Books: Remembering Di: Ex-magazine editor aims to improve understanding of princess

It’s doubtful that anybody else could have written a biography of Princess Diana as honest and revealing as Tina Brown’s “The Diana Chronicles.”

Brown grew up in the magazine world, as editor of the British magazine Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and finally Talk, as Diana matured from coltish country girl to global celebrity.

Brown’s book, “The Diana Chronicles,” falls on the 10th anniversary of the princess’ death, and it has been praised for its fairness as the most completely lifelike portrait of the “most photographed woman in the world.”

After a whirlwind summer tour promoting the book, an international best-seller, Brown embarked on a much-needed vacation at a secret location.

But she took time out to answer a few questions from the San Antonio Express-News by e-mail, in advance of her visit for a meet-the-author talk and book signing to benefit the San Antonio Library Foundation.

Q. Please describe when Diana came onto your radar, when she first entered your cultural consciousness.

A. Diana first entered my consciousness when I was editing Tatler, the British social magazine, in 1981. It’s hard to believe it now but at that time, the question of who would snag Prince Charles was the hot topic, and we had seen a succession of zaftig blondes on his arm over the years.

The first real impact Diana made on us all was the famous snap of her outside the nursery school where she taught, with a child on each arm and wearing a see-through chiffon skirt she had no idea showed the outline of her long, amazing legs.

That was the first moment when the blushing also-ran from the British shires hit us right between the eyes, and the first murmur began. Could this be the one?

Q. So many books have been written about Diana. What sets yours apart?

A. There’s been a lot of noise but not enough understanding. I wanted to portray Diana in the context of her era, her times, the media culture and British society. I wanted to portray her almost as a great fictional heroine, complicated, imperfect, compelling and more significant than we realized at the time.

Q. What was your personal relationship like with Diana?

A. I always felt deeply connected to the Diana story. At Tatler, we covered her from the moment she first appeared, and I met her shortly after her wedding, at the American embassy in 1981. She was so fresh, young, and eager to please Charles at that time, but she already had a luminous presence, able to beguile everyone she met with a warm, very human question or smile. I continued to cover her through my years at Vanity Fair when Diana too moved from a society world into celebrity culture. I wrote the story “The Mouse That Roared” that broke the news that the marriage was in deep trouble.

In 1997, in the July before she died, I had lunch with Diana in New York with Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, at the Four Seasons when Diana came for the auction of her dresses at Christie’s. The change in her was startling. She was now a polished global superstar, electrifyingly beautiful and self-confident when she walked into the restaurant. But over lunch she also betrayed how many anxieties she had. She said she dreaded August because she’d be alone — the boys would be at Balmoral with their father — and longed for someone real in her life. She kept saying, “Who would take me on? I have such baggage, with all the celebrity stuff.” I got a sense of real inner conflict. And a refrain of regret about Charles — “we would have been such a great team” — a real feeling that she was still mourning what she had lost, not just her marriage, but her role as future queen.

Q. How did you come up with so many fresh details about, for example, Diana’s childhood?

A. I did a huge amount of reporting and talked to over 200 people, many who had not talked before. I was especially interested in her early life, because I believe it held so many clues to later events and because no one has really depicted the extent of the strife inside the Spencer family, and the unique pressures of her childhood.

Q. When you first encountered Diana, she was at a certain point in her young life, rather unsure of herself and her role. Where was she at the end? In other words, what sort of growth did you see in her?

A. The main growth I saw in Diana was a real understanding of what the potential was for a modern Princess of Wales. Diana understood brilliantly the power of gesture — the effect she could have by walking into an AIDS ward at the time when the disease made the sufferer a pariah, and by embracing the victim of that disease, have a worldwide impact on how it was perceived. At the time we met in July 1997, she had just become involved in her land mine campaign, the most effective thing she ever took on.

She was revved up with the potential of what she could do by leveraging her celebrity for causes she believed in. In that sense, she was a total harbinger for celebs of today like Angelina Jolie and Bono, but she did it before them, and better.