Diana: The Portrait

Coward's lavish book, updated for the 10 year anniversary of Princess Diana's death, is a rich but frustrating biography featuring iconic and candid photographs of the People's Princess from throughout her life. Those who've read the recently-released biography by Tina Brown, The Diana Chronicles, will find Coward's Diana a much more sympathetic figure, generally characterized as likable and humane in numerous interviews with friends, family and others who witnessed the power of her care and attention. Focusing largely on her good works, the book gets a new foreword by Nelson Mandela, who notes that ""we can all insist, as she did, that nobody deserves to suffer from stigma and prejudice on top of their illness and disability."" Unfortunately, the book's design is unwieldy, alternating between pages crammed with tiny, single-spaced text and stretches of largely uncaptioned photographs. Coward's thorough research is commendable, but a stronger edit might have cut less relevant interviewees (like Diana's father's neurosurgeon) in favor of a more detailed look at Diana's long love-hate relationship with the press. Still, the photos collected here, particularly the later portraits that open and close the book, highlight what the young Princess of Wales brought to so many: beauty, warmth and compassion.