Tina Brown, former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Talk magazines, has in so many ways defined journalism. She is credited with conceptualising a new mix of the long, well-written piece, the shorter, snappy lead-in articles and strong visual support. At The New Yorker in the 1990s, she brought in a generation of writers — among them, Malcolm Gladwell,

Simon Schama, David Remnick and Lawrence Wright — who are today leading opinion-makers. She also, controversially at the time, hired the magazine’s first staff photographer, Richard Avedon. She spoke to Mini Kapoor about her recent and bestselling book, The Diana Chronicles, and her career as an editor.

• Why Princess Diana?

It gave me a prism through which I could look at English society — the aristocracy, monarchy and the press. Aside from the fact that it’s a great human story, but many people have written a great human story. So what I felt I brought to the party was the social history part. It gave me a chance to write about class, how women had changed in the aristocracy, what itwas like to be an upper-class girl in the late 1970s and 80s. I call Diana the last uneducated British girl.

• As you write, she was the first to see the media’s growing power.

Exactly, Diana was a media creation in a way and an extraordinary media interpreter. That’s also what fascinated me as a person who’s lived my life in the media. I call her the tabloid princess in a tiara because she was both a figure of the tabloid papers and a devourer of tabloid journalism. She adored its narrative of rise and fall and and celebrity. And she, of course, became an expert player in the media, as she realised that it was the media that was her power, that she had very little power inside the royal family. I think she also got a lot of affirmation from the media, which she felt she didn’t get at home. What’s the story about me today? Do I look good? It was a bit of fatal attraction, really, which of course ended in her death. The way she manipulated editors was absolutely amazing, but she made the mistake too of believing she was in control by the end. And, of course no one is in control of the media, they turn into a feral beast. She couldn’t understand why it had changed. As soon as she lost the royal family’s sort of protection those paparazzi and tabloid journalists became pretty brutal. They used to, in fact, enjoy upsetting her just to get the picture that was going to sell. Even as she lay dying in that car, the paparazzi were negotiating an exclusive. Ironically, a picture that could not be sold anyway.

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