As the editor of Majesty magazine, Ingrid Seward has developed professional and personal relationships with the royal family. We discover a surprising portrait of the English monarch and the princess, contradicting what the press has previously a fragile Diana battling an unfeeling mother-in-law. We learn that the Queen tried to welcome Diana into the royal family and that Di failed to grasp the hand of friendship. From the princess herself we hear details of what went on between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. And we glimpse much more about the inner workings of the extended royal family. Entertaining and factual, The Queen & Di stands apart and above the countless, often inaccurate, accounts published to date about Diana. Ingrid Seward reveals for the first time the true relationship between two important women of the 20th century.Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Ingrid Seward is Editor-in-Chief of Majesty magazine, the leading monthly journal covering all aspects of British, European and other royal families around the world.
Since it began in 1980 Majesty magazine has remained the market leader in its field.
Ingrid is acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent writers and commentators on the royal family and has published over 20 books and contributed numerous articles to publications worldwide.
An experienced public speaker both in the UK and North America, Ingrid has worked for every major TV and radio station across the world. She is currently royal commentator for ABC network's Good Morning America.
Ingrid is in the unique position of knowing many members of the royal family personally and through Majesty enjoys a special relationship with the Royal Household.
This paint Diana in a different light then the little I knew about her. I've always seen her as this kind, loving princess of the people. And while I still think she was that, I've also relized there was a more insecure and broken woman behind her glamour apperence in the media. This book did not however made her out as a bad person but a person that might have needed a little help and guidance to get herself in a happier place. Because I think it is clear she wasn't very happy. Maybe she was with her new love but the her tragic death came way to soon. I really enjoyed Ingrid Seward royal biographys as they paint these people as real human beings. Which is sometimes something that is easy to forget when people are so famous.
I have read several biographies of Princess Diana including this one and I have to say that my opinion of Princess Diana has drastically changed. Many writers are now revising their opinion of Diana's character since her death in 1997. I was appalled by what she put her eldest son through and the things she revealed to him that a young adolescent should not be exposed to, no matter what their station in life. While appearing to be a very caring person to the world public, which I'm sure she was,there was a darker side to this woman she did not want people to see,one who was very self-absorbed and tempermental and who could be unkind when she chose to be. She was severely emotionally unstable and someone should have gotten her help before her boys were traumatized by what she put them through. I will never look at Diana the same way again.
This book was authored by veteran british monarchy reporter/author Ingrid Seward, which was one of the main reasons why I decided to purchase this tome, along with the fact that I snapped it up on a kindle sale. I own a large amount of hardcover biographies (from before the kindle was invented) about Princess Diana, but never lose my appetite to learn some new kernels of information from reliable sources.
The premise of this book is a comparative exercise in the personalities of Queen Elizabeth II and her daughter-in-law Princess Diana. It was written after Princess Diana's death, but before Prince Charles married his long-time lover Camilla Parker Bowles. Even with this passage of time, the book remains solidly relevant. It's clear that this author is firmly entrenched with England's Royal Family, and has many inside contacts to provide information. The book took off with a spark immediately, recounting a lunch date with Princess Diana at Kensington Palace, a very short time before her death. The only other person in the house was Diana's notorious butler Paul Burrell, who later wrote his own books after Diana's death. Diana apologized for the fact that the coffee was instant. I was fascinated by Seward's assessment of Diana physically with a rundown of the quality of her skin, makeup application and hair. She also seemed to imply that perhaps Diana wasn't wearing any underwear, since she didn't detect any lines under Diana's svelte cut of dress. I was reigned in by the little gossipy details.
To sum it up, the perception put forth is that Princess Diana was defined by her upbringing of coming from a broken home and the occasional physical violence she witnessed before her parents split up. There is also strong evidence (borne out by examples of Diana's behaviors) that she had a mental disorder. The Queen is framed as being compassionate and understanding to an extreme- which frustrated both her palace staff, Prince Philip, Princess Anne, the Queen Mother and other family members. The Queen doesn't like to interfere with marriages and would often counsel those children who came to her with marital problems to give it another six months to try to work it out. With Diana, she seemed to be put to her absolute limit of giving her the benefit of the doubt and including her in family functions when others had had enough of her.
This was really a quality book on Princess Diana with some fresh information I had never read. The only minor criticism I have is in this kindle version, there were a rather ridiculous number of typos. Otherwise, well done!
Seemed really biased against Diana...I realize she was no saint but it does seem rather ignorant to bash her now. Yes I am a fan of Diana and am sad she is gone. It's a shame she never got a chance to work her issues out and find happiness in her life...I do believe she was good at heart and genuinely cared about people.
I've seen some of the reviews on this book when I was adding it to my shelves, and if you are a fan of Diana you won't care for this book at all. I've read biographies of Prince Charles, Prince William and several others of the British Royal Family, and had already gotten the impression that Diana showed one face to the world and quite another when she was alone with Charles and other members of the family. She felt she couldn't get enough attention from her husband, and often her attempts to force him to pay attention to her backfired and drove him further away.
I hadn't known much about her early life before reading this book; the author partially attributes Diana's need for attention to her mother's leaving the family for a lover when Diana was very young. Nor had I realized that the Queen had stood by Diana for as long as she did; it seems she was the last person in the Family to finally give up on her.
I think this is an excellent book to read to round out one's understanding of the turbulent period of Charles and Diana's marriage.
This book is not very good. It is written to support the royalist line against Diana. The author is a snob, & her justifications of the royal family stretch credulity. For example Anne is a disagreeable person. When Diana first met her at Windsor castle, Diana kneeled to her, as Diana was a lady at the time. Anne refused to acknowledge her in any way, according to the author looking right past her, Diana fled in tears. This was Diana's fault, as Anne didn't like ceremony. The direct quote from the book is 'this was a mistake on Diana's part'. However, no one had told her how to deal with Anne. No one had given her any advice at all - one of Diana's recurring complaints. Read this if you're interested in reading royalist justifications for truly horrible behavior, but I would suggest reading some other books about Diana & the times to get a fairer picture.
I was excited to read this book as both a fan of Diana and an avid royal watcher. I admit I was a bit disappointed on both counts.
The author is a heavy-handed supporter of the Queen and spent most of the book defending the palace’s handling of the negative publicity generated when the problems between Charles and Diana began to receive attention in the press. I found her insistence that Elizabeth was always a supporter of the Princess and tried her best to help her through difficult times a bit galling as in the same breath she stated again and again that the Queen’s go-to strategy for any problem was to advise that we “just wait and see.” That doesn’t seem like sage advice for someone with deep psychological issues who has tried on multiple occasions to commit suicide. The entire royal family is raised on the premise that feelings should be sublimated to duty, and that denial is a necessity to keep the commoners at bay.
On the other hand, Diana was obviously not as innocent as her admirers would like to believe. A young woman who would push her stepmother down a staircase and then just casually walk away as if nothing had happened had issues long before she married the Prince of England. She continually leaked damaging information and opinions to the press, while denying any culpability. Her insistent whining that Charles’ infidelity was the cause of their marital problems flies in the face of the fact that she began affairs with several of her security guards while her husband was still trying to please her and be a good husband, which included avoiding Camilla. Humiliation was Diana’s weapon of choice, and she wielded it gleefully against the Prince and his family.
Overall, I did glean some new insights buried in the blatant propaganda, but would have enjoyed a more evenhanded approach to this complicated relationship. Give us the facts and allow us to reach our own conclusions, okay?
I did think that this book was true. I felt that it was accurate as to how life was as a royal. No one really helped Diana. For instance, on her first Christmas in the family. She bought extravagant gifts for all. The family has a tradition of getting the very cheapest gifts. Now why didn't someone tell her that? Like her husband? I felt that this book presented both sides.
This was interesting to me, but it was kind of a hatchet job on Diana. I think she certainly had feet of clay but this book makes her seem deranged at times.
This book did a lot to end the view of Diana that I had and end the myth that she was the wronged party. I feel that this was a well written and truthful account of events. The whole marriage, divorce and ultimate death was a very sad time in English history. I honestly believed and still believe that the truth was somewhere in the middle of Charles and Diana's views leading up to the divorce and this book confirmed that for me. However and whatever the circumstances it is sad that a marriage ended and that eventually a young life was lost. I think people have to read and make up their own minds and not let good or bad reviews of books sway them or their thinking. I am very glad that I read this book and did enjoy the writing.
Very one-sided and unfair. Overly critical of a woman no longer able to defend herself.
Really now. Talk about rewriting history. Nice try, making Charles out to be the innocent one and Diana as the lunatic. She is no longer able to defend herself and this book is pathetic.
Ingrid Seward has written a great deal about the royal family, and spent many years as editor of "Majesty" Magazine, so she knows the ins and outs. I suspect her closeness to the subject has caused her to lose her objectivity, however. Instead of a researched portrait of two complex women navigating their relationship, we receive a largely anti-Diana tome with liberal doses of name-dropping (as in "when Charles and I had tea together at Highgrove, he said...") just to make sure the reader doesn't forget that the the author "knows" these people and thus should be trusted.
There is nothing new here, though those of us who have read a fair amount about the Royals will notice the things that are missing. Diana's tantrums are here, but interviews with those who might show her in a positive light are absent. Were actual, contemporary interviews conducted, or did all the research consist of reading previously published works that attest to the agenda set out before the first word was typed? Charles' well-meaning efforts to help his wife are duly (if not entirely believably) transmitted, but I see no mention of the many times, noted in numerous sources, when he was just as awful to her as she was to him. And how is it that an entire book is devoted to this couple's married life with no mention whatsoever of Kanga Tryon? For a while, all three of the other women in Charles' life - the Queen, Diana and Camilla, considered her a threat, but she's invisible here.
The Queen comes off very well, and for the most part that is probably fair. My feeling, based on the reading I've done elsewhere (and also mentioned here) is that she loathes confrontation and, further, determined that her 30-something year old son should be able to handle an adult relationship without having Mummy hold his hand. I imagine she did try to be supportive of Diana, but their worlds were just too far apart. The Queen was groomed for her position from the time she was a small child; Diana jumped into the deep end at a very immature age 19. The Queen has always had a "just get on with it" mentality, and Diana never had that mindset. It would have taken a miracle for these two minds to meet somewhere in the middle and for the Queen to be able to offer truly useful assistance to the new Princess.
This book read like a novel and I couldn't put it down. Unlike the other studies of both the women concerned, this one painted a more emotional response of all those involved in this royal drama. If you enjoy reading about this period of history and have a couple of 'me' hours, I suggest that reading this book is a good way of passing the time.
This spelling errors alone in this version of the book merit zero stars, if that were possible. The substance was confusing, haphazardly presented, and it seemed sensationally presented vs. factual. I got this on a reduced price and wouldn't have even read it but for that, but even with a bargain price, I would not waste my time on this.
This book tells the behind the scenes story of the Queen's relationship with Princess Diana. I found it to be honest and doesn't put the blame of what happened on only one person.
I found this perspective intriguing in a way. It was a bit too heavy on Diana’s faults, but it also included the Queen’s faults also.
I really didn’t care for how the author kept repeating that Diana suffered from borderline personality disorder. To me, this was the royalist point of view. And considering it was the royals who drove Diana’s bulimia, it was the pot calling the kettle.
I’ve always blamed the Queen for getting Diana into the situation in the first place. Diana was far too young and inexperienced to take on such a job. And the Queen never put a stop to Charles’ philandering. I guess it would be hard for her to criticize him since she put up with her own husband’s infidelity. To me, that not only weakened the Queen’s power as a sovereign, but also as a woman.
The Queen is far from the paragon that she portrays to the world. She was just trained from an early age to not show her emotions in public. Sadly, she’s taken that advice too far. When I listened to her Christmas speech last year, she was so painfully wooden that she came across as uncaring. It made me feel sad for the citizens of the UK. They pay a lot to have a monarchy and deserve better.
Actual rating, which I struggled with, is closer to 2.5. I picked this up on a whim at my public library expecting something light to read on my lunch breaks. Instead what I got was a book that felt salacious (which I loved) and unbalanced (which I did not love.) While it was very entertaining to read, it was a bit difficult to swallow as an objective account of the two women. Seward serves up what can only be described as contempt for Diana while listing the endless virtues of the Queen. Once again, this was very entertaining, but the explicit bias marred the experience and is the reason I cannot rate this title higher. While I did find what I will generously call an "honest" portrayal of Diana (that doesn't try to neatly frame her as a martyr, which is a weird narrative trend that bothers me about some recent cultural depictions) it felt a bit harsh at times and Seward also seems to posit that Diana brought her death upon herself which is unacceptable.
All that being said I am definitely going to read more of her works on the royal family.
This was a very interesting review of two women - not just any women - but Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. One born to the position and the other who married into the position.
The British Royal Family holds a fascination to many Americans. This book, although an unauthorized version gave insight into the tragic life and death of Diana. It seems she was ill suited to the position she found herself in. Her sad childhood left her with a huge need for love and happiness and belonging.
The Queen seemed to try her best to help her but Diana was looking for a mother. The Queen was the monarch. I am sure that to survive in that position which Diana was in needed someone mature and comfortable in their own skin.
Overall the book was interesting and a fairly easy read.
This book seemed to go on forever. Many of things in it I have heard or read many times before. What I learned was good and bad. The good: The Queen is an amazing women. She stands tall in spite of the craziness that goes on around her. She defended Diana almost to the bitter end. The bad: Diana was so manipulative. More so than I ever realized. This is a tragic story. If people would just behave like civilized adults and deal with the head that they are dealt many of these problems would not have happened.
Sadly I wasn't all that surprised at how Ingrid wrote about the late Princess. It has often appeared to me that Ingrid is very much on the side of Prince Charles and was never overly fond of Diana. Be that as it may, this book did give insight into the Queen's relationship with her daughter-in-law, and it showed that the Queen did care miss about Diana than most of the public realized. It also gave a fairly good showing of just how the Queen feels in general about so many things in her life. I found it quite informative and am glad I read it.
As expressed in other reviews, this edition is riddled with typos, spelling errors that take the joy out of reading. The book is very biased against Diana, and although I'm not a big fan of the late princess, I feel that some of the claims presented can be easily disproved with a simple youtube search where visuals speak louder than the words. I bought it on promotion on Amazon, and despite being a bargain, it still feels like I tossed money down the drain. I didn't feel motivated to finish it.
This book was the telling of Diana s story, but from a different perspective. It states that the Queen was someone Diana depended on, and understood her situation. It dismisses the lack of loving in the marriage and portrays charles as naive and unknowing how to help his wife. This is a very interesting explanation of the royal families dealings with the outside world.
Some of the book was interesting and told with a different point of view than just media coverage. What I found to be absolutely irritating was all the spelling and grammar errors. Almost invariably through the entire book, "title" was spelled "tide". Certainly not a quality book!
I very much enjoyed this book. A very thoughtful portrait of their lives and how they were changed by publicity, the royal duties, and their life experiences. Although Diana's story is a one of tragedy, is an important and fasinating one. I do believe that even through a hard life she was undoubtedly a smart and kind person. I recommend this book.
The author’s disdain for Diana comes through loud and clear. So much misinformation and lies I could not bring myself to finish the book. Don’t waste your time. Read Christopher Anderson’s The Day Diana Died if you want to read about Diana. GARBAGE