It has been 10 years since we woke up to the unsettling news of her death. She went with a bang. A tragic accident mired in speculation about cause and conspiracy. A funeral that typified British regalia drawing the world's attention to protocol and tradition by the several instances of its breach. The longest, best-ever written soap opera would not end with a whimper. In reality it would not end.

It is callous to say this but history is always callous because it sees perfection grafted on memories with the supreme optimism of hindsight. Her timing was perfect.

Diana (1961-1997) was 36 when she died. She had reached a point of physical and intellectual maturity exactly between naïve and jaded, between growing up and old. The image of her smile during her last happy weeks is the last memory history will have of her.

Gone is the shy chubby look of the teen girlfriend of the heir to the throne who failed twice to pass her O levels. Gone is the badly dressed English 'Sloane Ranger' in patent pumps, Laura Ashley skirts and high pie-crust collared blouses with strings of pearls. Gone is the transparently manipulative schemer. Gone is the unsavoury association with lesser royals such as Sarah Ferguson. Gone is the perpetually depressed, bulimic, adulterous, scorned wife.

Diana had been all of those things before she became the woman we remember: The best dressed, most glamorous, appealing candidate to the title of most beautiful woman in the world; the indefatigable campaigner for good causes; the woman with the healing touch and delightful smile; the mother of the boy who will be king and the surrogate mother of every orphan on earth; a woman in love who could be happy again and who radiated that happiness in every one of her public appearances.

There are several images of Diana we will never have: Of her growing old; of her in the arms of an Egyptian playboy; of her on holiday while her former husband marries another woman; of her going too far and too deep in political controversy over issues such as landmines and other pacifist themes when her country entered into controversial wars.

The best comparison that comes to mind is with John F. Kennedy. The world still mourns the might-have-beens of his Presidency cut short but any dispassionate, unromantic forecast of an eight-year Kennedy Presidency could reasonably expect many opportunities for an entirely different historical judgement.

This book is but a photo album of that memory we all have. A sanitised biography of the standard tale we all know told by ITN's royal correspondent, accompanies the point of this book: Another pictorial souvenir of the Diana we want to remember. It is also the Diana she would want us to remember. Certainly Diana did not plan her exit from the stage, much as she did not plan a lot of what happened in her life.

But these biographies have something eerie about them as unrelated details are brought together acquiring significance that perhaps they should not have. Aged 12 the pin-up on her dormitory wall was said to have been a picture of Prince Charles. Certainly not every girl who had a picture of handsome Charles on their bed-stead would proceed to marry him. But this one did.

The other coincidence that suggests prescience for those who wish to look for it was a speech she gave four years before she died: "When I started my public life 12 years ago, I understood that the media might be interested in what I did. I realised then that their attention would inevitably focus on both our public and private lives. But I was not aware how overwhelming that attention would become."

She would die as she had lived her 16 years of public life, under the relentless flash bulbs that she so enjoyed and feared.

She lives on in the many times her quintessentially beautiful face was photographed. This book collects but a few of those smiles, compliments of ITN, a news organisation like many others that spent 16 years capturing her looks for posterity and were shocked to be interrupted so suddenly 10 years ago.

• Mr Delia is a graduate of international relations and comparative politics. A review copy of this title was provided by ARCO Distributors.

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