COMING SUMMER 2027
DIANA
LAST HOURS IN PARIS
A historical investigation grounded in primary sources, official British and French investigations, archival material and previously unpublished first-hand testimony.
READ THE INVESTIGATION
A different look at Diana’s final weeks
Thirty years after the death of Princess Diana, the story of that night in Paris remains one of the most extensively documented—and most misunderstood—events of the twentieth century.
Diana: Last Hours in Paris goes back to the evidence to reconstruct the final weeks of Diana’s life, from her time aboard Mohamed Al Fayed’s yacht Jonikal to the events of 30–31 August 1997, and the extraordinary media storm that followed.
This is not a conventional biography, nor an attempt to prove an assassination theory. It is an investigation into what can actually be established—and into how facts, rumours and commercially driven narratives became intertwined after Diana’s death.
First-hand accounts never before published
At the heart of the book are three first-hand accounts from people who were directly there.
Captain Luigi Del Tevere, commander of the Jonikal, spent Diana and Dodi’s final summer at sea with them. His testimony provides an insider’s view of their time aboard the yacht, their relationship, the paparazzi pursuit and the role played by Mohamed Al Fayed.
Cristiano Iacopini, the yacht’s chef, offers another perspective from inside the Jonikal—from the first days of the Al Fayed family’s summer holiday to the final moments before Diana and Dodi left Sardinia for Paris.
And Daniel Bourdon, a French police officer assigned to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital on the night of the crash, provides a deeply personal account of the hours following Diana’s arrival at the hospital and the moments he spent beside her after her death.
Together with official British and French investigations, contemporary archives, forensic evidence and years of original research, these accounts allow the events to be reconstructed from perspectives that have rarely been heard.
Behind the photographs and the headlines
The investigation also revisits some of the most persistent stories surrounding Diana’s final weeks.
How was Mario Brenna able to find the Jonikal and capture The Kiss, the photograph that transformed Diana and Dodi’s relationship into a global media story? Testimony from Luigi Del Tevere and Cristiano Iacopini offers new evidence about how the photographer located the yacht—and about the source of the information that led him there.
The book also follows the extraordinary story of the alleged evidence that Diana was pregnant, tracing the document published by Interviú, its supposed origins and its circulation through the international press.
It examines, too, the much-publicised interview supposedly given by Diana and Dodi to Paris Match—and the contradictions that emerge when the story is compared with witness testimony and the magazine’s own evidence.
What really happened in Paris?
The final part of the book returns to the crash itself: the journey from the Ritz, the decision to use the Mercedes, the paparazzi pursuit, Henri Paul’s condition, the impact in the Alma tunnel and the desperate attempts to save Diana’s life.
It then follows what happened afterwards: the French investigation, Operation Paget, Mohamed Al Fayed’s allegations of conspiracy, and the extraordinary evolution of the stories told about Diana’s death. Operation Paget examined 104 allegations, interviewed around 300 witnesses and assembled more than 600 pieces of evidence.
Rather than adding another theory to the mythology surrounding Diana’s death, Diana: Last Hours in Paris examines how those theories were constructed—and what the documentary and judicial record actually tells us.
The result is the most faithful reconstruction yet of Diana’s final weeks, her last hours in Paris, and the stories that came to define them.