When you want to pull out the big guns for a newsstand cover, you can’t do much better than Princess Diana (according to “Stolley’s Laws” about which covers sell best, by the legendary founding editor of People Magazine, Dick Stolley, “Nothing is better than the celebrity dead.”)

Vanity Fair plays that card for their big September issue, featuring a cover story poignantly titled in the online edition, “The Grandmother Prince George Never Knew” but with the more sensational “Diana’s True Love” on the print cover.

It’s not about Dodi Fayed, the lover with whom she died, but about Diana’s relationship with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, which ended just before she began seeing Fayed (in a bid to make Khan jealous, according to the story).

As the story notes, a movie titled simply Diana, starring Naomi Watts, also covers the relationship and is based on Diana; Her Lost Love, by Kate Snell, originally published in the UK in 2000 and being released here as a tie-in edition on Dec. 1, (IPG/Andre Deutsch). Below is the UK trailer. The film premieres in London on Sept 5; it is not clear  when it will be released in the U.S.; some sources say it will have an “Oscar season” release, others list the date as Dec. 6. [UPDATE: US release is now set for Nov. 1, 2013]

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 11th, 2013 at 1:23 pm and is filed under 2013 -- Fall, Books & Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.