THE Prince of Wales's personal assistant and companion to his two sons issued a warning to British newspapers yesterday against printing gossip concerning her relationship with the heir to the British throne.
Tiggy Legge-Bourke (30), was reported to be upset about reports that she and Prince Charles were becoming too close. In a letter printed in the Daily Mirror, her lawyer referred to a "series of malicious lies" circulating in the press.
The letter was published as Ms Legge-Bourke, Prince Charles and his sons, William(l3), and Harry(II), began a skiing holiday in the Swiss resort of Klosters. During a ski trip last year, Prince Charles was photographed kissing Ms Legge-Bourke after she completed a difficult run. Although the prince's staff dismissed it as an innocent gesture, the photo appeared in newspapers around the world.
Salman Rushdie's novel The Moor's Last Sigh has won the Whitbread novel award, judges announced yesterday.
The Moor's Last Sigh is Rushdie's first full-length novel since The Satanic
Verses, the work which brought down the wrath of the Iranian fatwa on him. The tale of a spice dynasty now goes forward to compete with four other category winners for the £21,000 prize of Whitbread Book of the Year. The overall winner will be announced on January 23rd.
French actor Gerard Depardieu was made a knight of the Legion of Honour in the new year awards published in Paris yesterday.
Veteran film director Marcel Carne was appointed a grand officer of the order, as was novelist Henri Troyat.
The bed in which Lenin slept with his lover during his pre-revolution exile from Russia has returned to a more humble life as a simple hotel accessory, the Polish newspaper Kurier Polski reported yesterday.
It said the room and bed the Bolshevik leader shared with Nadejda Krupska in Bialy Dunajec, in Poland's southern Tatra mountains, could now be booked by tourists.
The house Lenin stayed in was a Lenin museum during Poland's communist era.