greer bashes diana

so aussie academic germaine greer has shocked a few people up at the edinburgh book festival by saying negative things about the people's princess. the telegraph mentions this at the beginning of a positive report about the festival:

"At the end of a meet the author session at the Edinburgh Books Festival this weekend, she lobbed a hand-grenade of a remark her audience's way: she'd been thinking about Princess Diana, she revealed - and 'I’ve come to the conclusion that she was a devious moron.' Making a mess of being Princess of Wales was no big deal, she reasoned ('All but one of the Princesses of Wales have come to a sticky end') but to botch up her life afterwards took some doing. As always Greer, who’s been preparing a newspaper article on Diana, knows the kind of furore she’s bound to be stirring with this kind of talk - 'I’m going to have to invest in a bullet-proof vest,' she joked."

the rest of the article is here

other reports are a bit more sensationalist:

"GERMAINE Greer has launched a scathing attack on the late Princess Diana, labelling her a devious moron. The outspoken Australian academic said: "One of the things I have been puzzled by is why her whole life was such a mess. It still puzzles me that she does that no-no thing: she sleeps with married men . . . and this is the angel people want to crown.""

melbourne herald sun

"Germaine Greer's fellow Australians will be choking on their breakfast cereal this morning as they read her latest piece of invective: an excoriating attack on the late Diana, Princess of Wales, whom she describes as devious, neurotic and stupid. In an essay in today's Weekend Australian Magazine, the Melbourne-born author and academic claims that Diana was nicknamed Brian by her siblings after the slow-witted snail on The Magic Roundabout. She also dismisses the notion that Diana was a fashion icon. "She dressed to the same demotic standard of elegance as TV anchorwomen do." In the essay, written to coincide with the impending 10th anniversary of Diana's death, Ms Greer suggests she was partly responsible for her own untimely demise. "The saddest thought of all is that Diana's death may have resulted indirectly from another of her cack-handed manipulations; it is said that she only went to Paris with Dodi Fayed in order to make the heart surgeon Hasnat Khan jealous." Diana had a relationship with Dr Khan after her divorce from the Prince of Wales, and is said to have wanted to marry him."

the indy

hmmmmm ... this is where i know i am really an american because i have never had any interest in the british royal family beyond learning dates for history lessons. my mother is an englishwoman, so they belong to her. not to me. i was visiting in brooklyn when diana died and was back in toronto when she was buried so i have no idea what it felt like to be in london at that time. my main memory is talking to my sister on the phone when she said, "have to go now, the coffin is coming." our parents' flat was on the route from the palace to the cathedral.

if i were to be a bit cynical, i might think this was all a massive pr ploy for greer's latest work about anne hathaway :-)