” of tough love. When the queen’s sister, had “in her stern way”, always enjoyed Between the Australian government Princess Margaret, suffered a series of a roll in the hay. and the palace? “Can’t tell you any more strokes and was seriously depressed Throughout the Parker Bowles than that. What I’m told is that it has been towards the end of her life, a friend went marriage, Andrew remained incapable discussed in terms of ‘This is something to see the British monarch to suggest a of monogomy and this had the effect of William would like to do’.” therapist be brought in. “Perhaps, when making adultery part of Camilla’s way The 1983 Australian tour, of course, she’s better, we could consider that,” of life. Match that with Charles’ own was a sensation that Tina Brown likens came Queen Elizabeth II’s reply. proclivity for bachelor girls who were now to “the tiara version of Beatlemania”. As Tina Brown says, “Buckingham as “fast as cars”, as well as a “willing “They just poured out onto the streets. Palace was – and probably still is – tailor- cadre of married women”, and Diana And she was at her absolute best. She made for a bulimic outburst. It is suffocating didn’t stand a chance. showed how she could respond to crowds. and empty at the same time, and everyone Was Tina Brown titillated by all these  She learnt it all in Australia really. And at is trained to look the other way … peccadillos, one wonders? “Oh no, I PIC CREDIT

10 | WW JULY 2007 WW JULY 2007 | 11 wasn’t. In the sense I thought, ‘What a “You could feel the awe in the moment randy lot they all were’. I mean the English from people in the audience,” Travolta upper classes are such a louche lot. They said. “It was dense with life, filled with were all going at it like rabbits in that life, and you’d have had to have been circle. It still blows my mind how married dead not to feel the joy around it. At the couples can conduct themselves. end, she curtsied and I bowed and, well, “And I mean, from Diana’s point I guess I turned back into a pumpkin.” of view, here was this modern girl who For Tina Brown, it was one of the wanted to live in a modern, loving joyous epiphanies of her journey through marriage and she was surrounded by Dianaland. “That moment of Diana dancing this kind of les liaisons dangereuse at the White House was an iconic moment, and that’s where I did feel enormously a magical moment,” she tells me. “That sympathetic to her. She was like the only was the stuff of fairy stories. one not in on the secret.” One of the more tantalising, but also WE KNOW WHAT happened next, pathetically poignant, moments in Tina’s though, don’t we? The fairytale was in book was her reference to the times Diana truth always a figment. The separation, attempted to dance her way into her the divorce, the adulterous confessions, husband’s heart. On one occasion, she Diana’s desperate search for love, the put on sexy lingerie and low music, and hounding of her by an out-of-control media. tried to arouse him with a striptease. It According to Tina, the “rat pack” had didn’t seem to much work. Charles’ sexual felt jilted ever since Diana allowed her interest in Diana had begun to decrease story to be told to a Fleet Street outsider, in direct proportion to how desirable she Andrew Morton, in 1992. That’s when she was becoming around the world. became prey. “She became objectified, ” In March 1981, Diana had shown up Tina says, “and she played a role in that. at a London musical recital wearingW that She let it happen in many ways. A lot of “nipple-busting black taffeta eye-popper”, people have tried to tame the beast of the which Tina Browns describes as “the media and she always thought she could greatest moment of sexual theatre since tame the beast, she thought she could Cinderella swapped her scullery clogs play to it and control it. for Prince Charming’s glass slippers.” “But unfortunately, as people learn It was a taste of things to come. time and time again, there is no controlling At a White House dinner four years the beast once it is out of its cage. And later, Diana danced her way into social the beast was fully out of its cage. There history with her idol, John Travolta. is no doubt that there is a real misogyny Diana had informed America’s First Lady, about that paparazzi core. They are , that she had only one all men, mostly, a couple of women, wish that night – to dance with Travolta. but mostly men. Travolta had duly obliged. At the strike “They regarded it as a hit, you know, of midnight the star of Grease and almost like comeback. I was shocked Saturday Night Fever had approached actually at how they would talk about the princess and said, “Would you care Diana. They would refer to her as ‘the to dance?” Diana had blushed and tilted loon’, when she would tear up or scream. her head. “Of course, I would love to,” It was so heartless and I think, by the she’d replied. end, when she was no longer royal, there Travolta then led the Princess of Wales was a real sense that her defences were onto the dance floor for what he said was off. She had lost her protectors … and one of the great moments of his life. “I she was up for grabs.” want it to go off well,” he recalled to By the end of her life, she was Tina in a gripping moment-by-moment continuing to scour the world for a account, “and show her I am in control dashing new prince. She was still calling and she doesn’t need to worry, and knows , the Pakistani-born surgeon I’ll lead. I bring her hand from a higher who had rejected her in July 1997, but position and gracefully position it lower whom she still adored. She was seriously so she knows I can run the dance. No weighing up possibilities with the super- talking. Talking during a dance is difficult wealthy New York financier Theodore when 75 people are watching you. And Forstmann, to the extent that she’d I look her in the eyes and reassure her even suggested they get married, more with my eyes, to say, ‘We’re okay’.” so – it seemed – so he could run for US They danced for 10 minutes. It felt President and Diana could become First like 20. Travolta could feel how seductive Lady. It was more “Barbara Cartland” Diana was. He could also feel that she was fantasy stuff, according to Tina. “I mean aware of him. He didn’t know that anyone it was a preposterous idea, but she was taking photos, but commonsense told thought it was great.” him that, if they were, they’d be recording Then there was Gulu Lalvani, the a slice of history. 58-year-old Hong Kong-based 

12 | WW JULY 2007 WW JULY 2007 | 13 entrepreneur whom Diana was planning and the descriptions of whether she had to see on her return to London from that her period or not. I mean it was all so fateful trip to Paris. (It was Lalvani’s terrible. It was their mother.” appearance in Diana’s life in January that had caused the final breach with SO WHERE DID IT come from, “the her mother. Frances had reportedly immense reach of this sorrow” for Diana’s exploded on the phone because of her death? What “mysterious transfusion of daughter’s predilection for Muslim men. glamour, suffering and exposure” turned Lalvani was a Punjabi Sikh, not a Muslim, Diana into such an idol of the masses, but to he was still created such convulsions of grief in “unacceptably brown”.) Britain and around the world. That left Dodi Al Fayed, the feckless Part of the explanation, the former playboy son of Harrod’s owner, Mohammed Vanity Fair editor-in-chief decided, lay Al Fayed, who was summoned to France in the fact that Diana “was the first great in August 1997 by his father to spend time glamour icon to live and die in the age of with the lonely and jilted former princess. round-the-world, round-the-clock multi- Like Prince Charles, Dodi Al Fayed was Smedia”. Part of it lay in the fact that people a man cowered by his father, but unlike in life who normally received little or Charles, he had a distinct preference for no affection reacted by shutting down Middle Eastern cooking and, according emotionally. Diana did the exact opposite. to Tina, snorting lines of coke. As Tina tells The Weekly now, “She Not only was Diana never in love with just seemed to have this huge, bottomless him, says Tina, but Dodi was never going well of this emotional sympathy and to get the nod from a crucial figure in sensitivity, which ultimately just has Diana’s life, Prince William. According to redeem her, whatever her other to sources which Tina won’t reveal, the questions were, and they were manifold. heir to the throne had a furious telephone That you just can’t take away from her. row with his mother a day or two before “I found again and again that she she died. The argument was over Dodi would do things that nobody really and his unsuitability for her. knew about – like continuing to stay Was this partly why, on her last in touch with the families of the people evening, she was seen quietly weeping who died in hospices. She was so at dinner in full view of the clientele of caring in her responses to people, the the Ritz Hotel’s L’Espadon restaurant? endless letters she wrote. She would Tina Brown believes so. “I came to see leave patients who were ill sometimes that her last night on earth was just a transformed. This was a girl with a total, horrible mess – that it brought very, very big heart.” together all the damaging forces of And then, of course, there was the media that had so distorted her life up primal myth itself that so tapped into ‘til then, the heartbreak of the men, the the collective unconscious. “She literally fact that she was with Dodi, who she was the shy girl who became the princess wasn’t in love with, that she was only and then was trapped by the palace walls, with him because she wanted to make and surrounded with ugly sisters and Hasnat Khan jealous, the fact that the wicked witch.” her kids weren’t with her … all of It is a breathtaking story that Tina those things put this poor woman into Brown readily admits she will find hard to extraordinary turmoil.” trump. Already, she misses Diana and is In other words, the “charade of doubtful she’ll ever find another writing eternal betrothal” between Dodi and project to rival it. “Let me know if you Diana that Mohammed Al Fayed has think of something,” she says by way of been foisting on the world since their closing our interview and, as I return to death was just that. A charade. So, too, the colonies from the heart of the empire, the idea that there was some kind of I decide that she could do far worse conspiracy to kill her. According to next time than write her own story. Tina Brown, it was a traffic accident, The Tina Brown story. pure and simple. It has a lot of the same ingredients as “He [Al Fayed] made his own fairytale,” Diana’s – celebrity, class, high society, she insists now, “that has had very malign media, glamour, interesting early lovers, consequences for everybody else – a famous husband and, depending on especially her children. I think it had a your point of view, a blonde, blue-eyed terrible psychic effect on those boys. heroine to boot. They wanted this thing [the inquest] Were she alive today, even Diana closed because they couldn’t bury their would probably read it. mother [properly]. “In the same way we used to pore The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown is over Diana’s clothes and love affairs and published in hardback by Century, rrp dresses, we pored over autopsy results $69.95. Copyright © Tina Brown 2007.

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