Opes and Haspirations of a Putative Princess
As shown by extracts from her diary, edited by a person or persons unknown, the orthographically challenged ‘Princess Diana’, also known as Diane and Dina, was a lady of contradictions.
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Opes and Haspirations of a Putative Princess
As shown by extracts from her diary, edited by a person or persons unknown, the orthographically challenged ‘Princess Diana’, also known as Diane and Dina, was a lady of contradictions.
Unable to pass the simplest of academic examinations, she was not devoid of intelligence; capable of great love and generosity, she hated her husband’s mistress with a profundity that could express itself in words and gestures of the crassest meanness; born into a privileged stratum of Britain’s class-ridden society, she was, to her credit, while clearly rejoicing in her status, not averse to befriending people of the humblest origins; and while oddly infatuated with her queen, whose position as head of the state she seemed to covet, she was subject to the most subversive of anti-monarchical feelings.
But who, in fact, was she?
Peter Royle is an author who has lived in different countries and worked in various genres. He has published books and articles on Jean-Paul Sartre and other literary, political and philosophical subjects in both English and French, as well as a novel entitled My Mother-in-Law’s Murder. He has written several plays, including The Kaffir Killer and The Atom Who Yearned to Be a Molecule, which have been performed by professional and university groups.
Reviews of this title
This book is not a biography, autobiography or memoir! It's a novel and it's very interesting, funny, insightful and analytical on a wide range of topics. It's a chronicle of someone’s attempts to find themselves with the help of a well-educated friend: "I looked at him quizzically, fluttering my eyelashes until I felt I could fly up to the sky," she says as their inquiry begins. The diary contains the "ubiquitous misspellings and semantic infelicities" typical of a writer who was "unable to pass the simplest of academic examinations" as she later discovers, "It's clear that you have to be a philofficer to know who you are". And, as it turns out in the novel, that's true: there's nothing like a little guidance from Kierkegaard, Hegel and Sartre for self-discovery - along with some colonic irrigation, of course. Or as "Diane, Diana, Dina" puts it: "... thesis, antithesis, synthesis tra la la". In the end, Diana finds that "... to become truly a person of integrity one must be as open as civilised norms will permit, empathising with one's fellow human beings and not simply reacting to them as an enclosed self". Perhaps we could call this a self-help book for, including the greatly interesting commentary on everything from the durability of the British Monarchy, to Christianity, Dostoievsky, Hippolytus, homosexuality and the lilies of the fields, it's a very edifying read!
Night Blooming (Buckhorn, Canada)
This astonishing work is a tour de force, a must-read for anyone interested in the British monarchy. The 'collator's' name, which is happily not a pseudonym, should be his fortune. He has such a sublime instinct for royal farce that if the waters of Buckingham Palace are not roiled enough already, his work can be expected to roil them still further. The book is, however, no mere exploitation of the late Princess Diana's tragedy. It is a romping fantasy, a glorious mélange of scurrilous puns, rollicking spoonerisms, scatological and sexual buffoonery, literary allusion, and etymological learning, all combined with serious philosophical and psychological insight, often worthy of Lewis Carroll at his best (and occasionally of Henry Miller). Its central figure is portrayed with humanity and compassion. She endears herself as an intelligent, though deeply conflicted person, who learns from a convenient, professorial lover -- with barely credible speed -- to follow the lingo of Freud and Sartre, to reflect philosophically on morality, religion, history, politics and economics, and to achieve a mature understanding of herself before the terrible night of August 30, 1997.
How much longer the British monarchy can survive under current conditions is questionable. The tragi-comedies of our generation may well be reenacted in the next, unless fundamental reform of the institution, or at least of its relations with the media and the Church of England, can be effected. Had Royle published such a work about an 'icon' in a less tolerant era or culture than ours, he could have been charged with lèse- majesté or incurred a fatwah. Instead, he might now provoke the British Government to set up a badly needed inquiry into the whole institution of constitutional monarchy, a Royal Commission upon Royalty Itself.
Speusippus (Victoria, BC, Canada)
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