KEY POINTS:
Famous and dead isn't always a recipe for publishing success. Many of the brightest stars fade from the public consciousness after a decade or so. But Diana, Princess of Wales, clearly isn't one of them.
The Marilyn Monroe of her generation, she somehow continues to fascinate and it's no surprise to see the major publishing houses making the most of the 10th anniversary of her death, with a slew of books hitting the shelves.
Next month sees the re-release of Sally Bedell Smith's biography Diana: The Life Of a Troubled Princess (Aurum, $29.99) and an anniversary edition of the book that was written with the blessing of the late Princess' estate, Diana: The Portrait, by Rosalind Coward (Hachette, $49.99). Both are overshadowed by the big mama of all Diana biographies, The Diana Chronicles, by Tina Brown (Random House, $37.99). Brown, a former editor of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, used to be considered a kind of royalty herself and even lunched with Diana two months before she died. Now she's joined the army of clairvoyants, private secretaries, butlers and security men, people whose lives once brushed that of the Princess and who have cashed in by writing about their experiences.
Despite Brown's status giving her access to just about anyone she wants to interview, this book doesn't offer anything astoundingly new about Diana. It paints a mostly sympathetic portrait of a nice Sloaney girl, with an overly romantic view of life, thanks to a diet of Barbara Cartland novels, who imagined she was going to marry her prince and live happily ever after. Brown shows us a person who wasn't equipped for any of it - the public fame and adulation, the private neglect and misery, or the husband who just wanted to hunt, garden and be with his mistress. It's a soap opera really and the fact that we know it all ends so tragically is one of the reasons the story is so compelling.
Diana's deeply flawed personality is the other drawcard. She was vain, damaged, wilful and incapable of being just another cog in the royal machine. Aside from Cartland romances, the only thing the Princess was interested in reading about was herself. Brown tells us how in the early days she'd buy newspapers and magazines and skim them for pictures of herself.
The Diana Chronicles is a strange beast, with Brown veering from playing the serious investigative journalist to dishing up salacious tabloid titbits such as revealing that lover James Hewitt 'helped Diana achieve orgasms of a reliability and intensity she had never achieved before'.
Given that Diana was the most photographed woman in the world, it seems strange that such an exhaustive, 426-page, cradle-to-grave memoir shouldn't contain a single one. Interestingly, the only photo in the entire book is the supremely flattering portrait of the author by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.
