If Diana, Princess of Wales, was indeed the most photographed of women (25), then she is surely an essential object of examination for the scholars from a number of disciplines. Her immediately obvious relevance is to studies of the British monarchy and the construction of national identities, to studies of feminisms and the representation of women, and to studies of image culture and the ideologies of the media. Representing Diana is a study that takes as its dominant theme the visual culture of the monarchy and its role in constructing a sense of continuity. It is written from an art historical viewpoint and is driven by questions of how femininity is represented in that culture.

The author has attempted to fill a gap that she locates within British cultural history. In this vein, the utility of the finished work is twofold. First, it goes a way to balance out the visual cultural narrative of Diana by addressing the imaging of the princess as it occurred during her lifetime, rather than her representation in commemorative contexts, the latter having received considerably greater academic attention thus far (14). Second, Colleen Denney's study fits into and completes, as it were, the historiography of British royal women, writing Diana's story in line with those of Queen Victoria, Princess Alexandra, and so on (19). By presenting Diana in this way Denney is able to draw comparisons between the princess and her predecessors to validate the claim that Diana's representation was influenced by a cultural memory of earlier royal women, in particular Alexandra.

The study successfully provides insight into how and why Diana's image was created in the context of her definitive roles of wife of a prince, mother of a future king, charity worker, wearer of beautiful clothes, and, of course, bearer of beauty. The first four chapters, comprising the majority of the book, are organized according to these different thematic roles with an abundance of good-quality images, which, despite needing to be better referenced within the text, are manageable and stimulating.

The discussion addresses the techniques of parody and pastiche as they were employed by the royal family, its artists, and the press in order to conserve Diana within the established patriarchal structure. Denney contends that this operation, based on gender distinctions, is carried out for the means of maintaining tradition, a phenomenon that answers a cultural need for continuity and stability. This is, of course, the generally accepted function of the monarchy as a whole. However, the significance of such a tradition is debatable in contemporary times, and it does seem slightly problematic to assume any authority in images of royalty at the time of Diana.

As Representing Diana is explicitly grounded in art historical objectives (28), its analysis of the images of Diana as compared with those of Alexandra does not deal with questions of dissemination and the vastly different conditions of reception between the two. Denney argues that despite historical specificities, the role of, and consequently the imaging of, a princess is continuous and stable. She uses Alexandra and Diana's visual stories to effectively demonstrate such parallels, but she does not consider the significance to her theory of the cultural differences she acknowledges. For example, the ideological significance of the photograph and its impact on the received meaning of Diana's image are not discussed. While it seems that Representing Diana is lacking in this respect, I do not intend to dismiss it as a relevant work. Its primary intention, to show the workings of a cultural memory in the imaging of Diana, is successfully achieved.

At worst this book might be described as specialist. However, perhaps more accurately, it is a focused study that is suggestive of wider issues. Indeed, despite the principal theme of Representing Diana, Denney's secondary feminist agenda is sited “at the heart of ” the project (31). That is, she is concerned with finding appropriate avenues to experience and theorize female identities in the face of the ambiguity that continues to surround “feminism.” Her words throughout the book are telling of her passionate involvement with this issue, just as my initial reservations about it were linked to the questionable relevance of the monarchy to contemporary women; can studying the imaging of Diana actually help women now (and in the future)—be that a postfeminist or a third-wave feminist era—perceive, express, and define themselves?

In conclusion, Denney states that Diana, at the end of her life, can be used as a model of postfeminism as it is aligned with third-wave feminism (159). Throughout the analyses of the princesses, both Alexandra and Diana are read in terms of feminist theories of empowerment, with the suggestion that their agency as well as their objectification can be located within representations of them. In the examination of post-Charles Diana, which constitutes the final two chapters of Denney's book, the author continues this argument to show Diana's resistance to the patriarchal restrictions placed on her by her image makers and to argue that she had begun to reconstruct the fairy-tale image of her life. At this point Alexandra is dropped as a comparator, and Denney points to contemporary visualizations of femininity, here from popular culture, to contextualize Diana's dialogues in her later life. This section of the study is particularly suggestive of the ways in which Diana's visual culture can be used constructively in discourses on the potentials of feminism, and it would be nice if it were longer and wider reaching in terms of comparative material. However, the overall dynamic of Representing Diana works fairly well, with the initial very thorough examination of traditional semiotic structures setting up the later, perhaps more useful, discussion.

All in all this is a very well researched and contemplated study, which provides a refreshing take on Princess Diana's cultural significance. Denney presents a strong argument with a keenly focused theme, which, if not of interest in its own right, provides a useful platform for investigation into broader cultural issues.