The tragic death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997 was a catastrophic event – like the deaths of Jack Kennedy, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, the trauma took on a mythic quality, and left a scar which can never heal. The response of the usually stoic British people was an astonishing phenomenon. But then, in the expression originally coined by Burchill and hijacked by then Prime Minister Tony Blair on the day of her death, she was the People’s Princess.
Julie Burchill, herself a celebrated author and journalist, had written about and observed Diana with fascination for many years. As a near contemporary she, along with the rest of the world, followed her progress from shy, aristocratic and yet ordinary teenager to the world’s most photographed woman. In this study, part biography, part analysis and part eulogy, Burchill examines her immense appeal. She recounts Diana’s unhappy childhood, the desertion of her mother which would foreshadow the many betrayals of her later life, her brief period of freedom and then the fairytale wedding.
Burchill is known for her spiky, controversial style but here she displays great empathy for her subject. This is one of her most heartfelt books, beautifully written and truly a testament to one of the most fascinating women who ever lived.
‘Of all the books that emerged from the death of Princess Diana, this is the most intensely personal. If historians want to understand the depth of feeling – mourning, self-identification, feminist and republican class rage – that overtook large parts of Britain for several weeks after her death, they can do worse than look here’ – Roz Kaveney, author, critic and poet
‘Burchill fans, of whom this reviewer is unashamedly one, will find her triumphantly on form in this book’ – A N Wilson
Julie Burchill has been a journalist from the age of seventeen. Since then she has worked for or contributed to most of the major newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic and in continental Europe. She has written novels and non-fiction which have been translated into a dozen languages; she has also written stage and television screen plays. She was Editor-in-Chief of the magazine The Modern Review and is a columnist for The Telegraph. She lives in Brighton on the south coast of England.
