The Queen & Di: The Untold Story - Softcover

Seward, Ingrid

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1559706236 ISBN 13: 9781559706230

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 2002

Synopsis

A behind-the-gates journey into Buckingham, Balmoral, and Sandringham palaces reveals for the first time how the royals really live, including portraits of the English monarch and the late Princess Diana that illustrate a relationship unlike that of popular belief. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Review

Ingrid Seward, a prolific writer on the English royal family, was the last journalist to interview Princess Diana before her death in August 1997. In this intriguing book, Seward gives a worm's-eye view of Diana's trouble-plagued life, layered with episodes of betrayal and illness, and she accords full sympathy to the minor noblewoman who became "the people's princess." She is still more sympathetic to Diana's sometime nemesis Queen Elizabeth II, who, in Seward's account, labored endlessly to preserve the dignity of the monarchy in the face of a family that behaved in anything but a dignified manner.

Rising above the caricatures that color the popular press, Seward depicts a queen who tried her best to accommodate Diana--who was, it seems, never shy in voicing her displeasures and had an undeniable flair for recruiting the media in her cause, all the while protesting the press's intrusion into a fairy-tale life that "turned into a Gothic nightmare." Diana's insistence on airing her dirty laundry in public was bound to irritate the ever-sensitive queen, but more, Seward writes, "in her demands for love and sympathy, she gave self-fulfillment precedence over duty"--and for Elizabeth, dereliction of duty was the greatest possible sin one could commit. Their relationship could end only in tears; and so it did, taking much of the English public's good will toward the royal family with it.

Sometimes racy and breathless, but intelligent all the same, Seward's account enlarges our understanding of the internal dynamics of the modern court while delivering no end of scandalous news, just as a palace chronicle should. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author

Ingrid Seward has written about the British royal family for 17 years. She is the author of eight books on the subject, and is the editor in chief of Majesty magazine. She lives in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1559706236
• ISBN 13: 9781559706230
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 262