A book claiming that Diana knew of a plot to kill her is causing a right royal stir, writes Rosita Boland.
Is there any end to the Diana saga? The Princess of Wales has been dead since 1997, but you could sometimes think you were living in a time warp - she still seems to dominate British tabloids in death just as much as she did in life.
This week, Britain's Daily Mirror ran extracts from A Royal Duty, a book of memoirs by her former butler, Paul Burrell, due to be published by Penguin on Monday. Probably the most meaty piece on the decomposing bone of this latest offering was a letter in Burrell's possession, in which Diana forecast her own death. The letter was dated October, 1996, two months after her divorce, and less than a year before her death.
"This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous . . . X [thought to be a security officer\] is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry," she wrote. There was more: about her low self-esteem, and how paranoid and depressed she was.
The letter, which was to Burrell, is generally accepted to be genuine, and has excited a large contingent of the more gullible in society. Since the reproduction of the letter, several British papers have run stories which explore - yet again - the possibility that the fatal car accident in Paris was engineered. Their explorations were as woolly as a Merino sheep and open-ended as a LUAS finish-date. Murder or accident? You decide! seems to be the red tops' consensus.
However, Diana's letter is not the only part of A Royal Duty which is attracting attention. All members of the royal household sign a confidentiality agreement, but this has clearly not stopped Burrell's revelations. Buckingham Palace contacted Penguin this week and demanded - oops, sorry, requested - to see the book before 100,000 copies arrive in shops on Monday. Penguin sent extracts.
The book quotes from several of Prince Philip's letters to the late Princess, in which he variously advises and admonishes her on the foundering relationship with his son. In 1992, he wrote: "Charles was silly to risk everything with Camilla for a man in his position. We never dreamed he might feel like leaving her for you. I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind leaving you for Camilla. Such a prospect never even entered our heads." He runs down Charles as a feckless man without direction, spirit or brain.
It's not clear whether Philip was using the royal "we" in his letters to Diana, or also speaking for his wife. What is clear from the extracts the Daily Mirror has gleefully printed, is that he doesn't seem to have rated Camilla as a suitable partner for Charles. Nor does he seem to have had much respect for his son. Diana is now dead, but given that Charles and Camilla are very much alive and now unofficially together, this may well cause some embarrassment over the next glass of sherry.
As it happens, lawyers for the Duke of Edinburgh, Farrer & Co, concluded on Wednesday that they could not stop publication of the book, since it did not infringe copyright laws relating to the letters: only extracts were printed, not the full text of the letters. The irony of Philip's public panic in seeking legal action is that there is unlikely to be any meat left to chew on come Monday and the book's publication: tabloids are notoriously adept at filleting every last morsel when they serialise extracts from memoirs.
Paul Burrell reports that, while on duty in Highgrove, he once had a book thrown at him in temper by Charles. Should the two of them cross paths again, Charles may well fire something even more substantial in his direction. Nobody comes out of Burrell's memoirs unscathed, but Charles gets it more than most, portrayed as arrogant, conniving, deceptive, callous and pompous. After the book-throwing incident, he apparently stamped his foot - either in rage or perhaps as an aide memoire - and yelled petulantly: "I am the Prince of Wales! And I will be King!"
So the butler clearly saw a lot while in his long employment for the House of Windsor. Burrell knew Diana even before her engagement, and joined the Highgrove staff in 1988 at her request. When Charles and Diana separated, he moved to Kensington Palace with Diana. He was such a trusted member of her household that when Diana died, it was Burrell who flew to Paris with a cocktail dress, shoes and make-up in which to dress her corpse prior to its arrival back in Britain. He was the sole non-family member to attend her burial at Althorp, the Spencer family home; but his memoirs draw the line at revealing details of the ceremony.
Burrell will get a substantial amount of money for his book: even the most trusted employees of the royal household seem to go to the dark side in the end. Maybe the royals should just pay them better - their employees are infamously underpaid.
It's probably safe to assume that those in Buckingham Palace's employ will not be receiving copies of A Royal Duty as a Christmas gift. Unless of course, Charles happens to throw a copy at someone.