cover image Dianaworld: An Obsession

Dianaworld: An Obsession

Edward White. Norton, $32.50 (416p) ISBN 978-1-324-02156-8

Biographer White follows up The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock with a kaleidoscopic portrait of Princess Diana (1961–1997), as viewed by the people whose lives she touched. Describing how the princess’s 1991 diplomatic visit to Pakistan and romantic relationship with British Pakistani surgeon Hasnat Khan endeared her to many in the country, White suggests that some Pakistani women saw Diana’s tumultuous relationship with Prince Charles as akin to their own troubled arranged marriages. Diana’s outspoken advocacy on behalf of AIDS patients made her a “gay icon,” White contends, arguing that her memory “has become entwined with a particular idea of gay experience, in which defiance and radical honesty are king and queen.” White’s central contention is that people see in Diana what they wish to see. For instance, he notes that the anti-monarchist Julie Burchill called the princess “the greatest force for republicanism since Oliver Cromwell” despite Diana, as White sees it, helping to revitalize the Windsors’ flagging reputation. White takes an evenhanded perspective on his subject—positing that the princess could be “beguiling and frustrating, admirable and infuriating, weirdly clueless and astonishingly astute”—and while he’s largely uninterested in discovering the “real” Diana behind the myth, his panoramic approach attests to her lasting influence across the world. This achieves the difficult task of finding a novel take on the much-discussed former royal. Photos. (Apr.)