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Okay, season 4 of @TheCrownNetflix begins on Nov 15 (Sunday) and it finally gets us to the Diana years in all their glamourous, messy glory. So I've pulled together some reading as I've realised not everyone has quite the same Diana fascination as I do. Stand by for a thread.
Let's start with the wedding - possibly the most famous one ever to be held ever. And it was pretty good if you like that sort of thing. There's a pretty good piece in the @BritishVogue archive by a woman who was a guest. It also has great piccies. https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/remembering-the-wedding-of-the-prince-of-wales-and-lady-diana-spencer
Make no mistake abt the fervency of the Charles and Diana camps (I've had to reconsider my opinion of some otherwise sound people because of this). It was full on from the start. The best book on the saga is The Diana Chronicles by @TinaBrownLM - gossipy, insiderly, the business.
If you don't want to read the whole thing (I can't imagine why not but anyway) there is a extract in @VanityFair which Brown used to edit. https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2013/09/princess-diana-prince-charles-early-marriage
When Brown was younger she wrote a very famous article hinting that all might not be well inside the fairytale. It was a sensation. Nobody had dared to write about this before. Bear in mind this is 1985. You can still find it online: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2013/09/princess-diana-prince-charles-early-marriage
As as aside, Brown's book about her life as the editor of Vanity Fair/The New Yorker in the 1980/90s is INCREDIBLE. If you're into very high spending, high drama, high glamour tales of magazine life when the cash splashed around like bubbles over the edge of a champagne glass.
Back to Diana.
The fashion is, clearly, a huge drawcard. Am loving all the youngsters discovering Di style & am all here for the resurrection of the sheep jumper.
The great fashion journalist Suzy Menkes wrote this in 2017, 20 years after Diana's death. https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/suzy-menkes-diana-and-her-language-of-clothes
The fashion is, clearly, a huge drawcard. Am loving all the youngsters discovering Di style & am all here for the resurrection of the sheep jumper.
The great fashion journalist Suzy Menkes wrote this in 2017, 20 years after Diana's death. https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/suzy-menkes-diana-and-her-language-of-clothes
Some of the most famous portraits of Diana were taken by Mario Testino just before her death to mark her kind of emancipation from capital R royal life.
I mean, look at her - just exquisite. https://www.vanityfair.com/style/1997/07/princess-diana-reborn
I mean, look at her - just exquisite. https://www.vanityfair.com/style/1997/07/princess-diana-reborn
The also v famous BBC interview w Diana in which she said her marriage was "crowded" because there were 3 people in it (
Camilla) is also back in the news because it seems to have been obtained by dubious means. @BevanShields wrote abt it a few days ago. https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/questions-over-famous-princess-diana-interview-prompt-fresh-bbc-probe-20201109-p56d0y.html
Camilla) is also back in the news because it seems to have been obtained by dubious means. @BevanShields wrote abt it a few days ago. https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/questions-over-famous-princess-diana-interview-prompt-fresh-bbc-probe-20201109-p56d0y.html
The show's creator is quite ambivalent about the monarchy. Peter Morgan told the @nytimes the institution was "indefensible".
"And yet the whole thing’s so bloody ridiculous you can’t help feeling slightly sorry for them.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/magazine/the-crown-peter-morgan.html
"And yet the whole thing’s so bloody ridiculous you can’t help feeling slightly sorry for them.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/magazine/the-crown-peter-morgan.html
But if you really want someone who doesn't think much of the monarchy you must read Hilary Mantel's (of Booker Prize winning Thomas Crowell trilogy fame) speech Royal Bodies. It's in her new book but online here.
Incredible writing that doesn't miss. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies
Incredible writing that doesn't miss. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies
On a more personal note I thank my mother for keeping the 8 (yes, 8) Diana scrapbooks I made as a little girl. I was 5 at the time of the wedding - prime princess propaganda age.
I’m sure these Australian Women’s Weekly commemorative editions will be needed some day.
Fortunately I was already very on brand and getting my coverage of the 1983 tour from the @smh.
Note the fancy stockings. My sister and I were somewhere in this crowd and my sister, aged 3, told Diana she had “beautiful legs”, a story that had obviously gone down in family lore.
Finally - a lady always spends a certain amount of time each day attending to correspondence. I do not remember what I drew for Diana but I was never more excited than when I received an official reply from the palace.
Thank you for your patience and attention. 
