WALKING IN LIGHTVIVIENNE PARRY

Many of you have asked me what I think about the Patrick Jephson book on Diana, given that I worked closely with both of them. It was deeply depressing. It should have been the definitive account of her life. It should have set her in proper historial context. Instead it it is score settling by someone who came to hate her, vindictive, unpleasant and ultimately therefore, fatally flawed as a balanced portrait. Reading it was, as one astute reader told me, like coming across an axe murderer, still furiously raining blows on a victim who expired with the very first one. The Princess, as I've often said, was the original girl with a curl. When she was bad, she wasn't all that nice as the book details on every page But you forgave her the flakey bits, because when she was good, as the rhyme goes, boy was she wonderful. But that side is not recorded. There is no light in this book. None of the fun, laughter and good times that I remember. It is all darkness and I can understand why the Princes are so upset. I defend Mr Jephson's right to publish but not to squander his former employer's reputation as he attempts to exorcise his own personal demons.
Why has it been written? Cherchez la femme. Mr Jephson got involved with a thrice married image consultant who has turned him from a man who once had a fine reputation, integrity, a wife and family and friends who adored him into one who no longer has any of these things. He's unemployed and in order to keep his high maintenance girlfriend, he has had to do the very thing that people like him never do. Tell. And in doing so, he has sold his soul. He will be tormented by it for the rest of his life. Like many who know him, I am convinced that he never would have done it had he not had the singular misfortune to run into this woman. The fact that HE thinks the book is not the right thing to do either, is evidenced by his refusal to defend his book in public. The money won't last. Betrayal of himself and of someone who once meant a great deal to him (and to us) and all for nothing. It's enough to make you weep.