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ALTHORP, England - After penning biographies of Lucrezia Borgia and Jacqueline Kennedy, historian Sarah Bradford was reluctant to write about Princess Diana because she thought of her as a "silly, neurotic blonde".
By the time Bradford finished her book, she had changed her mind.
At a literary festival staged at Diana's family home in Althorp, Bradford told Reuters the princess made such a fascinating subject because of her contradictions.
"She could be funny, witty, a lovely friend. She could also turn on people, she could be cruel, she could be hysterical," Bradford said.
"How did this totally unsophisticated girl become a world figure in 16 years? What she achieved was remarkable."
Diana was killed in a Paris car crash almost 10 years ago and her brother Charles, in his funeral oration, called the princess "the most hunted person of the modern age".
Bradford highlights Diana's complex personality and particularly her paradoxical attitude to fame.
"She found it suffocating and she wanted a private life. But the other side of her wanted the celebrity and she would call up reporters herself," Bradford said.
Diana's death prompted an unprecedented outpouring of national grief portrayed in the Oscar-winning movie "The Queen". "This girl represented great beauty and a unique gift for communication. People felt they owned her. She was part of their lives, it could not be true that she had gone," Bradford said.
Bradford has no doubt who was to blame for the break-up of Diana's "fairytale" marriage to the heir to the throne.
"Charles was rather more to blame. He could have tried harder to make the marriage work," she concluded.
Diana, like Marilyn Monroe, died at 36, and Bradford feels it was definitely a life half-lived.
"I discovered that before she died she was planning to do specific television programmes focusing on issues like landmines, Aids and, strangely enough, illiteracy.
"She was going to do media training in New York. She had mapped out a way of continuing her charity work in a very conspicuous way."
And for Bradford, it was poignant appearing at a literary festival just a stone's throw from the island where Diana is buried on the Spencer family estate.
"I must say it is really uncanny for me to be here talking about her."
- REUTERS
