A Royal Duty: The poignant and remarkable untold story of the Princess of Wales

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He started to get more and ingratiating and smug, constantly detailing how close his relationship with Diana became, how many gifts she gave him, how close he was to all her friends. my aim was lady Di biography so dropped it and watched a 3 hours documentary about her life and her interview with Martin Bashir instead. Paul, who was one of the last people to speak with her, hopes to set the record straight for the Princess he so admired and cherished.

Having known personally almost every member of the current British Royal family, his credible insight is much sought after.

I think the emotional dependence on both Paul's and Diana's side was way too big and that was the problem. most would assume the book would be about princess diana (the cover most definitely leads you to believe it) but it’s about her butler (paul burrell) and his life, before and after her. Considering that this is the only volume of Diana revelations to have been written by a still-ardent Diana admirer, one explanation for the royal family's unusually vigorous response is that it is even stupider than anyone had imagined. Burrell's exalted sense of duty, as keeper of the Diana flame, might even provide the excuse for the release of more prince-relatedtittle-tattle from his decades of invisibility. I decided reluctantly to tell what I know to be the truth because I firmly believe that someone has to stand in the Princess' corner and fight for her now that she cannot do so.

it is apparent that mr burell intended to sell HIS biography making use of his publicity regarding his relationship with diana. Sly girl, with that reference to her late great uncle, the king who abdicated and got exiled to France over his love for a fellow nazi sympathiser enthusiast, Wallis Simpson. The Queen, revealed elsewhere, is a great deal more in touch than people realise as one of her best friends is the working class lady who rose to be her ddresser (and seamstress and dress designer) and when in Windsor pops out for afternoon tea and telly with her most afternoons. Although the book's title and cover makes it seem like the focus will be primarily on the Princess of Wales through the author's eyes, readers end up being treated to three different biographical views in one - the autobiography of the author Paul Burrell and biographies of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana (and her family) during his time as footman and butler, respectively.

In this instance, her taking the butler into her confidence and allowing him to have access to personal papers etc, came back to bite him, when he was accused of stealing personal items that had belonged to Diana.

Mr Burrell hasn't diffused all the mystery surrounding the princess' legacy either, because he dropped many hints of secrets he is keeping for her.

I think reading this book in 2014 gives me a different perspective than if I had read it upon publication.

Another is that it has been stung, as it has not been since the horror of Crawfie's The Little Princesses, at the below-stairs effrontery of the whole thing. This book is an autobiography about Paul Burrell, the butler of Princess Diana, one of the most influential women of our time. He admits several times that he was a crappy husband and father, because he spent so much time with Diana. Prince Charles comes out of it worst, as babyish, bereft of self-control and quite incapable, when it comes to Burrell's arrest, of establishing where his own family's best interests might lie (in soothing the butler, not throwing him to the police). His wife should be proclaimed a saint for not leaving him even after the princess almost rejected her entirely and didn't speak to her for a year (while her husband did nothing to mend the situation).

Still, strewn through Burrell's disorganised, often flaky memoirs - part therapy and part history, part gossip and part eulogy - are treasurable descriptions of the domestic life of the weird and helpless Windsors. Burrell became Diana's confidant and his unique perspective casts new light on the Princess of Wales and the events that would shape her life and the lives of those around her. From his time as footman to the Queen, who has senior servants to enforce her household's petty despotism, Burrell offers only affecting episodes designed, like Crawfie's effusions, to show our fairminded and dutiful monarch in a yet more gracious light.