Former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, British-born writer and editor Tina Brown had the Midas touch when it came to increasing circulation at those storied magazines. Since then she has hosted a talk show and started her own magazine, Talk, which didn't survive, and authored "The Diana Chronicles," about the life and death of Princess Diana.

Ms. Brown, who is now a U.S. citizen, will open this year's Drue Heinz Lectures tonight at 7:30 in the Carnegie Music Hall (412-622-8866 for more information).

Q: You have said that Diana as a global celebrity changed the media, so how much did the media attention change her?

A: The media changed Diana a huge amount. She really grew up, evolved and re-created herself in the media's image. She became, in the course of it, immensely media savvy and ultimately learned how to manipulate the media. Ultimately, of course, she couldn't control the media, and she was destroyed by the media.

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Q: Do you think she became addicted to the attention?

A: I think it really was more about seeking validation from the attention. You know, her private life was so sad and so depleted and so lacking in any real consolation. In the end the media became the place she turned for encouragement for praise and for sort of reassurance.

Q: Did you know her personally?

A: I did, yes. I first met her when I was editor of Tatler. I first got to know her when she was engaged to [Prince] Charles. Six weeks before she died in July of '97 I had lunch with her for three hours, just her and me and Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, at the Four Seasons. She talked about her hopes and fears and the things that she was worrying about.

Q: Did you feel any guilt about exposing her in the book for who she really was?

A: No, I think that Diana at this point is a historical figure. I talked to 250 people who knew her intimately, many of her closest friends. They knew that I had a connection to her.

Q: You said you interviewed 250 people for the book -- so how did you find out they [Prince Charles and Princess Diana] had sex only every three weeks?

A: Well, I mean, I talked to people who knew Diana, who were her confidants. A lot of things she said herself, don't forget. Diana was the first person to break her own privacy in a very dramatic way when she told Andrew Morton all her heart secrets. Diana wasn't really reticent about talking about her private life. I mean, when I had lunch with her at the Four Seasons she talked about her private life right away. It wasn't me that asked her. She went right in immediately on her marriage and how let down she felt and how betrayed and how much she longed to meet a guy and how she couldn't because men found her full of the baggage of her celebrity. So Diana was someone who had a very confessional streak.

Q: Do you think she loved Dodi Fayed, who died in the car crash with Diana?

A: I think for Diana it was a big holiday romance. I think she was extremely angry that Prince Charles had given the 50th birthday for Camilla [Parker-Bowles] at Highgrove. She felt humiliated and angry and alone. She said to me then, "I dread August because the kids go off to Balmoral." There is no doubt in my mind that it was a heady summer that would have ended with the fall leaves.

Q: Do Princes William and Harry like their stepmother, Camilla?

A: They do like her now, yes. They are young men now, and they really want their father to be happy. They are really devoted to their father, and they see Camilla as making him happy and keeping him calm and keeping him from getting depressed, and they like her for that.

Q: How would you change the way celebrities are covered today?

A: I think the volume of it has become just wearing. What I don't like is the way celebrity has infiltrated the political and public realm. It's crazy. We should be talking about what they are doing, not how they seem or their relationships or their kids and all that. It gets me irritated.

Q: What about the value of gossip -- when is it good and when is it destructive?

A: Gossip will always be with us. People have always loved gossip. I personally never ever publish anything that I don't think I could corroborate. I'm starting a new news site right now, and I will absolutely apply those same values to anything I put out now. The volume and velocity of [gossip] now is what is scary. During the French Revolution the stuff they wrote about Marie Antoinette quite frankly was far worse than anything that we would even think of publishing today, but it was an underground pamphlet.

Q: Speaking of under, what was your play "Under the Bamboo Tree" about?

A: [Laughs.] It was a comedy about a mistress and a married couple. It was a play I wrote when I was 21 and it won the Sunday Times Drama Award. It kind of got me a lot of attention, and I was in fact going to stay writing plays but was sort of lured into journalism and never looked back. [Laughs again.]

Q: What is the Web site you are launching?

A: It's called The Daily Beast, and it's launching in three weeks. I am a partner in the site with Barry Diller's company, IAC. It's news and original content.

Q: Both your parents had successful careers in the film industry. Did you feel you had something to live up to?

A: You know, I came from a very creative household. It really wasn't so much about living up, just absorbing that atmosphere at home. I always had that view about life as material. I always saw everything as material, everything as content.

Q: What about your own celebrity -- have you enjoyed it?

A I'm always delighted when the things I do take off. Obviously that brings with it acclaim. The downside of acclaim is when it doesn't go well the spotlight is just as much on you as it was before. I mean, don't do stuff that puts you out there and then crawl into a cave if things go badly.