Book Review - The Peoples Princess by Flora Harding

TITLE - The People's Princess

AUTHOR - Flora Harding 

BUY LINK - Click here

SYNOPSIS - 

Buckingham Palace, 1981

Her engagement to Prince Charles is a dream come true for Lady Diana Spencer but marrying the heir to the throne is not all that it seems. Alone and bored in the palace, she resents the stuffy courtiers who are intent on instructing her about her new role as Princess of Wales…

But when she discovers a diary written in the 1800s by Princess Charlotte of Wales, a young woman born into a gilded cage so like herself, Diana is drawn into the story of Charlotte’s reckless love affairs and fraught relationship with her father, the Prince Regent.

As she reads the diary, Diana can see many parallels with her own life and future as Princess of Wales.

The story allows a behind-the-scenes glimpse of life in the palace, the tensions in Diana’s relationship with the royal family during the engagement, and the wedding itself.

I hadn't read the synopsis before I read this book, so when I started reading it I thought it was just another book about Princess Diana, and I have read many before, but how wrong I was. 

There is obviously some poetic licence taken with this book but a lot is based on fact, having read some of the discussions in a book by Andrew Morton. 

Princess Diana, before she married Prince Charles, was intrigued by a painting in Buckingham Palace of Princess Charlotte; The Queen that never was. She was given a journal written by Princess Charlotte and began to read it page by page. 

So much has been written about Princess Diana and I felt I knew a lot of it, but I knew nothing about Princess Charlotte. I fell in love with her and was mesmerised by her story. So much so that I am going to research her and read more books about her. 

This book didn't always paint Princess Diana in a favourable light, sometimes making her seem like a spoilt teenager, but then at the end of the day, she was a teenager.  However the book was very well written and I love how the author blended the stories of the two Royal Princesses.