Product Description

In the early hours of 31st August 1997, a spirited, compassionate and beautiful woman - who just happened to be the most famous woman in the world - kept her final rendezvous, in a tunnel under the streets of Paris, hunted down by her pursuers. How did this happen? In this book - part love story, part document of our times, part murder mystery - Julie Burchill explores every aspect of the "Age of Diana", to develop the first rounded, in depth look at this iconic figure of our century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #196603 in Books
• Published on: 1998-06-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Of all the books that came out of the death of Princess Diana, this is perhaps the most enduring, because the most intensely personal. If historians want to understand the depth of feeling--mourning, sentimental self-identification, feminist and republican and class rage--that overtook large parts of Britain for several weeks, they could do vastly worse than look here. What sometimes count for faults in Burchill's writing--failures of logic, overstatement, the pursuit of the smart-ass remark at the expense of overall control--are here either ways of saying what someone needed to say, or expressions of a whole person transfixed by deep emotion. She sees Diana as a woman betrayed by a using and adulterous husband, and distorted from childhood by the false values and iniquity of a class, who won through to a real compassion and social usefulness, and who escaped self-destructive urges and eating disorders to settle into a mature sensuality. The death in a Paris underpass is seen as all the more terrible because random, gratuitous and the cutting short of productive personal development. This is not the only possible reading of the facts in the case, but it is a coherent one, memorably expressed. --Roz Kaveney

About the Author
Born in Bristol in 1959, Julie Burchill is known for her controversial and acerbic style of journalism. At seventeen, she went to work for the New Musical Express, at nineteen The Face, at twenty-four The Sunday Times. She has written for many magazines and national newspapers and is the author of eight previous books.

Customer Reviews

Scathingly brilliant and brilliantly scathing
The public appetite for Diana books seems to have wavered only slightly since the excellent "Diana" by Julie Burchill was published last year. The ante for Diana spill-alls has gone down, presumably because Burchill seems to have the final word on the subject. Her examination of Diana's life and celebrity is done with a jaundiced eye that is merciless on Charles but also refuses to spare Diana. Of the 110-plus books on the late Princess of Wales, only Burchill's "Diana" comes close to cracking the royal facade. This will come as no surprise to readers who have followed Burchill's career as a thorn in the side of British journalism. Her call-'em-as-she-sees-'em style first came into the limelight with her seminal exploration of punk in the late Seventies, "The Boy Looked at Johnny." Small wonder her view of the royal family is so savage. Burchill isn't the first to pinpoint many of Diana's problems to "the Firm" but she's the one who never lets up on the Windsors. Burchill, who coined the term "the People's Princess," assails them for treating Diana as a brood mare and their cold, unconscionable behavior after her death. And although Burchill always keeps the queen in her sights, she saves the lethal bullets for Prince Charles, repeatedly excoriating him for the "whatever love means" quote he uttered to cameras at their engagement announcement. Burchill's point is that Charles knew all too bloody well what love meant, and when he couldn't have it with his mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles, he got himself a childbearing trophy wife instead. "Diana" is for the true Diana-philes, the ones who accept her faults with her majesty.

A tour de force
This book impressed me hugely. Part potted history, part polemic, part love poem to a dead icon. Burchill's writing is funny, persuasive and wise. Made me think. Not your run of the mill Royal book. I've already given this book to one friend as a Christmas present, I may well do it for another. Heartily recommended.

utter crap
Julie Burchill manages to be completely love struck with Princess Di and in so doing contributes to every stereotype of Prince Charles and the Royal Family that the tabloids have churned out over the last decade. She reveals herself as having a very large chip on her shoulder and this prohibits her from writing anything sensible. I found myself frequently open mouthed at some of her lucridous statements which seemed to be nothing more than her warped opinion on Prince Charles. This book says nothing new, it is factually incorrect, is based on subjective analysis alone and is simply the authors love letter to Diana. Julie Burchill, I thought you were smarter than this.