The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Princess by Wendy Holden

Episode Date: July 4, 2023

The Princess by Wendy Holden https://amzn.to/44rrWl0 The whole world saw Princess Diana step from a gilded carriage for her wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral. But before that fairy-tale moment came a dark and difficult journey.… Bestselling author Wendy Holden explores the astonishing backstory and young adulthood of the ultimate royal celebrity. Britain, 1961: A beautiful blonde baby is born to Viscount Althorp, heir to the Spencer earldom. But Diana grows up amid the fallout of her parents’ messy divorce. She struggles at school. Her refuge throughout is romantic novels. She dreams of falling in love and being rescued by a handsome prince. In royal circles, there is concern about the Prince of Wales. Charles is nearing thirty and the right girl needs to be found, fast. She must be young, aristocratic and completely free of past liaisons. Pure and innocent. Eighteen-year-old Diana Spencer is just about the only candidate. Her yearning to be loved dovetails with royal desperation for a bride. But the route to the altar is perilous. There are hidden dangers. Ruthless schemers. Can Diana’s romantic dream survive?

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Oaks Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the the big show my family and friends we certainly appreciate you guys coming by the big circus tent in the sky where we bring forth the greatest minds the

greatest authors the brilliant uh insights the pulitzer prize winners the the journalists everybody comes on this show the ceos the business people and brings their brilliance and intelligence that makes you smarter on the show and i'm just here being your silly host to tell the jokes and, and I don't know, try and make everything more interesting or less interesting, but the hosts or the guests are the main entree that we have aboard the Chris Voss show. Aboard the entree?

What are we like a train or something? I don't know. Anyway, guys, as always, you know, refer the show to your family, friends,

and relatives. Go to goodreads.com for just Chris Voss, youtube.com, guys, as always, you know, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrissfoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrissfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrissfoss. That LinkedIn newsletter is so hot right now. And also go see us on TikTok. We're over there at chrissfoss1 and the chrissfoss show podcast on TikTok. We're trying to be cool, but I don't know. The kids are looking at us going, you're kind of old, man. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show she's written her newest book and this thing's pretty interesting

uh you may have heard of this uh young lady named princess diana she's very popular especially with the uh with the uh what do they call those uh guys who go out and shoot photography and sneak up on people in the media and Hollywood stuff. Uh, but we'll find out for sure, because I'm sure she knows the term I'm looking for, but, uh, she's very popular and very loved across, uh, uh, uh, I think most people really liked her. Uh, but, uh, she, uh, we have an author, uh, Wendy Holden, a multi-book author is on the show with us today. Her newest book, The Princess, August 1st, 2023 has just come out and we're going to be talking to her about her amazing book and insights to it. Welcome

to the show, Wendy. How are you? I'm fine. Thank you, Chris. It's very exciting to be here. It's very exciting to have you. Thank you for coming on the show. It's an honor. Give us your.net wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs, maybe on social media as well. Yeah, I'm wendyholden.net. That's my website. And I'm wendyholdenauthor on Instagram, which is where I'm mostly posting things. I'm also on Twitter, wendy__holden. There you go, that Twitter.

Yeah. They recently did a thing where they're limiting stuff because I think they broke their algorithm. So that's kind of interesting. You only process like 600 tweets. So there you go. So, Wendy, give us a little bit of a bio on you, if you would, please. Yeah, I was a journalist for 14 years before I became an author. And I've written 20 books.

And most of them or the last, the first 17 were romantic comedies and then i pivoted to historical fiction and i've written three novels about the windsor women um who are the women who really disrupted the house of windsor so the first one was called the royal governess which is about the queen's teacher this lady called called Marion Crawford. Really amazing, interesting story and completely buried for 80 years. And then I wrote The Duchess, which was about Wallace Simpson, who was obviously, as you know, a really interesting woman and a really incredible story, the abdication and so on. And then, as you say, my most recent one is about that ultimate disruptor of the House of Windsor, Princess Diana. Although I'm not really writing about her years as Princess Diana, this novel is about the years before she became Princess Diana.

I was interested in the run-up, you know, how she got there and how it all happened. And it's the most amazing story. There you go. I don't, I, you know i i think there's not a lot written about her prior life exactly exactly exactly that and it was it's such an incredible story because you know the whole um business of of the whole journey to saint paul's cathedral was was so unlikely it was so chaotic it was so contrived and manipulated. And the only person really who believed it was a romance was Diana

and everyone else was, you know, it was all quite heavily, yeah, manipulated, I would say. But the reasons why and the people who were doing it are also different and for such different reasons, uh, that it made it just the most fantastic ensemble, um, you know,

cast of characters, all of whom were up to different things, but ultimately pushing these two people together. So it was just the most fascinating story to, to, to, to write, to novelize.

Yeah. The, the whole, uh, Royal thing seems to be quite the machine. Yeah, exactly. Royal and inherent. And I think people kind of got the gist in watching her

that she seemed to be the odd man out. She seemed to be like the normal person and everybody else is running the machine and the operation of the royal family. Yeah, I think that's right. And, of course, the thing about her story, the operation of the royal family. Yeah, I think that's right. And of course, the thing about her story, the most sort of the fundamental fact is that she was so incredibly young.

She was just a kid, you know, she was only a teenage girl and she was in the middle of this very sophisticated and very ruthless setup that was pushing them all in this particular direction. And she was happy to go along with it because you know she she really really thought Charles was hot stuff and she really really wanted to marry him but um it was it was and then when she eventually found out that

it wasn't all that it seemed it was a bit too late but I was fascinated by the contrast of her story the way that ultimately what we saw on the day of the royal wedding was not just a little bit different from the reality it was the complete opposite because you know this romantic vision was really not the truth at all and I was fascinated by that and the the whole run-up from when she first met him to when she stepped out of the carriage, just such an incredible sequence of events. And, you know, Chris, I didn't just want to write about the sort of sad aspects of it, because obviously, as we know, Chris' story ended in sort of terrible disillusionment and unhappiness.

But before all that happened, before she realised what she'd let herself in for, you know, there were moments of real joy and excitement and fun. And some of my favourite bits to write, some of my favourite chapters were when she was living in London with her flatmates, when she was a Sloan ranger, you know, just having a sort of happy time with, you know, lots of suitable blokes and, and, you know, making spaghetti bolognese suppers and, you know, going to Benetton and buying brightly coloured jumpers and cycling around and just being very normal in that sort of Sloan Ranger kind of way. And she was obviously really happy then, you know, they were all sort of,

you know, the kitchen was always full of steam from the spaghetti there was always someone in the bathroom they were banging on the door borrowing each other's clothes answering the phone you know just loads of just three teenage girls and their goldfish you know living in this flat so I wanted to have a bit of that you know I was interested in in in that sort of side of it too and how that all came to a sudden end you know when she became engaged and that was when she moved into buckingham palace and that was it really there you go so do you just cover a period of her youth before she gets married because you you did a historical fiction novel correct yeah yeah exactly well yes mean, I wanted to look at the, as far back as I could. So I begin with the school days and then, and the moving around from, I mean, she grew up in Norfolk. She lived in a place on the Sandringham estate, actually, a house on the Sandringham estate where the Queen lived, where the Queen was at Christmas and Easter and so on. And this is where she first met Charles. She used to be invited to birthday parties for the young princes.

And it seems that the first time Charles and Diana clapped eyes on each other was when Princess Di, well, obviously Diana Spencer, as she was then, was hiding behind a curtain with the five-year-old Prince Andrew during a game of hide-and-seek. And Prince Charles came walking into the room. He was 18, but wearing a suit and tie as he obviously was always being quite sort of buttoned up and he drew aside the curtain and sort of found them and that was the first time they saw each other so and you can just imagine the sort of giggly little girl or shrieking as the curtain

was pulled back and and that was that I did obviously that wasn't love at first sight that was just the first time they saw each other. But it's quite fun to think that that was the first encounter. And then she met him a few years later when he came to shoot for a shooting weekend at her father's estate when they'd moved to Northamptonshire

to the estate there. And yeah, so it was just fun to imagine, you know, what those scenes were actually like because that's what i like you know i like to think what was it like to be there what did they look like what did they say you know um so yeah lots of that sort of detail there you go so why did you decide to make it a historical novel or historical fiction as opposed to you know doing a biography yeah a biography sort of well actually chris it's because nobody else has written a novel about princess diana and there are loads and loads of biographies and it's just more interesting for me i mean i'm a novelist

i'm not a biographer and i wanted to novelize fictionalize everything that i all the best bits that i'd found in biographies and just fill them in with my imagination because obviously there there are lots of things that you won't find in a biography but it's quite easy to to imagine what it must have been like so um yeah so that's why i did it and that's what i do with the other books too and also you know i i if if you have your own idea about um what a character is like and what the real story is, you can use biographies to frame your theory. I mean, for example, with Princess Diana, one of my main themes in The Princess is that she was completely obsessed with historical fiction. As a child, she read endless Barbara Cartland novels.

She absolutely just lost herself in them. And I think she was actually escaping into them after her parents' terrible divorce, which is a really unhappy time for the family, very, very difficult. She was very unhappy about it. It was horrible. Her mother left home.

She only saw her every other weekend. They stayed with their father. He was very unhappy about it. It was horrible. Her mother left home. She only saw her every other weekend. They stayed with their father. He was very depressed. And so it was a sort of strange life. And she escaped from this wonderful romantic figure who was going to rescue her from all her troubles and take her away in a white charger and make her a princess, just like the women in the novels, came from those books. And I think it was because she'd read so much romantic fiction that she was able to see him in that light when nobody else did, really, not even himself. But she just saw him in this way. And it meant that all the warning signs, things that her friends might have said to her, things that members of her family might have said to her about whether this was a good idea.

She was so young. Did she really want to go and live in Buckingham Palace with somebody 18 years older than her sorry 12 years older than her um but she just was completely set on on the marriage and i think that was the reason why you know she completely saw him as this this romantic figure straight out of a novel and it sort of blinkered her to the reality so that was something that obviously you're not going to find in a biography and that was something that I'd except that just in passing because most people will refer to that um obsession with romantic novels as you know something sort of you know pathetic and laughable and juvenile and and illustrative of the fact that you know she wasn't very bright all this kind of stuff

but to me that was really fundamental. It was a really important thing about her because it meant that she, it sort of explained everything that happened in a way that nothing else could. Because, you know, how could she have been so young and have been so willing to marry this much older man who didn't seem to be very interested, but she would have seen it as, you know, the course of true love was always difficult. You have to win your man and there are problems and so on. So she would have seen it all in that light. And most importantly and most interestingly, and this is quite weird from a 2023 perspective,

but in 1979 when the royal family were looking for a bride for charles she had to be various things she had to be an aristocrat she had to be young she had to be protestant she had to be a virgin she had to be completely chased yeah she had to be have no previous liaisons with anybody she had to be completely uh what was the phrase they used completely sort of without a past that's what they that was the euphemism she had to be without a past so the problem was that he was um 30 and he'd he'd had lots and lots of girlfriends and there really weren't very many suitable women left in britain you know there weren't many suitable aristocrats left. And Diana was just about the only one. And one of the most amazing things about her and the reason she was

so suitable was that she was without a past. And I think it's possible that one of the reasons she was without a past was that she had been so obsessed with romantic novels in which the heroines are always chased and they never succumb they never give in to a man they know that you know the reward of true love is chastity and then you're when you're married that's it that's fine which is why they always end in marriage so I think it was that explained that whole sort of strange situation only Diana could have married Charles and they were actually the most unsuitable people in the world for each other but the the romantic novel aspect was fundamental so that was

a good example of something that you wouldn't find in a biography but I was able to develop as a theme in the novel um because I really believe that's one of the most important aspects of her story, which means that Barbara Cartland's novels and romantic novels, which are absolutely ridiculous and have the most absurd plots and the most crazy sounding characters, aren't just silly books. They've had a real effect on the history of Britain because they brought about this wedding, which then went on to, you know, have this kind of colossal effect on the nation and by extension on the rest of

the world. So, you know, so anyway, there you go. And that's brilliant. You know, I think we all kind of saw that too. I mean, we, we kind of saw saw these these two weird individuals you know here's this beautiful young uh princess diana and and this this dude who uh you know he's not he's not uh he's not striking in any way shape or form maybe he was when he was young i don't know hi voksters voss here with a little station break hope you're enjoying the show so far we'll resume here in a second uh i'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com.

Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO. And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. People thought he was really hot when he was young, amazingly. But yes, absolutely.

This must be in England. He was seen as a kind of action man type of figure. When he was rushing around in tight white trousers playing polo, people thought that was great. He sure is an age well, let's put it that way. No, he hasn't really. He hasn't really he hasn't so but you know it's and then i i mean it was it was just so interesting to watch and yeah i mean i think over the years people have

kind of understood the machinery that goes into uh you know keeping the the the looks up or the uh the thing uh but yeah it did seem like a pr sheet sheet of putting her on and bringing her in, and then you just saw how, you know, she was like the odd woman out, odd man out sort of thing, where it's just, you're like, she's not like the others, basically, it was like a Sesame Street thing, you know, one of these things is not like the others. Well, yeah, absolutely, and she always had that quality of, there was something sort of genuine about her, and this had been so eager, there was something sort of genuine about her and this had been so eager to please and most of all, so young, you know, I think she really,

really desperately wanted to make a success of being Princess of Wales and really wanted to please the family, partly because she'd had such a terrible time herself. You know, her family had broken up and she longed for a family. You know, she was really desperate to you know be the best possible daughter-in-law the best possible wife the best possible sister-in-law to all these people but of course the Windsors are a completely dysfunctional family and and even more so than her own so it was never going to happen and they all you know they were not interested but um she uh thought that it was uh you know that it was going to be the answer to all her problems.

But it was actually just the start of that. You know, it's funny. I'm looking at the crown pictures because I pulled up Diana and Prince Charles. And the Prince Charles in the crown is more creepy looking than the original Prince Charles. So that's just my opinion. But no, this has been a this has been a major thing of intrigue uh i think a lot of people love diana i think they saw her for uh just the humanness of her and like i said you know her in contrast the menagerie of of the

of this this sort of weird family that you're just, like you mentioned, they kind of have some issues. I imagine after, I don't know, how long have kings and queens been reigning there over in England? Oh, you know, about a thousand years or so. Yeah. A little bit longer. Half the family's been bred or something.

She had to find a Protestant and that's just crazy, man. He had to find a Protestant. Yeah, that's to do with the law. There find a Protestant? That's just crazy, man. He had to find a Protestant. That's to do with the law. There's a law? Yeah, there's a law. Do you not know this, Chris? What's the matter with you? I mean, look,

we're Yankees over here. We left you guys and said... I don't think most people in Britain know this, Chris, to be honest with you. And I think they care even less. But there is an an act of parliament, a law, which means that Catholics cannot sit on the throne of England. You have to be Protestant. You have to be Church of England.

Because then you become the head of the Church of England. Wow. I was just rereading The Prince by Machiavelli. He talks about some of these popes running around and doing stuff and wars and stuff. So I imagine there was some sort of

ancient medieval whatever. Do you cover in the book when she marries Prince or beyond when she marries Prince Charles? No, I don't cover the wedding itself, although I'm interested in the whole run up to it. That might be a book too. Yeah, yeah.

One of the things that's interesting, one of the reasons I got interested in the whole story to start with, I was looking at the timeline and I realized that Diana was and Charles were engaged at the end of February 1981 but they didn't get married until the end of July and she moved into Buckingham Palace at the end of February after the engagement was announced so she was there for nearly five months and I started to wonder about what on earth had happened during that period. I was trying to imagine this 19-year-old girl in this huge palace and sort of rattling around for five months before the wedding and what on earth she did and what was going on. Because obviously outside in the world, people could talk about nothing else. They were obsessed

with her. There were endless articles, endless programs articles endless programs endless everything but in fact for her it was a sort of vacuum she was in the middle of all this but there's nothing happening I think she'd hoped that the family would take her in and show her you know how to wave how to dress all this stuff but nobody did anything at all and she was more or less left alone and um that was the point at which she started developing her bulimia and and so on and in fact um she was so lonely and it was so sad and she was so young that some of the footmen took pity on her and brought her mcdonald's from you know the nearest one at victoria station yeah it was really sad and you know she bonded down to the post office room in buckingham palace

and start opening some of the presents that came in and um you know she she it was it was just a really sad period so i sort of worked my way back from there and i was sort of thinking so what did she do and what was that like and then and i sort of back from there back from there and i was always really interested in that really horrible suit she wore to be engaged in because she was so young and she wore this truly terrible blue suit which was really stiff and really old-fashioned and so i wanted to sort of think about how did that happen why did she wear such a bad suit and you know so who did she go shopping with what shop was it and as it happened she went shopping with her mother with whom she didn't get on very well and they'd gone to one shop and had a row and they'd ended up walking into harrods and just pulling it off

a rack and so so all these things you know were really fun you won't find those in a biography but they are part of a novel because they are part of the build-up and she kept whenever she went to her to see her designers these two young designers that she just sort of picked from a end of year show from st martin's college they just really young designers that she just sort of picked from a end of year show from st martin's college they just really young designers had never done anything like this before but she could liked them and uh when every time she went to see them she got thinner and thinner and thinner and they were pulling the dress in because she was losing so much weight but also they would tell her all these mad things that were happening to them that the press were trying to find out what color the dress was and and you know what kind of material it was from and made

from and so they were the they were called the emmanuels the the designers and so they were sort of doing decoy things like putting um sort of decoy bits of silk into the bins so the press would think it was i don't know purple or you know whatever just to just everyone was having to behave in such a strange way because there was so much interest in it covering all their windows with curtains all the time because there were people taking pictures and trying to smuggle things in to to find you know out what the dress was like so she had you know on the one hand she was getting thin and all by herself in in the palace and when she'd go to her designer and find that you know mayhem

was going on outside their shop so such a strange time and she was so young to have to deal with it and no one had had to deal with this before you know that sort of i mean obviously if you were one of the beatles you would have had to deal with it but she was a young girl who hadn't really expected anything like that plus you got people writing ugly things about you you know it's one thing you know when a woman you know is developing and growing up and yeah you know she's she's thinking about her self-image and her body and everything else you have the whole world in there you know they're writing ugly and probably nasty articles about diana where is today and yeah you know you're like yeah like what the hell man like, man? Yeah, that was very difficult. But in fact, she did have an unbelievable amount of press interest, obviously.

But one of her complete streaks of genius, which was a really rare thing for a member of the royal family to do, probably unprecedented, actually, was that she always got on really well with the press. She just knew how to deal with them. Even though she was a kid, she just knew how to do it. And one of the reasons for that, I think, was that she was completely obsessed with, as well as with romantic novels, she really loved middle market tabloids. She really loved the Daily Mail. She really loved that sort of, and The Sun,

and all the sort of tabloidy British papers. She really loved them. And so she kind of knew what they wanted because she was one of their readers, you know, so she knew what they were after. She knew what they were like and she wasn't really frightened of them in the way that Prince Charles would because he only read the Times or what have you. So, you know, she got on with them right from the beginning and she would help them. You know, if they wanted a photograph, she would go down and post for them because then they could go home for Christmas or go home for dinner. Or, you know, she would just she kind of they develop this team teamwork with them. But at the very beginning, she was no fool. I mean, she was very sharp.

She was a sharp person. I mean, she's often written off as a kind of idiot or not a very bright person but she was a very bright person very clever very funny person just not particularly academic but you don't have to be academic to be clever so she did this really clever thing when when the press were first on her case she was at balmora with prince charles and he was fishing he was standing on the river up to his you know thighs in rubber um in fishing and he was fishing. He was standing on the river up to his, you know, thighs in rubber, fishing. And she was sitting on the bank, as his girlfriends were expected to do, just sort of admiringly watching him.

And these press men were crawling behind her through the undergrowth with their telephoto lenses because they'd spotted that she was there. They wanted to take a photograph. At that stage, no one photographed her and um she had a compact mirror and she was watching them from behind you know through her with her compact mirror and so she knew she could see them but they didn't know that she could see them and at the moment they were just about to get a picture of her she got up and she ran into the

woods and all they got was a photo of her backside and that was it so but you know so she so there was a kind of mutual respect you know they didn't use so they had to realize that she was um onto them she knew what they wanted and obviously later on that all changed but at the very beginning it was a it was a team effort and to an extent it the press was so in love with diana they thought she was so great that i think they actually forced the wedding you know there were lots of other people who wanted the wedding to happen the queen mother wanted charles to marry her there were various courtiers and palace servants who wanted it to happen too but the press really wanted this wedding to happen

because they loved diana she was total sales gold with newspapers so you know they they really did everything they could to to get this marriage off the ground and of course they succeeded there you go and tons of palace intrigue and and, absolutely. And she really seemed to master the press, especially in her later years. Because, you know, between mastering fashion and mastering manipulation. But I remember the crazy stories of them. Yeah, jumping out of bushes to photograph her, the paparazzi. Oh, God, absolutely. All the craziness that she had to kind of endure.

But she seemed to hold it with a lot of class and then seeing her do her charity. Anything more you want to tease out in the book before we go? Oh, let me think. I think I've covered quite a lot of it, Chris. I mean, I just really would like to get across the fact that this is a book about Diana

before she became Diana, you know, and the story of her childhood and and her school days and and her friends and this and this I think the other thing about it was that it was it this is this is a sort of snapshot of snapshot sorry of Britain in 1980 which is a time when it was really on the cusp of enormous change so you know all this medieval stuff this sort of search for a virgin bride was happening in the context of you know social breakdown you know it's people there were riots there was unemployment you know Britain was in a complete mess and yet this story was was happening right in the middle of it. And so a few days after the royal wedding and the carriages and the big dress and the St. Paul's Cathedral and the bells and all the rest of it,

you know, there were kind of riots in the inner cities and it was all happening at the same time. just a moment in time when this girl from a particular type of British family sort of came up. What can I say? It was just when sort of past meets present in a way that it hasn't really, you know, that was sort of the beginning of a complete change, which we're still living with, I suppose. But anyway, that probably doesn't make much sense. But she was a sort of, in some ways, she was a girl from, she could have been born at any time from the 18th century to the 20th century. Her background was really, really, really old-fashioned.

And she was actually, despite the fact that we see her as a modern person and a person from the 1980s, she was actually, her education and her upbringing were really like something from the 1930s. They were really old fashioned. You know, she grew up at a time when nothing much was expected of girls, aristocratic girls. You know, they weren't even sent to very good schools. All the money went on the boys' education. But people like Diana, one of the reasons why she didn't do very well at school was that the school wasn't very good schools all the money went on the boys education but people like diana one of the reasons why she didn't do very well at school was that the school wasn't very good you know and girls like her were expected to marry well they were expected to you know have children

and you know it was there was not a lot expected but she had this romantic vision which made all that palatable and possible for her and the great tragedy was was that all she wanted was was to be loved you know she wanted love she wanted a happy family that stayed together and all lived in the same place you know she wanted her children it was really simple you know but she ended up becoming the most famous woman in the world but it wasn't actually what she'd ever wanted and it wasn't what she'd expected you know she'd wanted she thought finch charles was the man for her because she loved him she really loved him and that's why you know in britain the the the

book set is called a love story you know it says the princess a love story because it was a love story she was really really in love and um but you know it didn't work out so it's it's terribly sad um but also really really really interesting and i think a time capsule because only a certain girl at a certain time could have seen the world in quite that way and the fact that it happened to be d and she happened to marry Prince Charles, and it had this colossal effect, which we're still living with. The consequences of it are still playing out with Harry and William and what have you. So it's an amazing and consequential story. Yeah, and it's still intrigued today.

Yeah, people. totally. And still, and still, every time I go to the, every time here in America, when I go to the store and there's the, there's the gossip rags on the thing.

I mean, there's always one about Diana or her profile on her, you know, and Harry, Harry and Megan, you know, that story is, is,

is, is so obviously connected to, to, to Diana and everything that's, that story is so obviously connected to Diana and everything that happened. These two boys living with the consequences of their parents' divorce. And they've had tricky lives. And it's all very dramatic. And the story goes on and on and on. But it began with her and that wedding and, you know, everything that happened afterwards.

So, yeah. Well, it's going to be interesting to read and it'll be out August 1st, 2023. I can't believe we're already in August. July. Yeah.

Yeah. There you go. I'm still getting used to, I'm still in February. Yeah. There you go. Well, Wendy,

it's been wonderful. You have in the show, give us your.net and other places you want people to find you on the inter There you go. Well, Wendy, it's been wonderful you're on the show. Give us your.net and other places you want people to find you on the interwebs, please. My website

is wendyholden.net and my Instagram is wendyholdenauthor and my Facebook is wendyholdenauthor and my Twitter is wendy underscore holden there you go there you go well wendy it's been wonderful to have you on the show thank you very much my pleasure thank you for

having me chris thank you for coming and uh it's just such a great story to yeah you know i think i can't think of anybody who hates diana i mean no no so wonderful everybody loved her i mean if i ever met anybody i don't like her. I'd be like, what's wrong with you? There you go. What a great story. And this is an opportunity to find out what made Diana Diana. She didn't just appear.

She came from a real place with real people and had real experiences. And this is what formed her. That's what my book's about. How she stepped out of that carriage at St. Paul's and everything book's about. How she got to how she stepped out of that carriage at St. Paul's and everything that led up to it. There you go. A romantic story for all the ages. Pick it up wherever

fine books are sold, folks. The Princess, August 1st, 2023 by Wendy Holden is going to be coming out soon. Pre-order it so you can get all the you can be the first one on your block to read it or your book club. Anyway, thanks everyone for tuning in. Be good to each other.

Stay safe and we'll see you guys next time.