Death of a Princess

In many ways the crash of a black Mercedes S-280 into the 13th pillar of Paris's Alma Tunnel on the early morning of 31 August 1997 resembles a thousand other fatal road accidents. This particular tragedy was, however, exceptional. In causing the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, the playboy son of Mohammed Al Fayed, owner of Harrods and one of the world's richest men, it sent shock waves around the globe that month's afterwards show no sign of abating.

Behind the immediate possible causes - speed, alcohol, a chase by paparazzi and even a collision with a second vehicle - lies an array of seemingly random variables, all of which led inexorably to the fatal conclusion.

Thomas Sancton and Scott MacLeod, two highly experienced reporters of Time magazine based in Paris, look back into the question of Diana's relationship with Dodi to discuss what it was in the personality of this jet-setting playboy and movie industry fringe player that attracted and reassured Diana after her unhappy marriage to the Prince of Wales and several unsatisfying affairs.

They ask whey Dodi's conquest of Diana was so important to his father. Were Diana and Dodi planning to marry? Was Diana pregnant? Is there any grain of truth behind the conspiracy theories - particularly rampant in the Middle East - that Diana and Dodi were victims of a British Intelligence plot?

The questions are myriad. Sancton and MacLeod have investigated the crash as closely as the French police. They now have man of the answers. 'Death of a Princess' is their highly revealing report.

Within hours of the death of Princess Diana, conspiracy theories began to fly thickly across the Internet. Within 10 days, a book called Who Killed Diana? was on the bookshelves in Cairo, claiming that the princess and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed were assassinated by the British government to ensure that neither Diana, her sons, nor any future children would convert to Islam. In our conspiracy-obsessed age, such a scenario seems as likely as any other currently making the rounds, be it the faked deaths of Elvis and Jim Morrison or aliens stockpiled in a government warehouse, but as authors Thomas Sancton (the Time magazine Paris bureau chief) and Scott MacLeod (the magazine's Middle East correspondent) point out in exhaustive detail, the fatal car accident was almost undoubtedly the result of poor judgment, coincidence, and plain bad luck.

The pair conducted interviews with such key figures as Dodi's father, Mohammed, and several of the paparazzi who were first on the scene, and they give a detailed account of the events leading up to the accident, as well as profiles of all the participants, most extensively the driver Henri Paul and the princess's Egyptian boyfriend. Unlike the popular image of a macho cocaine-snorting party guy, Dodi is revealed to have been a sweet and rather insecure figure whose enormous generosity was often taken advantage of. With much personal charisma but little aside from wealth and privilege to mark him as extraordinary, he seems to have been a natural match for his stellar consort. --John Longenbaugh