Shifting Gears

I’m nearing the end of “The Diana Chronicles” by Tina Brown – the first (and probably the last) book I’ve read about Princess Di.  I remember reading Tina Brown when she was editor of The New Yorker but had somehow forgotten the fog factor of her writing – or the fact that I often felt my vocabulary lacking as I slogged through her big words and lengthy paragraphs!  Over the last couple of weeks I’ve alternately been tempted to quit the book or can’t put it down – despite the fact that I know the outcome.  Not much mystery there – my spot in the book is where the Wales have separated and it appears there’s no turning back – what remains is the divorce and then that fatal night in Paris.

My memory of Princess Di’s death is tied to watching never-ending television coverage with my mother in her hospital room at Cox South just a few weeks before my mother died.  She wasn’t a Di-watcher but she did come from the era that has seen the Monarchy in better straits and she remembered the abdication of King Edward to marry the woman he loved, Wallis Simpson.  However, as we endured the nauseating press coverage of Di’s death my mother remarked how sad it was that the media was fixated on a spoiled brat Royal instead of Mother Theresa who died just a few days later.  Sad but true, the glamour of Di caught the world’s attention as much in death as in life, overshadowing a caring nun who gave made her life’s work caring for those less fortunate than she was.  Was that what the public wanted………or what the media wanted to give us?