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The Real Diana

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The Real Diana

By: Lady Colin Campbell
Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
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About this listen

Who was the real Diana? What was it like to be so privileged yet so anguished, so beloved yet so self-loathing, so spoiled yet so despairing? The Princess of Wales was all these things - far more complicated, conflicted and intriguing a person than the wildly disparate saint or lunatic she is frequently portrayed to be.

Royal insider Lady Colin Campbell sets the record straight on many of the most controversial aspects of Diana's turbulent life: how Charles and Diana's engagement came to pass, though it seemed ill-advised to those closest to both of them, what their honeymoon was really like, the truth behind Diana's bulimia, her widely reported suicide attempts and her obsession with Camilla Parker Bowles; Diana's search for love and fulfilment with numerous men before, during and after her marriage; her brilliant manipulations of the press and her relationship with Dodi Fayed.

Lady Colin Campbell's New York Times best-selling biography Diana in Private was the first to expose the truth about Diana and her troubled marriage. In The Real Diana, she reveals that the reason she knew so much about what went on behind the palace gates was because Diana herself was the source. Drawing upon these confidences - as well as on conversations with countless people who knew Diana and with Diana herself in the final years of her life - Lady Colin Campbell combines true insight with true compassion to bring us the most intimate and revealing portrait of the Princess of Wales that we will ever have.

©2004 Lady Colin Campbell (P)2022 W F Howes
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Pretty good

Quite insightful and very interesting. Would recommend for those still interested in the whole subject

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Loved this book

I liked the openness and all sides explained this lady’s books really hold there own I wish she had more of her books on here straight, talking and openness and respectful😊

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1 person found this helpful

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Really enjoyed it! Very in depth, learn ALOT & always shows there to every story.

Really enjoyed it, in depth from official sources. Lady C does not hold back. I always knew there were 2 sides to the story! Really really interesting and factual. Really enjoyed reading it, learnt ALOT from it!l King Charles and Queen Camilla gone shot in my estimation! X love the royals, bat Meghan and harry as of late. Long live the king! X

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    4 out of 5 stars

Interesting, but….

An interesting account of Diana’s life, very good narration. Did get a bit fed up of the author’s patronising comments regarding her own life experiences and just how wonderfully she managed everything

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7 people found this helpful

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A real eye opener

This book was a real eye opener for me. Although I wasn't a fan of the coy, not so saintly Diana, I decided to listen to this book. I never realized just how deep those dark waters ran, how manipulative and vindictive she was. I was taken aback at just how many affairs she had, yet she was jealous of her husband's friendship with one woman? Very sad really.
The book was interesting, informative, well written, and well narrated. As a victim of severe narcissistic, manipulative, violent abuse myself, there were moments that made me so angry and upset, that I had to stop listening, and go back to it later when I felt calmer. I have far more respect for Charles than I did before. Great book all round.
Well done, Lady C.

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The easy going voice

I enjoyed the book from the beginning to the end . The book has been written in a way for the reader/listener to understand in the first instance without the need to go back to check . Very good . I shall listen again to a Lady C book

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Has stood the test of time

As with all her books, Lady C has told the truth in a sympathetic, balanced and fascinating way. A must read for anyone who's interested in the real story behind the incredible, beautiful, but damaged Diana.

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Great book. Narrator a let down.

The book is excellent and obviously well informed and written by Lady C. Few would be better placed to write this book. Lady C knew Diana and the context of her life in the Royal circle. She has researched the cause of Diana's tragic death in depth. A riveting read or listen.

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Empathic, comprehensive and exceptional depth

This book is an absolute must for anyone seeking to understand the parental nest from which both Prince William and Prince Harry have flown into their respective skies. I would urge everyone to read this book before embarking on any books about, or by, the brothers and their wives, or the courtiers who prepared them for public life: the patterns of their parents and youth form the causation for their work and adult lives.

Lady Colin Campbell, brings real humanity and life to a complex woman, whose life and death are deeply misunderstood, surrounded by myths and mystery, still to this day. Diana's immortalisation in press, history and repeated court inquests, is as elusive as her public face in life. This book opens up the elusiveness to let the reader into the secret world -- internal and external -- which Lady Diana inhabited.

There is an immense empathy with which Lady Colin gently explores the realities of a mismatched marriage doomed to fail from the honeymoon onwards; a woman too young to understand the complexities of long term adult relationships left long behind for friendships drove her to jealous suspicion; again too young to be thrust into a job too difficult for someone lacking the wisdom of time, live experience, or training from birth. There is great sensitivity describing the true extent of Diana's mental illness, and how it invaded to make her marriage and work all the more unstable, and her mind all the more vulnerable to manipulation by external actors, seeking to make their name from exploiting her paranoia: bringing her to smear the current King Charles in unfair ways; leading to the legacies damaging Prince Harry and earlier William, along with many others who have been left confused as to objective reality.

Lady Colin alludes to the deep tragedy that Diana's illnesses only quietened after divorce, reaching a stability in her 30s: her relationship with Charles became cordial, no longer competitive, no longer paranoid suspicion of all those around her. Wonderfully, she finally found the deep love she dearly needed, and fulfilling happiness, with Dodi Fayed: with their death occuring just as they became engaged to marry. If Dodi was her true love to whom she would have partnered for life, for her sake, it was a mercy she was spared grieving his loss by her failing to wear a seatbelt. However, the far greater tragedy is the loss is for those left alive missing her: her sons' lives, family, friends, have been devastated, and each have dealt (or not dealt) with that trauma in different ways....
.... In this way, this book is vital reading to understand The Truth which has shaped both her sons alongside the contemporary monarchy: and therefore Lady Colin's work is a must, before anyone picks up the books about (or by) the brothers, their wives, and their courtiers.

Lady Colin writes from the rarified vantage of being part of the aristocratic circles, her class status affording insights others lack, and most importantly with tapes and notes made with Diana herself (amongst a wealth of other sources who knew her in familial, friendship, private, employment, associate, and public capacities).

She further researched not only all three inquiries and inquests, but furthermore spoke directly and researched the car accident herself: far more thoroughly and with far greater explanation, logic and evidence than any of the inquiries and inquest's went into: this was both important for integrity of Lady Colin as a writer, but more importantly as she genuinely cares -- a care which can be felt from every word.

The one question I have left, whilst there was the ramblings of the SAS officer who presented a story, this concords with a story told by the runaway mi5 desk officer David Shayler. Whilst both are largely written off as deluded, trading on their positions to make a living from the gullible, they do leave open one loose end which should be tied: whether the flash of a speed camera, the planned flash of a Strobe, or a disloyal protection officer or driver, a loose end is a loose end: where perhaps Diana was not the intended target afterall, given she would have survived with a seatbelt.

However, whilst some accidental deaths will always remain a painful mystery, leaving pain as deep as the black hole of a singularity, and maddening questions circling inside the heads, of those closest... the more important mystery is of Diana's life: answered here in Lady Colin's book -- the good, bad, beautiful, ugly, but always the truth to the best of her capacities as a brilliant writer and both women entwined as compassionate humans.

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Warts n all listen

Everything about this book has a ring of truth. I think the author has had a fascinating life and is often self-promoting and I hadn’t expected much of the book but I was very pleasantly surprised. Whether some of the stories need a pinch of salt or a handful is neither here nor there really, she is describing a character more then individual events her life and I think it’s spot on. Highly recommended.

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