Diana, William, and Harry: The Heartbreaking Story of a Princess and Mother

Product Information

This is a good book to read if you are not familiar with Princess Diana, William, or Harry. It is really just an overview of each person’s life. Diana definitely was a caring woman and remember feeling so sad the day she died. Then seeing both William and Harry at the funeral, it really was obvious how much pain they were in. So, the first half is really facts about Diana’s life. The second half tells about William and Harry, but on a too superficial a level. In 2019, however, Pasternak made a startling disclosure in the Daily Mail that Diana had encouraged, indeed urged, Hewitt to cooperate with the writing of the book to get ahead of a more salacious version of their affair coming in another book by Andrew Morton. Pasternak told me that she and Hewitt “met halfway between Devon and London in a field, and he said, ‘Diana wants the story told but with two conditions. One, it has to come out before Morton’s second book, and two, it has to be a love story.’ ” To oblige her, Pasternak says she crashed it out in five weeks. In July 2021, Prince William and Prince Harry unveiled a statue of their mother on what would have been Diana’s 60th birthday. Getty Images William and Harry meet up on Diana’s death anniversary to reminisce

Princess Diana’s first scene in The Crown’s sixth season is a sweet one: She and her eldest son, Prince William, whip through the English countryside in a convertible, their heads bobbing along to Chumbawamba. In that same episode, “Persona Non Grata,” and in its follow-up, “Two Photographs,” the late royal shares more warm moments with William and younger son Harry—cuddling them and playing soccer, pranks, and Uno. It’s the first warm and informal relationship we’ve seen between an heir to the throne and his or her mother on Peter Morgan’s drama series, and the scenes starkly contrast Prince Charles’s scenes with his own “dear mama,” Queen Elizabeth. As she fell in love, first with Prince Charles and then with her sons, William and Harry, the world fell in love with the young royal family - Diana most of all. Being the older brother and heir to the British throne, Prince William has a different recollection of his mother’s funeral than Harry. Much like Harry, William admitted that he felt “completely numb” following his mother’s death. In a BBC documentary marking the 20th anniversary of Diana’s passing, the now-Prince of Wales said that walking behind his mother’s casket was “one of the hardest things I’ve ever done”. Sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley depicted Diana with short cropped hair, in the later years of her life. Kensington Palace said the statue aims to reflect Diana’s “warmth, elegance and energy”, while three children beside her represent the “universality and generational impact of the princess’s work”. Prince Harry, left, and Prince William greet their aunts, Sarah McCorquodale, left, and Jane Fellowes, right. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/AP

Prince William and Prince Harry: Kensington Palace, Eton, St Andrews

Perhaps the area they’ve emphasized most, in part because of Diana, is mental health. During a 1995 interview with the BBC, she talked about self-harm and depression: “When no one listens to you, or you feel no one’s listening to you, all sorts of things start to happen. For instance, you have so much pain inside yourself that you try and hurt yourself on the outside because you want help, but it’s the wrong help you’re asking for.” My take on Diana, William, and Harry is neither positive or negative on the writing, and the creativity. James Patterson tends to publish one or two non-fiction books, and truth be told, I don’t usually read them. However, this year I have broken new ground. I not only read his own personal memoirs – “The Stories of My Life” – during the summer, but I have just finished his take on the story of Princess Diana and her two sons, William, and Henry. Now, that doesn’t mean there were things that I struggled with. There were at least two things I must mention. The first is that Patterson’s writing style favors short chapters, and in this case, it came across at times as if each chapter were a newspaper story or article, and all of them added up together equaled a book. The transitions between chapters bounced around, causing the book to read in many ways like a timeline rather than a cohesive novel, with interconnected chapters that told a unified story. I saw that this bothered some readers, but I was able to deal with it. From the moments William and Harry are born into the House of Windsor, they become their young mother’s whole world.

Kensington Palace said: “The figure of Diana, Princess of Wales is surrounded by three children who represent the universality and generational impact of The Princess’ work. She was the best mother in the world,” said Princes William and Harry at Diana’s 10-year memorial. “Entertaining and persuasive,” ( Publishers Weekly ) this is the first big book about the private Diana, the mother of two princes. Jane was also asked to give a reading at Harry and Meghan's wedding ceremony last May, one of the myriad ways in which Diana's memory was honored during the day. In the first half, the boys are barely mentioned, and in the second half Diana is barely mentioned. I thought this would be a look at the relationship and special bond between mother and sons and the influence she had over their characters both when they were young and still yet today. I do think they each thought highly and fondly of the other but I learned that from other sources throughout the years, and all the coverage of all that is Diana. I did not get that sense from this book., which ultimately is a disappointing rehash of previous reports with very, very little new information.

The pair were known to have had a close relationship with their mother, something which is shown throughout season 6 of the Netflix series and particularly their final interaction in the form of a telephone conversation, something which mirrors real-life events. Though his portrayal of Diana is mostly sympathetic in season six, Morgan touches on this dependence—showing Diana make offhand remarks about Charles’s mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, and her chaotic love life to her teenage son. Explaining the timing of their St. Tropez vacation, Diana tells William, “I just wanted us all to be away when your father threw a huge 50th birthday party for you-know-who”—“you-know-who” being Camilla. The book gave me a bad taste in my mouth. This book is not authorized by William or Harry, or Princess Diana's estate. There aren't any interviews. Everything I read I already knew or could have done a Google search. Twenty-five years after her tragic death, James Patterson tells the heartbreaking true story of Princess Diana's life as a mother and a global icon. He had been living in South Africa when Diana died, and he—along with many others—had felt that his sister had been hung out to dry with the media in the wake of her separation and eventual divorce from Prince Charles, who along with then-girlfriend Camilla Parker-Bowles had been painted as villains in the Princess of Wales' fall from royal grace. Earl Spencer was also understandably livid at the press, who had dissected Diana every which way and hounded her literally right up until the tragic end.