The Queen and Di Book

Ingrid Seward has been watching and writing about the royals since her appointment as editor of Majesty magazine in 1983. Her previous publications have covered most of the significant members of the royal family, from Prince Edward to her celebration of the Queen Mother in The Last Great Edwardian Lady. In The Queen and Di Seward claims to offer a sensitive account of the relationship between the Queen and Diana from the latter's arrival at Balmoral in the early 1980s as a guest of Prince Charles, to her untimely death in 1997. In fact the book is a rather elegant piece of extended gossip on Diana and her fraught relations with all the Windsors, which spills the beans on everything from the sexual indiscretions of virtually the entire family, to the Queen's consumption of "far more Martinis than was advisable" following Diana's death. The Queen and Di is also a rather misleading title for a book that is in fact a subtle denigration of Diana and a defence of the Queen and the workings of Diana's most hated institution, the Palace. Seward is at pains to stress that the Queen "had tried to accommodate Diana within it--bending its rules, excusing her indiscretions, making allowances for her illness, overlooking her outbursts, taking note of her grievances, ignoring the way she tried to claim centre stage and ordering her staff to treat her with respect and courtesy at all times." There are some extreme claims--including the diagnosis of Diana's "Borderline Personality Disorder"--and moments of surreal hilarity, such as the picture of Diana running through the Palace chanting "I've got Brenda's rocks" on the eve of her wedding, after being presented with Queen Mary's jewels by the Queen. The Queen and Di is an unwitting portrait of a household in terminal decline, and a young woman who accidentally accelerated its slide. --Jerry BrottonRead More