REVIEWING "DIANA"
When Sarah Bradford, an expert on Princess Diana, was asked to review Tina Brown's new book on the princess for the Spectator, they refused to print it. The Guardian, however, were delighted to.
I've heard Tina Brown (pictured here) in innumerable interview over the last couple of weeks and in each one she dwells on the Princess's addiction to the novels of her step-grandmother, Barbara Cartland. Brain-rot fiction, are the words she uses. Well, Tina can do fine "brain rot" herself. In fact she writes the kind of purple prose that would make a Mills & Boon editor blush. Here's a taste from Sarah Bradford's review: --
"Tina Brown's uncertainty about her project is highlighted by her writing, which slides between self-consciously pacey modern schlock and sentimental drivel. Diana's mother, Frances, "looks flawlessly put together and crisp in her coiffed blond ripples. She wears a pale blue suit and hat, a string of fat, creamy pearls and gazes down with a proud smile into the big blue eyes of the gurgling baby Diana." Cut to Diana's pretty nannies. In America, Brown comments irrelevantly, "a Kennedy would be sleeping with help that looked as good as this". Eighteenth-century Spencer ladies used the picture gallery at Althorp for "morning power walks". You can take the girl out of the magazine, but you can't take the magazine out of the girl."
Read more here
When Sarah Bradford, an expert on Princess Diana, was asked to review Tina Brown's new book on the princess for the Spectator, they refused to print it. The Guardian, however, were delighted to.I've heard Tina Brown (pictured here) in innumerable interview over the last couple of weeks and in each one she dwells on the Princess's addiction to the novels of her step-grandmother, Barbara Cartland. Brain-rot fiction, are the words she uses. Well, Tina can do fine "brain rot" herself. In fact she writes the kind of purple prose that would make a Mills & Boon editor blush. Here's a taste from Sarah Bradford's review: --
"Tina Brown's uncertainty about her project is highlighted by her writing, which slides between self-consciously pacey modern schlock and sentimental drivel. Diana's mother, Frances, "looks flawlessly put together and crisp in her coiffed blond ripples. She wears a pale blue suit and hat, a string of fat, creamy pearls and gazes down with a proud smile into the big blue eyes of the gurgling baby Diana." Cut to Diana's pretty nannies. In America, Brown comments irrelevantly, "a Kennedy would be sleeping with help that looked as good as this". Eighteenth-century Spencer ladies used the picture gallery at Althorp for "morning power walks". You can take the girl out of the magazine, but you can't take the magazine out of the girl."
Read more here
