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Dianaworld

Author Edward White
Narrator Josette Simon
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Run Time 13 hours and 58 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Biography: royalty, European history, Popular culture, Social and cultural history.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

A brilliant, kaleidoscopic new cultural history of Diana, her many lives and the world she created

‘This book is about layers of mythology and the people connected to them. It is less a biography of Diana, more the story of a cultural obsession told via an exploration of “Dianaworld”, the sprawling, ever-evolving precinct of her various lives—public and private, real and imagined.’

In February 1981 a 19-year-old nursery teacher’s assistant overnight became globally famous. In a frenzy of excitement, jumping every barrier of language and class, a new, overwhelming icon was conjured up.

This is a guide to Dianaworld – the extraordinary hall-of-mirrors through which one young woman, the world’s media, the royal family, and everybody else stalked one another. Fashion-plate, breeder of heirs, role model, fantasy object, saint and sinner, Diana gripped the minds of millions of people in ways which were unique, complex and distressing. After her death, chased by paparazzi through a Paris traffic tunnel, an estimated 2.5 billion people watched her funeral.

Edward White examines Princess Diana as the complex figure she was: a scion of a great aristocratic house, wife of the future king, mother of his heirs, an inspiration and delight to countless people for many years. And yet, of course: a human being inevitably and woefully underequipped either to deal with the horrors of the House of Windsor or control, or even lightly supervise, the Dianaworld she and others had created. This is a wonderful book, both admiring and incredulous, exuberant and melancholy.

© Edward White 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

A kaleidoscopic portrait of Princess Diana (1961–1997), as viewed by the people whose lives she touched… White takes an evenhanded perspective on his subject… his panoramic approach attests to her lasting influence across the world. This achieves the difficult task of finding a novel take on the much-discussed former royal.

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Edward White’s The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock

[A] masterful study… There have been thousands of books about Hitchcock. This is the best of the bunch, a brilliant investigation of a man full both of ego and fragile self-esteem, a sour mixture of self-disgust and self-regard

The Daily Mail

Anatomising someone of Hitchcock’s stature risks an equally chaotic frenzy of stabs, but with these 12 scalpel strokes White cuts close to his subject’s heart

The Sunday Times

The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock is overflowing with anecdotes, memories and curiosities… the book offers lots of insights into what made him such a revolutionary director of masterpieces such as North by Northwest and Rear Window

The Independent

Perceptive and gracefully written, The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock is a bracing study of the master of suspense… it is a rare book that could pleasurably be twice as long

The Economist

Using an approach that manages to balance chronology and theme, [White] presents the subject from a dozen angles, many of them in implicit opposition… his use of sources is inventive, and he exhibits breezy authority on a range of relevant themes, from dietetics and mid-century slimming to Catholic prayer

New Statesman

[The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock] is entirely accessible without being glib or sensationalist; it is well-researched and wide-ranging in its cultural references without being pedantic or effete… One completes this book feeling one knows Hitchcock as well as he could be known, and with renewed respect for his gifts and his influence on culture

The Times Literary Supplement

A provocative new way of thinking about biography….The radial structure vibrates, like Hitchcock’s best films, with intuition and mystery

The New York Times

Running the gamut from ‘The Boy Who Couldn’t Grow Up’ to ‘The Man Of God’, White’s book deftly divvies up the director’s 80 years into a dozen readable chunks

Total Film

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