EXCERPT
JUNE 11, 2007 12:00 AM
Diana's Final Heartbreak
Princess Diana emerged from her divorce with a new style, a new crusade (banning land mines), and a new love, Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, whom she hid from the press for 18 months. But, as Tina Brown chronicles in this excerpt from her new book, Diana's superstar status—and her emotional scars—drove away the man she hoped to marry, sending her into the spiral that would lead to Paris.
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On July 15, 1996, in a shabby little room at Court Number One, Somerset House, it took all of three minutes to dissolve the marriage of the century. H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and H.R.H. the Princess of Wales, neither of whom was present, were listed as Couple No. 31. Somerset House is less than a mile from St. Paul's Cathedral, where, on another July day, a dashing prince had waited at the altar for the shyly smiling 20-year-old bride in the billowing ivory taffeta wedding dress.