Excerpt from Diana In Search of Herself by Sally Bedell Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Tabloid coverage of Diana was marked by some facts, but more often by guesswork, exaggeration, and outright fiction. Reporters wrote thousands of words on her setbacks, yet somehow managed to turn her life into a triumphant progression. Every six months or so, the press would offer a string of articles commenting on Diana's new "maturity," "confidence," and "strength."

"New confidence" was an especially popular theme, and the hacks invoked it on the slightest evidence: a different hairstyle, an adjustment in her wardrobe, a more poised demeanor. The real ingredients of confidence--stability, commitment, clarity, maturity--were sadly absent in her private life. Even in her last year, Diana was so terrified of silence and solitude that she called friends numerous times each day. According to Diana's energy healer Simone Simmons, "We would speak for hours a day--eight hours was not unusual, although the record was fourteen. She spent nearly every free minute of the day on the telephone." Diana relied heavily on alternative therapists such as Simmons (who, among other tasks, "ghost-busted" Diana's house by standing in doorways and "willing" away "hostile spirits") and unconventional treatments such as colonic irrigation, in which the bowel is flushed with purified water through a plastic tube inserted in the rectum.

Rather than traveling a steady upward path, Diana actually staggered between advances and retreats. In her public role, Diana methodically became more skilled and assured, while privately her turbulence persisted. "You could see how she was evolving in the sense that she was ... very, very professional," said Dr. Michael Adler, Chairman of the National AIDS Trust, who helped guide Diana in her work with AIDS patients. But in fundamental ways, Diana moved very little. She began her adult life looking for a man to take care of her, which is where she ended her life, with Egyptian playboy Dodi Fayed.

"There was a tremendous fight all the time to believe in herself," said her friend Elsa Bowker. "She wasn't steady because she didn't believe in herself." Another longtime friend observed: "She had so many compartments, so many periods and changes. It is difficult to knit into a coherent picture. What was applicable for her in 1989 was not so in 1994."

In the early years of the Waleses' marriage, the tabloids periodically hinted at deeper problems. These accounts were gleaned from dinner-party gossip and tidbits supplied, often for a fee, by disaffected staff from the royal household. Like social anthropologists, the reporters also relied on visual cues, divining meaning from the scantiest evidence, such as body language and facial expressions. Having introduced various alarming assertions about Diana--using such inflammatory terms as "fiend" and "monster"--the tabloids would then capriciously reverse course and resume their gushing coverage as if the troubles didn't exist.

These twists and turns were part of the game; the tabloids were simply keeping a great story at a constant boil. Coverage of Diana often had as much to do with complicated turf wars between journalists as with the subject at hand. "If you look through the record of the eighties, you find totally contradictory stories week after week," said Richard Ingrams, longtime editor of Private Eye, which kept close tabs on the coverage. "I can't think of anyone who was consistently well informed about the royal family."

At the same time, the British "broadsheets"--the respectable upmarket British papers such as The Times and The Daily Telegraph--largely ignored the saga of Diana and Charles, considering it inappropriate and frivolous to follow the personal lives of the royal family. "We felt we had a responsibility to give the royal family the benefit of any doubt," said Max Hastings, editor of The Telegraph from 1986 to 1995. "I didn't think our audience would thank us for emblazoning our front pages with the rumor and gossip that had been in the tabloids." Whenever the broadsheets did cover Charles and Diana's relationship, they offered the official version, endorsed by the public relations spokesmen for the royal family: a marriage that endured some small bumps but benefited from a solid foundation of mutual affection and duty to the monarchy.

Copyright © 1999 Sally Bedell Smith .