The Queen & Di

The complex relationship between the Queen and her daughter-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales is examined in detail for the first time by bestselling author and royal biographer Ingrid Seward. The Queen & Di charts the sometimes touching and often fraught association between two powerful and determined women from the moment Diana stepped over the Queen's threshold at Balmoral as a weekend guest in the 1980's to her death in 1997, and shows how the monarchy was affected by the tragedy. Chronicling the parallels in their lives as well as their contrasting styles and the differing conventions of their times, Seward provides new insights into the behind-closed-doors scenes of Buckingham Palace as Diana's fairytale marriage began slowly, to unravel and events spiralled out of control. The author reveals the lengths to which the Queen went in her efforts to understand her daughter-in-law - her unstinting generosity and support, her encouragement and forbearance - often standing alone in her defence, until she was finally driven to distraction and plunged into despair; she shows, too, how Diana, too scared, young and psychologically troubled, failed to grasp the Queen's hand of friendship in return, and how, in the end, the Queen came to fear her - and her effect on the Queen, grandchildren William and Harry and on the institution of monarchy. Through a meeting with the Princess a few weeks before her death, Ingrid Seward provides an astonishing insight into the Camilla Parker-Bowles set-up and the views and opinions of one of the most adored and vilified women of the twentieth century.