the Diana Legacy

An indication of the magnitude of an event is that most people can remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. By those criteria, the dreadful accident in that underpass in Paris in the early hours of August 31, 1997, ranks with the assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1963, for most of the world. Whatever part Diana, Princess of Wales, had played in people's lives and thoughts before she and Dodi Al Fayed were killed, there was a universal feeling that the world had lost something special, something good, something irreplaceable. At Royalty magazine, which had chronicled the rise and transformation of the gauche young ingenue from "Shy Di" to the rank of icon and certainly role model for a generation, our feelings were as intense as any. Now, a year after those dreadful events, it is a pleasure to recommend a book which, I feel, genuinely shows the most compelling and compassionate insight in both words and pictures of the woman whose life touched millions worldwide. The definitive portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales, may be still some way off in the future, but Susan Maxwell Skinner’s first-hand account of her life and times, framed by Anwar Hussein's superb photojournalism, has taken a big step in that direction.
Bob Houston, Founding Editor, Royalty