Date: May 24, 2009
Diana sent me the following precis to add here because she has just now been inspired to compare some of the
words in Andrew Morton's book "Diana: Her True Story--In Her Own Words" to what she really felt and still feels
about it all. So read the excerpts below and then find them followed by Diana's comments (sometimes with a bit
of bite!) after that in the sections marked "Keeping Things Real!". After that is the review by Sarah Bradford
upon Tina Brown's book, "The Diana Chronicles", a review that Diana got much glee from. --- Rose Campbell
" Hello Everyone,
I was speaking with a good friend of Andrew's and so of course mine, Anne who is a very down to earth
person much as Rose of course so meaning not people given to flights of fancy so imagining they're
communicating with an ex-dead princess just to make this point clear!
If people have read my channeled messages and perhaps listened to the pod casts they might know my
personal feelings about "The Diana Chronicles" book that the precis below speaks about and how refreshing to
see that it hardly impressed it's reviewer who people might know is pretty much an authority on my life and
herself the writer of a book called appropriately "Diana" and a much more serious read!
Andrew as people know is not allowed to read books about me or ought I to say hasn't been though he
really doesn't need to, does he? In our conversations with Anne I got to thinking it might be interesting to see
what I had to say on the tapes for the Andrew Morton book which as I have said on a pod cast was simply revenge
on my part, as was the Panorama interview. Andrew's personal collection of books about me will be a wonderful
legacy for my boys to enjoy and for them to likewise pass on to their children so for this reason he collects them!
I am really not worried by the fact people might say that he gleans all his information from them as it is my
personal energy that is apparent within him as people who knew me will readily recognise as of course they
already have done, those who have met him...errr "US"...and that not being something that can be gained from
glancing at a book or two about me now can it!
Anyway, I was giggling to myself in reading just a couple of things which I will share with you all now if I
may...remember I always say with me it is so important to read between the lines ....
Taken From "Diana: Her True Story"
The Queen...
"The relationship certainly changed when we got engaged because I was a threat wasn't I ? I admire her. I long to
get inside her mind and talk to her and I will. I've always said to her I'll never let you down but I cannot say the
same for your son. She took it quite well. She does relax with me. She indicated to me that the reason why our
marriage had gone downhill was because Prince Charles was having such a difficult time with my bulimia. She saw
it as the cause of the marriage problems and not a symptom. I kept myself to myself. I didn't ask her advice. Now
I can do it myself. I get on very well with them ( her parents- in-law ) but I don't go out of my way to go and have
tea with them!"
(Keeping things real!)
I always found Her Majesty distant and somewhat aloof and I consequently not comfortable in her presence at
all, certainly not to be able to relax and she certainly never seemed at ease with me either, we had so little in
common. This said by me seems contradictory to my saying I was seen as a threat. Would you relax in the
company of someone you saw as an enemy? As for my being a threat, why exactly? This comment made by me
seems quite ridiculous, I only became a threat to the family once I'd been unofficially ousted from it having
separated and later divorced from the Prince of Wales, when I did all I could to gain the people's popularity. I
was after all fighting a system hell bent on destroying me, so needing valuable ammunition being a strategist at
heart and scheming and vindictive when I wanted to be, well known traits of a native Cancerian, as another
H.R.H. The Duchess of Cornwall herself illustrated so perfectly of course to me! The reason for our marriage
failing being that he loved her and not me and this no secret to Her Majesty or the family but babies necessary I
was the perfect brood mare and unlike her still a virgin. She being already married and a mother of two, Charles
Godfather to her son Tom!
I suppose you could be reading this thinking bitter Diana strikes again but no actually as I have also said Camilla
was and is far better suited to Charles than I would ever have been and likewise he suited to her but merely
pointing out how even in the Morton book I was not upfront and honest but still alive the book itself damaging
enough without its content needing to cause further injury!
Isn't it odd how I say I got on so well with my parents-in-law but would never go out of my way to have tea with
them? In other words they were alright in small doses but not company I'd personally choose to keep which says
quite a lot about our relationship together then, doesn't it? Going to Her Majesty for advice... I did once in tears
over our marriage falling apart because of Camilla to be told "Charles is hopeless!" I suppose this might have
meant unlike other royals, he failed in satisfying both wife and mistress as infidelity is not something new in the
British gentry after all. Something though, a tradition, I hope William and Harry are not intent on maintaining ! "
Again, from "Diana: Her True Story"
Princess Anne...The Princess Royal.
"We're always supposed to have this tricky relationship. I admire her enormously. I keep out of her way when
she's there, I don't rattle her cage and she's never rattled mine and the fuss about her being Godmother to Harry
was never even thought about. I thought to myself...There's no point having anyone in the family as Godparents
as they are either aunts or uncles... I said " The press will go for that" and Charles said "So what?" They had this
great thing about she and I not getting on. We got on incredibly well but in our own way. I wouldn't ring her up if I
had a problem nor would I go and have lunch with her but when I see her it's very nice to see her. Her mind
stimulates me, she fascinates me, she's very independent and she's gone her own way."
(Keeping things real!)
Now here is someone I say I find fascinating and stimulating, someone I get along with extremely well but would
never encourage personally meeting her and talking to her much less sharing a problem I might have had with
her! In other words we didn't like each other, had little to talk about, horses not being my thing at all and ballet,
swimming and pop bands hardly hers. I actually hardly remember uttering a few words to her but certainly not a
conversation as such ever, no! I admired her work for Save the Children Fund which is incredible but she always
saw my charity work as a ploy to gain personal publicity due to the fact the media were interested in my work
whilst largely ignoring hers but our own personal attitudes to them largely the reason for this. "Naff Off ! " said
to them and worse is hardly going to encourage a popular press report, is it, and consequently what the report
will concern as opposed to the invaluable work carried out. I am also hardly going to personally want my boys to
have a Godparent who I shared such a cold and distant liaison with am I, knowing traditionally in the event of
both parents dying and the child, so in this case Harry, being young enough, that the chosen Godparent finding
themselves being responsible for him!
So there we are the Diana now, which you can choose to believe in or not of course, and the Diana then but I
certainly have my work cut out for me upon my return righting a number of wrongs which these two chosen
pieces so clearly illustrate, don't they? "
Thank you for listening to me,
Diana xx
Now read Sarah Bradford's review of the "Diana Chronicles" by Tina Brown:
"Whatever its actual merits, Tina Brown's Diana Chronicles has been the most talked-about book of the season
and Sarah Bradford's its most talked-about review - even though, until today, it had not been published. It
remains unclear why the Spectator refused to print Bradford's piece, given that she is widely considered to be
this country's foremost authority on Diana. But here it is, abridged and edited:
"This overblown and over-hyped book is, to quote its author, her "maiden foray into long-form non-fiction".
This kind of weird language bedevils the pages: Brown never seems quite sure exactly what it is meant to be.
Traditional "chronicles" necessarily involve chronology: Brown is not bound by such considerations. The first
chapter begins with Diana's final hectic evening in Paris on August 30/31 1997, then darts back through a welter
of Fayeds to the author's last sight of Diana at lunch in the Four Seasons in New York, in July: "The gently flushed
skin of her face wasn't just peachy; it was softer than a child's velveteen rabbit." Diana is en route with Dodi for
the Alma tunnel when the chapter abruptly ends, the grisly story of the crash to be taken up again nearly 400
pages later.
Brown's treatment of her subject is frequently muddled: at first Diana's mood on her last chaotic night was
"sour", but, a few pages later, "here she was on a hot night in August revelling in high-life flash, pursued by the
farting motorbikes of the international press".
Tina Brown's uncertainty about her project is highlighted by her writing, which slides between self-consciously
pacey modern schlock and sentimental drivel. Diana's mother, Frances, "looks flawlessly put together and crisp
in her coiffed blond ripples. She wears a pale blue suit and hat, a string of fat, creamy pearls and gazes down with
a proud smile into the big blue eyes of the gurgling baby Diana." Cut to Diana's pretty nannies. In America, Brown
comments irrelevantly, "a Kennedy would be sleeping with help that looked as good as this". Eighteenth-century
Spencer ladies used the picture gallery at Althorp for "morning power walks". You can take the girl out of the
magazine, but you can't take the magazine out of the girl.
Some things are just plain wrong. (Park House, for example, where Diana was born, is not a grey-stone mansion,
but built of the rust-coloured local carrstone.) All the old stories are repeated. Some of them are eerily
reminiscent of stories in my Diana book. The story of the Queen's private secretary informing Her Majesty that
Prince Charles was sleeping with Camilla is the same one as in both my book on the Queen and my book on Diana,
which I based on my interview with the courtier in question.
Really there is only one blonde in this story and it's not Diana. By the end, I got the impression that Tina Brown
didn't have much time for her subject, inserting herself into the text whenever she could, if possible in
conjunction with a famous name. "Henry Kissinger told me", etc. In fact, apart from Charles's unfortunate
Windsor tendency to pronounce "house" as "hice", Tina Brown has more time for him. He is, after all, the future
King. Yet I find her comment that Charles would have welcomed back a crippled Diana utterly grisly. "For the
Prince there could have been something redeeming in having his ex-wife return to him in a condition of
dependence." And Brown sums up the failure of the French doctors to save Diana with a true sob-sister line: "This
time Diana's broken heart would never mend..."
From the context it is obvious that Diana's closest friends have not spoken to Brown, which makes for a lacuna at
the heart of the book. Why did Brown do it? Why, on the basis of one article and a couple of social meetings did
she feel uniquely qualified to write The Diana Chronicles? She has had a stellar career in social journalism: only
two recent setbacks with a magazine and a chat show in the US mar her record. Is this a job application, a rescue
operation for the Brown career? Does she see her future in "long-form non-fiction"?
One reviewer remarked on the "skinflint" production of this book. There are no photographs of the most
photogenic woman of the last century. Nor is there a dust jacket. Perhaps the publishers find themselves
strapped for cash after the much vaunted advance they allegedly paid Tina Brown for writing it, estimated to
being in the region of a million dollars!"
Video of Sarah Bradford talking about Diana:
