FLORENCE KING: A Tabloid Girl in a Tiara
Brown, Tina
HE "PEOPLE'S PRINCESS" may not have needed titles to make herself beloved, as her brother snarled in his funeral oration, but she enjoyed having them. One of the most revealing stories in this...
...You get out there and wield your handbag to the day youdie...
...Every Diana book makes some such claim, leading readers, especially American ones, to think the House of Windsor are pretenders to the throne, or even that Diana had a better claim to it and should have been the Queen Regnant...
...Unfortunately,shedidnotgrasptheoxymoronictruth that her "worldview" was parochial...
...It was not a suicideattempt;shesimplytrippedandfell,landingat thefeetoftheQueen--laterchangedtoQueenMumto avoidthelese-majesteoflyingaboutthemonarch.The other alleged suicide attempts were surely lies too, or at least exaggerations, especially the one about taking a lemon slicer to herself...
...Brown doesn't say who the "relation" was but it sounds like his sister, PrincessAnne,whocalledDiana"theDope...
...In 1603 James I rewarded them with a Barony, but the Windsors are direct descendantsofJamesI.Ithappenedthisway: JamesI,founderoftheHouseofStuart,inherited the English throne from the childless Elizabeth I, granddaughter of Henry VII...
...it's solely for envelopes and formalwrittennotices.Theblue-bloodblingkicksinwith thedaughtersofearls,sowhenShyDilearnedthatshe hadbecomeonesheturnedcartwheelsdownthehalls of her boarding school, shouting, "I'mLadyDiananow!Hooray...
...In the cadabout-townJamesHewittshesawonlythedashing cavalry officer...
...Diana, used to living with her Cool Britannia roommates who chowed down on saladsandyoghurt,hadtogetridoftheYorkshirepudding and butter-dripping scones somehow...
...Sheunderstoodthepopularpressbecauseshe was their audience...
...The Kaiser deadpanned that his favorite Shakespearean play was "The Merry WivesofSaxe-Coburg-Gotha...
...For one thing, she was a liar (Brown calls it "mythomania...
...going on a picnic in the rain, falling down a mud bog and remembering to laugh as she was pulled out, and striding briskly up steep hills to watch her future in-laws slaughter wildlife...
...an Elector was a prince with the right to vote for the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, i.e., Central Europe).In1688EnglandexiledJamesII(JamesI'sgrandson), because he was Catholic...
...When the two lunchedtogetherinNewYork,shetoldBrownthatshe wanted to resolve the Northern Ireland problem because "I'm very good at sorting people's heads out...
...Asaviscount'sdaughtershehadbeendesignated the Honourable Diana Spencer, but nobody is ever called "Honourable...
...by Diana's time it had acquired "the stale, curdled taste of aBritishRailcheesesandwich...
...This is what Diana did when she went to live at Clarence House with the Queen Mum after her engagement was announced...
...These two were the Charles and Camilla of medieval England because Katherine was initially Gaunt's mistress and their four children were all bastards until they were legitimated by Richard II after theirparentsfinallymarried...
...I am inclined to think that Diana had built a protective shield around her Prince Charming fantasy," writes Brown, and to make sure she wasn't tempted, dated only what Brown calls "unaggressive, dim-Tim" boys she could handle...
...Gauntwasasonofthegreatwarriorking,EdwardIII, hero of Crecy and ancestor of the present Queen ElizabethIIandPrinceCharles...
...Annehadhad19pregnanciesbutonlyonechild,a son who died at age 11...
...Brown's theory is that the Prince Charming character in romance novels inspired Diana to go for the jackpot and land the real prince in her midst, and that she put the plan in place, at least subconsciously, wellbeforethetimewhengirlsofherclassusuallylosttheir virginity...
...Many unathletic nonconformistsrebelbybecomingintellectuals,butneitherwas Dianadrawntothelifeofthemind.Somesaidshehadno mind...
...Brownissympathetictotheprincessbutsheisno Dianaphile, and comes down hard on unforgivable behavior...
...The ever-helpful Barbara Cartland averred, "She wouldn't dooralsex,"butBrownletsitpass,sayingonly,"Infairness to Charles, her throwing up all the time didn't helpsexualrelations...
...The throne went to his olderdaughterMaryandherDutchhusbandWilliam, who reigned jointly...
...The adverbial phrase routinely crops up in descriptions of her, and may even be permanently attached to her person by now thanks to some mysterious divine work of chutz-pahmadeflesh.ShetookhernativeEnglandbystorm when she wrote haute monde gossip for the Tatler...
...Brown also has no use for Diana's self-pity, especially her complaints that no one in the Royal Family complimented her on her smashingly successful publicappearances...
...Everything at Balmoral was old, from the dinner guests to the one TV in the castle, a console floormodelwithlegs.AsDianasuccumbedtothe"wellpopulated loneliness of royal life," her easily stirred insecurity, resentment, and boredom came to the fore...
...It's the story of one Englishwoman's war against the stiff upper lip...
...the Barbara Cartland plot line of the unyielding virgin, like the thin red line of the British army against the Zulus, had to be held at all costs.(AposthumousVictoriaCrossmightbeinorder...
...asked one of Charles's relations...
...One was expressed by Princess Margaret, the Queen's sister, who looked at thesobbingcrowdsandsaid,"It'sasifshegoteveryone to be as hysterical as she was...
...BROWN THROWS IN THE TOWEL only once: What, exactly,didDianameanwhenshetoldafriend that the cause of the royal couple's unsatisfactorysexlifewas"geographical"?Brown'ssighisalmost audible: "Either Charles had difficulty locating her erogenous zones, or his own erogenous zones were focused on somewhere she didn't want to go...
...Brown states that "Diana's aristocratic lineage was longer than [Charles's]," and quotes Diana telling the Royal Family, "My title is older than yours...
...When not engrossed in romantic fiction or TV soap operas, Diana was constructing a worldview shaped by the narratives of the tabloids...
...Thevirginpartwaseasycomparedtothenexthurdle the horse-hater had to clear: her first weekend at Balmoral...
...Balmoralnightlifeconsisted of working on enormous jigsaw puzzles or playing tiddlywinks...
...She believes Dianawasad-dictedtothecameraattheend,andsubconsciously craved the attention of the paparazzi in Paris...
...Brown strongly disagrees that she was stupid, blaming the finishing-school frou-frou given to aristocratic girls in lieu of a rigorous education, but the fact remains that there wasnoinnerVirginiaWoolfstrugglingtogetout...
...Brown offers intriguing new interpretations of several now-familiar stories...
...Balmoral village had only oneshopanditcarriedonlyoneitem:Scottishwoolens...
...They were the House of Hanover, changed to House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha when Victoria married Albert, and changed again, for PR reasons,toHouseofWindsorin1917becauseEngland was at war with Germany...
...Now she has taken the biographical arts by storm in this account of the late Princess of Wales, whocameapartandcametogriefwhen shetriedtoforceroyaltytocomeoutof character...
...HenryVIIwasthesonofLadyMargaretBeaufort, who was the great-great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt (1340-1399) and his third wife, Katherine Swynford...
...The trouble was, the bodily abuse joined forces with her inferiority complex, self-hatred, and free-floating guilttobecomeanaddiction...
...Diana was ready to drop, something the consummate big-city girl had heretofore experienced only when shopping, but there was no chance of that now...
...Camilla Parker Bowles, whose wardrobe ran to what Browncalls"designerdoghairs,"wouldhavelovedit...
...She took the U.S...
...John of Gaunt is portrayed in Shakespeare's Richard II, delivering the famous speech, "...this sceptered isle, this earth, this realm, this England...
...Without fresh-air credentials, Diana would neverhavegottofirstbasewithanyofthem,"soshehad tofakebeingagoodsportwhilestandinginicywaterup toherthighs,castingfortroutwiththetireless80-yearold Queen Mum...
...She hated the outdoors, she was against "blood sports," she was afraid of horses, and she was threatenedbyfishingbecauseitofferedtoomuch time for silent contemplation and she sought only to escape her thoughts...
...The stairway incident was also a lie...
...The younger Spencer children, Diana and Charles, were severely traumatized...
...My only argument with it concerns genealogy...
...but she praises "her gift to the monarchy: the understandingofthepoweroftheinclusivegesture...
...She admitted as much when she told AndrewMorton,authorofhertell-allmemoir:"Iknew I had to keep myself tidy for what lay ahead...
...That he had goneoutridingaftershethrewherselfdownthestairs in a suicide attempt, when in fact he had stayed with her all day and took her to lunch...
...That labor was induced to fit Charles's polo schedule, when in fact he wasinthedeliveryroomthewhole16hours--thefirst PrinceofWalestobepresentatthebirthofhisson...
...When they died it went to Mary's younger sister, Anne...
...Every day she inhaled their glorious mix of sentimentality, sensation, gossip, and moralizing, and she knew exactly how to hold their interest...
...Diana found the note "unsettling," as well she might, for Brown speculates that Camilla may have decided to play a "Liaisons Dangereuses" game, befriending Diana while subtly tearingherdowntoCharlesinordertoinsureherown power as royal mistress...
...2) Diana was not a virgin on her wedding day because she, not Camilla, was the mystery woman who spent the night with Charles in the Royal Train that was parked on a siding near Camilla's house--where Diana was a guest that week...
...James was the son of Mary Queen of Scots, who was the great-granddaughterofHenryVII,soJameswasHenryVII'sgreat-great grandson...
...1) The note Diana received from Camilla Parker Bowles congratulating her on her engagement to Charles and inviting her to N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 6 9 Thevirginpartwaseasycomparedto thenexthurdlethehorse-haterhadto clear:herfirstweekendatBalmoral...
...Since James I was a direct descendant of Henry VII, so are the Windsors, and it is when we get to Henry VII that we realize just how old their English roots are...
...in the coked-out playboy Dodi Fayed she saw the liquid-eyed Arab sheikh who would whisk herawayonamagiccarpet...
...One of the most revealing stories in this warts-and-all tell-all is her reaction to thenewsthathergrandfatherhaddiedandher father, up till then a viscount, was now an earl...
...Do you peel yourself to death...
...Tina Brown's reaction falls somewhere between these extremes...
...If the Prince of Wales wanted a bride with an intact hymen, she would see to it that he got one...
...Heraddictiontoromancenovelsbecameadiabetes of the soul, leaving her spiritual bloodstream permanently polluted with saccharine...
...Before becoming James I of England he had been James VI of Scotland through his mother...
...Jealous of the maternal competition, shespreadtheliethatTiggyhadabortedCharles'sbaby...
...DIANA, SHE WRITES, was "a tabloid girl in a tiara...
...Unlike Charles's camp, Brown does not believe Diana was insane, but she was delusional, with a tendency to develop obsessions and monomanias such as herintenseinterestinsickpeople.Inherdesperationto be a healer she laid hands on everybody she could lay hands on until she acquired an "eerie new image as a 7 0 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 B O O K SI NR E V I E W compulsive ambulance chaser and death groupie," inspiring a satiric magazine to suggest that hospital patients wear a disk with the instruction: "In the event oflossofconsciousness,donotallowmetobevisitedby thePrincessofWales...
...lunchhadasurprisinglybreezy,girlishtoneforsucha horsey-doggy countrywoman...
...in the serious and private cardiologist Hasnat Khan she saw the heartthrob doctor who would be at her side in Florence Nightingale missions...
...She calls it "the polite girl's hunger strike," a way to please one's hostess while dieting...
...OnehearsOprahinthis...
...ThisisMonarchy101,"Brownsnaps...
...But the Windsors go back much further than this...
...ATabloidGirl inaTiara T The Diana Chronicles By Tina Brown (DOUBLEDAY, 542 PAGES, $27.50) Reviewed by Florence King B O O K SI NR E V I E W they turned to their maternal grandmother, Lady Fermoy, for sympathy, this lady-in-waiting to the QueenMotherreplied:"Worsethingshappenatsea...
...Knowing that Anne would die childless, Parliament passed the Act of Settlement of 1701 awarding the crown to the Protestant closest in the bloodline...
...Stuck in Balmoral with her Sony Walkman, she was EmmaBovaryinheadphones...
...His secondmarriagetoaCatholicledtoagrandsoncalled BonniePrinceCharlie...
...their mother was James II's Protestant first wife...
...Prince Philip has been accused of thinking all culture is decadent, and Edward VII, the Queen's gourmandizing great-grandfather, was at a loss to understandwhyaprofessorofEnglishliteraturewascalled anauthorityonLamb.ButunfortunatelyDianalikedto read,andthereinlayherdownfallbecausethebooksshe read were written by her step-grandmother Barbara Cartland, who turned out what Brown calls "prose that rotsthebrain...
...Both sisters were Protestant...
...When the dust settled, her mother was denied custody and Diana and her siblings were shipped off to boarding schools and forced to spend holidays with a remarried, sexually enthralled father and a casting-office Wicked Stepmother, the glitzy social climbing daughter of the even glitzier Barbara Cartland,queenoftheromancenovelists...
...Diana's first skirmish with it occurred at age six when her parents' marriage exploded in mutual loathing and dueling adulteries...
...B O O K SI NR E V I E W N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 7 1 TheSpencerfamilytracethemselvesback to1469whentheywerewealthysheep farmerswholentmoneytothecrown...
...TheSpencerfamilytracethemselvesbackto1469 when they were wealthy sheep farmers who lent money to the crown...
...Her present biographer, Tina Brown, in private life Lady Evans, most definitely does not need a title to do what she does best, which is taking things "by storm...
...she won only two prizes in school, one for Helpfulness and one for keeping the cleanest hamster cage,andtotheendofherlifeshekeptachartonherdesk containing the words she had trouble spelling...
...He married a Danish princess and had a daughter, Princess Elizabeth Stuart of Scotland...
...She did it for Queen and Country...
...How do you kill yourself with a lemon slicer...
...by storm when she was named editor of the hallowed New Yorker and pulled it so far out of its sacrosanct rut that it actually became readable...
...Her actionable offense, for which shenearly got sued and had to settle out of court, was her slander against Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the beloved nanny of William and Harry, who was too beloved for Diana's comfort...
...She married theKingofBohemiaandhadadaughter,Sophia,who married the Elector of Hanover (Hanover was a German principality...
...They huddled together in secret weeping, Diana comforting her brother when he woke from nightmares, but when B O O K SI NR E V I E W 6 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 FlorenceKing'scollectionsincludeTheFlorenceKing Reader, STET, Damnit!: The Misanthrope's Corner, 1991 to 2002, and, most recently, Deja Reviews: Florence King All Over Again...
...The other was expressed by Tony Blair, who said, "She taught us a new way to be British...
...SHE WOULD HAVE FIT IN BETTER withtheruralphiliac Royal Family and their mud-spattered allies in the landed gentry if she could have honked, as mostofthemwerewonttodo,"Neverreadabookinmy life...
...Her death produced England's "first grief-a-thon," which produced two schools of thought...
...She lied to the media about Charles's behavior while she was pregnant with William...
...Brown is almost brusque on the subject of bulimia, believing it has received too much psychologizing...
...EversincetheAbdicationfiascoithadbeenmuch safer for the monarchy to be boring," writes Brown...
...Diana never "got" this attitude because she fell betweentheculturalslats.Therewasreallyverylittleof the classic English gentlewoman about her...
...THIS BIOGRAPHY IS A can't-put-it-down tome, exhaustivebutneverexhausting,abehemothofa book without one skippable page...
...The roly-poly Queen Mumsetagroaningboardthreetimesadayandserved cake-laden afternoon teas...
...clean your plate and then quietly throw up in private...
...In 1714 Queen Anne and Electress Sophia both diedwithinweeksofeachother.IfAnnehaddiedfirst, England would have had an 83-year-old Queen, but Sophia died first, and so England got George I, the great-grandson of James I and the first of the four "German Georges...
...3) Diana's famous charge, "There were three of us in themarriage,"shouldhavecausedlightbulbstogooff in everyone's brain, but Brown is the only biographer who makes the connection: Camilla as the dead first wife in Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca, who haunted the new bride and the husband until they werebothhalf-mad...
...A guest served a heavytraditionalEnglishmealshouldneverpickatit...
...That was Sophia, Electress of Hanover andgranddaughterofJamesI.Shewas71andhada41year-oldson,George...
Vol. 40 • November 2007 • No. 9
