Author: Diana's death banal end to beautiful life

By Belinda Goldsmith

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The former queen of celebrity journalism, Tina Brown, says there is no mystery to the death of Princess Diana even though many people, including one of her sons, still question what happened on that night in Paris 10 years ago.

The former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker said she understood people's reluctance to accept the facts of the princess's death as she covered the transformation of a "shy, blushing mouse" into "a global superstar" for her new book "The Diana Chronicles."

Diana's youngest son, Prince Harry, 22, told U.S. network NBC in an interview released last week that he thought his mother's death would always remain a mystery.

But Brown, 53, who spent two years researching the princess and interviewing 225 people for her book, said there was no mystery, just a car crash with a drunk driver.

"I understand why people don't want to accept the facts of her death, perhaps even including Harry," she told Reuters in an interview in her elegant, three-story Manhattan home where she lives with her 79-year-old husband, Harold Evans.

"There is something incredibly almost unbearable of the idea that someone so special, so beautiful, so young, with all her life poised before her, should be snatched from the world in such a banal way -- a lousy car crash in a Paris tunnel."

It will be 10 years on August 31 since Diana's death, but the fascination with the princess, who won over the British nation but whose marriage to Prince Charles failed, has not waned.

'DANCE OF DEATH'