Remarkable Similarities between
President Reagan's and Diana's Astrologer (1997)

Remarkable parallels between the 'Royal Astrologers'


Penny Thornton author of "With Love from Diana"


Joan Quigley author of "What does Joan say?"

• Both astrologers offered sound advice based on the charts to their high profile clients, Diana, Princess of Wales and Nancy Reagan, wife of US President Ronald Reagan. This counsel subsequently became instrumental in shaping the most successful and redeeming features of their lives.
  • Penny's advice to Diana was to ease the pain of her unhappy childhood and an unfulfilled (unrequited) marriage by self-less and compassionate work.
  • Joan advised Reagan (via Nancy) to forget branding the Soviet Union as the 'evil empire' and that he and Gorbachev had good synastry. In the event, this advice may have been instrumental in softening the President's hard line and the resultant opening up of the Eastern Bloc
• Both Penny and Joan got their commissions through social contacts.
• Penny and Joan even look quite similar with blond quaffed hair and something of the air of a Princess about them.
• In both cases, the roles of the astrologers were leaked by third parties and not the astrologers:
  • Donald Regan, who had been chief of staff for the Reagan administration until his resignation, published the revelations in his memoirs, For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington (1988).
  • Lady Colin Campbell, a former courtier, published Diana's involvement with astrology in her book Diana in Private: the princess nobody knows (1992).
• When Nancy Reagan and Diana falsely denied the role of their astrologers when news of it became public, both astrologers felt betrayed by the lack of public support.
• Quigley and Thornton were then put in an impossible position. With their supposed roles in the public domain, but denied by their clients, they were seen as self-publicists and pretenders to the role of 'Astrologer Royal'. This put them under huge pressure from the Press and the public.
• Both waited many years before eventually confirming their role in print and then went into detail justifying their reasons for publication and 'to set the record straight'.
• In both cases, the astrologers were heavily criticised by other astrologers for publishing. Penny Thornton was stripped of her hard won Diploma from the Faculty of Astrological Studies (London).

Donald Regan (1988) For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington, San Diego: Harcourt Trade Publishers

Lady Colin Campbell (1992) Diana in Private: the princess nobody knows. London: St Martins Press.