Former New Yorker and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown's upcoming bio about the marriage of Pricess Di and Charles--titled The Diana Chronicles and published by Doubleday--promises to further dispel the fairy-tale myth of the late Princess of Wales' marriage and life. While U.S. editors, including PW have been asked to withold reviews of the book until the Vanity Fair excerpt runs, the U.K. Daily Mail apparently paid no attention to such restrictions. The paper reported yesterday that Brown's book portrays the Princess as largely motivated by ambition and lust for power and position, making quite a number of what will be, at least to many, startling claims. For example, according to the Mail, Brown, who claims to have interviewed over 250 sources, many of them new, says that both Diana and Camilla Bowles were mainly interested in Charles because he was heir to the throne. Brown also claims that Charles and Di
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had two trysts before their marriage, which were later covered up by the Palace. The book also says that Di's romance with Dodi Fayed, with whom she died fleeing photographers through Paris, was only a ploy to anger The Palace, and that she intended to make a far richer Long Island tycoon her next husband. The Mail also quotes a friend of Brown's who, after seeing the book, said, "Almost everyone except Charles, William and Harry comes off badly - the Queen, Camilla and, most of all, Di." The book, which is set to be serialized in Vanity Fair later this week, will be released on June 12th, just two months shy of the 10th anniversary of Di's death.
