In part, the frenzy was whipped up by shrewd publishing tactics. London-based Bloomsbury Publishing, which reportedly offered $4.5 million for the manuscript after four rivals turned it down, is said to have rushed the book into print in an effort to capitalize on Prince Charles's confession of adultery with Camilla Parker Bowles—and to preempt author Andrew Morton, whose Diana: Her New Life is due next month. Just before the book was ready, booksellers were told to expect delivery of an explosive work on the Windsors but were given no details about its content—a move reportedly calculated to head off a Palace injunction.
Thus, readers who snared the book on Oct. 3 could savor the shockers for the first time. They had never heard Hewitt's claims that Di had contemplated leaving Charles for him or that the two had sported at Highgrove, the Waleses' country home, while Princes William, 12, and Harry, 10, were in the next room. They could also marvel over Pasternak's portrait of Diana as a love-starved bulimic who loves to "let [her] passion rip"—and who dreams about Hewitt's "strong physique" as she lies in the bath. Alternately fragile and self-confident, she musters the courage to invite Hewitt to Charles's 40th-birthday ball and to appear at boîtes like San Lorenzo with her lover at her side.
But if booksellers are delighted with Princess in Love, others are appalled. Claiming that both the Waleses are an embarrassment, MPs are calling for a speedy end to the marriage. Said one privy councillor: "I don't see how this can go on. It is making the royal family a worldwide laughingstock." A Palace spokesman dismissed the book as "grubby and worthless," and Diana herself was said to be "bitterly hurt," in the words of a senior courtier.