In her review for the Los Angeles Times, “The Bottom of the Royal Barrel,” critic Margo Kaufman eviscerated both Dimbleby’s autobiography and Morton’s sycophantic follow-up, Diana: Her New Life, while Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times wrote, “If you didn’t know the names of the famous ex-couple portrayed in these two books, you’d think they were just another pair of guests on Oprah or Donahue: victims of dysfunctional families and a bad marriage, who are given, alternately, to bouts of self-pity and New Age searches for meaning and self-esteem.”īut more ominously for the crown, the press also started to question Charles’s fitness to be king. The Guardian called it “a foolish and sorry authorized version,” and the Daily Mirror labeled it “the prince’s crowning act of treachery.” Reviews of the autobiography were scathing, as its contents were called the whining complaints of an out-of-touch, privileged man.

According to Dimbleby, once they were married, Charles discovered his young wife was a bulimic who indulged in “self-pity” and mercilessly ridiculed him. In the book, Dimbleby described Charles as “an individual of singular distinction and virtue.” He also claimed that Charles had been pressured to marry Diana by his father, and would have been happier as a bachelor if he had not had to produce an heir to the throne. In addition to sitting down for private interviews, Charles had given Dimbleby access to his numerous diaries and letters. But worse was to come on November 4, 1994, when Dimbleby’s authorized Charles biography, The Prince of Wales: An Intimate Portrait, was published.

Natalia grosvenor