Tina Brown Talks

It's not easy to write yet another book about Diana, the Princess of Wales. A gaggle of writers and critics have had 10 years since Diana's death to ferret out every last detail of her life. In "The Diana Chronicles," Tina Brown, former editor of the London magazine Tatler, as well as U.S. magazines Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, has managed to paint a fresh and human portrait of this iconic figure. Brown spoke with NEWSWEEK's Christopher Dickey in New York. Excerpts:

DICKEY: What was your relationship with Diana?
BROWN: I met her ... it must have been four or five times over the years. At Tatler, our job was to cover her. We were all young at Tatler. And she was just about to turn 20, and so there was kind of a generational echo with Diana. I've always felt that kind of bond with the story.

And then I saw her at the American Embassy dinner, at different embassies, two or three times. And then I spent time with her at the end, when she came to New York. We had lunch with Anna Wintour [the editor of Vogue]. We talked for two or three hours at the Four Seasons, six weeks before she died. I got a sense of her in this pivotal moment in her life where she had decided to try to reinvent herself in a very American way. I was struck by the enormous change in her from the girl that I'd met at the American Embassy. She'd become this self-possessed, striding, global superstar. It was really remarkable.

Reading your account of covering her for Tatler, I wondered: if there had not been a Diana, would there have been a Tina Brown?
[Laughing] Well, she was certainly good for business. She was the big story, and we were in the big-story [business]. She sure helped England become a swinging center, and that was great for a social magazine. Tatler was supposed to be the magazine about the London social scene, and here was Diana, who electrified it.

You don't believe for a second that there was a conspiracy connected to Diana's death?
I really believe that conspiracy was a fairy story of [Mohamed Al Fayed, father of boyfriend Dodi].

As you point out, everybody involved with Diana's death was working for Fayed.
This is the agony for Fayed.That Diana died in a car procured by his hotel, leaving his hotel. With the bodyguard who worked for him. With his son. With his security chief driving, who was drunk. It's a horrible and unpalatable fact.