Everyone knows the public Diana: the sweet, shy English girl with "a history but no past" who married the Prince of Wales in a storybook wedding. But what of Diana in private? Was she really just an innocent kindergarten teacher when she and Prince Charles got engaged? Was she truly in love with her fiance - and how did he feel about her? And what went on behind the palace gates after the honeymoon was over? While Diana's previous biographers have been firmly outside her inner circle, Lady Colin Campbell, with personal connections to European and British royalty, takes us inside that circle to bring us the first truly informed account of the Princess's life and marriage. Here is Diana in intimate detail - from the child caught up in her parents' scandalous divorce, to the savvy flirt who captured a Prince. ("If she'd been a wild animal", confides a relative, "she'd have made an excellent hunter".) Here is the lonely teenager roller-skating through Buckingham Palace, and the newlywed who thought her new house in the Cotswolds a terrible comedown from her ancestral home. And here is Diana the woman - from her transformation into a famous beauty to the truth about her relationships with other men both before and after marriage. With extraordinary candor and sympathy - and, above all, with an insider's understanding - Lady Colin Campbell goes beyond the myth of the fairytale princess to unveil the real Diana.

本作は、世界が愛した「悲劇の王妃」という虚飾を剥ぎ取り、一人の女性の魂の深淵に迫った衝撃作です。コリン・キャンベル夫人は特権的な視点から、純真なイメージの裏に潜む凄まじい生への渇望と狩人の本能を鮮明に描き出しました。孤独な少女が王室という檻の中で変貌を遂げる様は、冷徹なまでにリアルで、読む者の背筋を凍らせます。 神話と現実の乖離に苦悶しつつ、運命を自ら切り拓こうともがく彼女の姿は、一級の人間ドラマとして胸を打ちます。偶像を破壊し、血の通った一人の女性を蘇らせる圧倒的な洞察力は、歴史的アイコンの「真実の重み」を突きつける極上の書です。ダイアナという光り輝く多面体の、真の核に触れる知的興奮を味わってください。