How Charles tried to stop court case that threatened to humiliate Royals
CONTINUING OUR MUST-READ SERIES
The doorbell rang at 6.50 in the morning of January 18, 2001. Paul Burrell, who was asleep, was woken by his wife.
Standing at the door was Detective Chief Inspector Maxine de Brunner and three other police officers. ‘Do you have any items from Kensington Palace in this house?’ Princess Diana’s former butler was asked.
‘No,’ he lied. he was then placed under arrest and the pre-dawn raid on his home near Runcorn in Cheshire began.
What the detectives found was far beyond their expectations. The rooms were filled with paintings, drawings, china and photographs that clearly belonged to Diana, who’d died three-and-a-half years before, and her children William and harry.
‘Oh my God,’ exclaimed de Brunner. In Burrell’s study, she’d just spotted an expensive inlaid mahogany desk inscribed ‘her Royal highness’. ‘how did you get all this?’ she asked the butler.
‘The princess gave it to me,’ he said, collapsing into a chair and beginning to sob.
As the search continued, the police discovered 2,000 negatives. A cursory look revealed Charles in the bath with his children, and many others showing the young princes naked. Other finds included 30 signed photographs of Diana, many empty silver frames, a box containing the princess’s daily personal notes to William at school, and another box of Diana’s more intimate letters to William.
As Burrell’s sobs intensified, an officer shouted from the attic: ‘It’s full of boxes, wall to wall!’
The boxes were wrenched open: inside were bags, blouses, dresses, nightgowns, underwear, shoes, jumpers, suits and hats that had belonged to Diana, including a blue-ribboned hat she’d worn during her visit with Prince Charles to South Korea in 1992. her perfume, de Brunner noticed, lingered on the fabric.
Late that afternoon, officers filled a lorry sent from London with 2,000 items that de Brunner judged had been illegally removed. The princess, she believed, would never have given away such personal material, and certainly not in such quantities.
Nevertheless, a large number of Diana’s possessions remained in the house. But without orders from Scotland Yard either to seize everything that had belonged to the family or to seal the house as a crime scene, there was no more to be done.
‘I want white lilies on my coffin,’ wailed Burrell as he was escorted to the waiting police car. THERE can be few people in Britain unaware of the 2002 trial of Paul Burrell, which was dramatically halted after the Queen had a ‘recollection’.
Nearly 16 years on, however, it appears that a great deal went on behind the scenes that was never revealed to the public.
I have talked to many of the police, courtiers and lawyers who were intimately involved in the Burrell case — before, during and after the trial. Among the most serious disclosures are those relating to Prince Charles — and the attempts made on his behalf to try to stop the prosecution going ahead. Burrell had originally worked for both Charles and Diana at highgrove, then moved with the princess to Kensington Palace, where he was a witness to her extreme moods and secret affairs.
Although married himself, he’d had so many gay affairs with guardsmen that Diana’s chef called him ‘Barrack-Room Bertha’. The public knew none of this, however, when Burrell became a minor celebrity after Diana’s death, appearing on TV shows and even posing for photographers at the Oscars.
News of his former employee’s arrest reached Charles about a week after the police raid. Unaware of the scale of the alleged theft, and knowing that low-paid staff occasionally pilfered small items, he told his assistant private secretary Mark Bolland that Burrell probably did steal some things ‘because they all do’.
Within hours, however, Charles had become more alarmed. After all, police probes into murky palace habits could produce unexpected difficulties.
Soon afterwards, his senior private secretary Stephen Lamport, looking beaten and downhearted, confessed to a colleague: ‘We’ve got a terrible problem with this man Burrell... the Prince of Wales is distraught. The prince will say he gave the things to [the butler] and that Burrell’s actions were all right.’ Lamport’s confidant was unimpressed. even Charles had to allow justice to take its course, he said.
Indeed, the investigation was now well under way. During his second police interview Burrell was asked: ‘Did you tell anyone that you had the property?’
‘No,’ he admitted, insisting that the items — including all Diana’s school reports — were gifts.
Burrell’s solicitor Andrew Shaw, for his part, appeared to think the case would never come to trial.
‘ You’re making a terrible mistake,’ he told Maxine de Brunner. ‘They won’t let Burrell’s secrets be splashed in the public domain. They’ll never let this come to trial.’
In light of what happened subsequently, his comments were not quite as far-fetched as they seemed.
April 3, 2001
ALONG with a Crown prosecution lawyer, Maxine de Brunner arrived at St James’s Palace for a meeting. There was no alternative but to prosecute, they told the Royal Family’s senior officials.
Also present was Charles’s divorce lawyer, Fiona Shackleton, to whom he’d now turned for legal advice. She revealed that Paul Burrell had sent the prince a handwritten letter in which he offered to return some of the items, provided Charles agreed not to support any prosecution. The letter had been returned on her advice.
The CPS lawyer explained that the case could be closed only if Prince William and Diana’s sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale, who together inherited Diana’s property, signed statements to drop their complaints. Shackleton’s view was that Charles could not be party to undermining the legal system. Agreeing to accept the return of some property in exchange for dropping the investigation, she said, would make it look as if Buckingham Palace were participating in a cover-up.
‘It needs to be all or nothing,’ she said.
Sir Robin Janvrin, the Queen’s private secretary, agreed to tell the monarch what had been discussed, and almost certainly did so.
This, of course, would have been the ideal moment for the Queen to recall that she’d allowed the butler to take some of Diana’s possessions for safekeeping. But apparently she didn’t say a word.
As for Charles, he was upset when his own private secretary told him the police intended to prosecute. Who knew what Burrell might say in the witness box? In effect, he was a time-bomb, having witnessed the prince’s secret meetings and phone calls with Camilla while he was married, and Diana’s many rendezvous with her boyfriends.
he told his spin- doctor Mark Bolland to try to navigate a way out of a prosecution.
May 2
The case against Burrell strengthened.
The police had now had time to watch six videos found in Burrell’s home, featuring Diana talking about the most intimate details of her relationship with the Royal Family, her sex life with Charles, and her affair with police protection officer Barry Mannakee.
The tapes had been recorded by Peter Settelen, the princess’s voice coach, who, soon after her death, had asked her private secretary for the return of not six but 16 tapes.
he’d been told: ‘I am advised by Mr Burrell that he has been unable to trace them.’
What had happened, the police wondered, to the missing ten tapes? [Material from Settelen’s six recovered tapes was used in a Channel 4 documentary last year.]
And there was another tape that worried Charles. Kept in a box of Diana’s and now, he believed, in Burrell’s possession, it described the alleged rape of one member of his staff by another of his staff.
July 19
Burrell’s lawyers now issued a warning to shackleton. If Burrell were prosecuted, they said, he would have to describe from the witness box not only details of Diana’s sex life, he might also read out quotes from letters in which Prince Philip had allegedly threatened her. (In fact, the letters were perfectly reasonable, it emerged later.)
Burrell’s lawyers later explained that this was not a threat — the defence was seeking only to protect the royal Family. AT THIS point, the CPs and the police asked for a ‘ victims’ consultation meeting’ in order to obtain the direct approval of Princes Charles and William to prosecute Burrell.
In anticipation of a police visit to highgrove, Charles appealed to Bolland: ‘Mark, this is crazy. You must do something.’ the prince was now willing to do anything to avert a trial, especially with William a potential witness.
Burrell simply knew too much. Would he, for instance, dare to describe Diana’s reported use of cocaine to the court? the best way to avoid a prosecution, ion, Bolland agreed, was s for Burrell to return all ll the property he’d taken. n.
July 24
A TOP- SECRET meeting was arranged between n Bolland and Burrell. over coffee, ee, the butler said: ‘I’m sorry.’
he wanted to let Charles know that he’d return all the property, but insisted on telling him so in person. throughout the 25-minute meeting, the spin-doctor had been appalled by Burrell’s ‘ creepy manner’. the royals’ staff, he thought, were ‘a slimy, weird group with odd relationships’.
later, he reported back to Charles that the butler wanted ‘a big hug and an offer of a job at Balmoral. he doesn’t want to be cast out’.
the prince repeated thoughtfully: ‘he doesn’t want to be cast out.’ A truth occurred to Bolland then about the royals: ‘ No one cares whether Burrell is guilty or not.’
August 3
THAT very afternoon, the police were expected at highgrove. What they didn’t know, Bolland hoped, was that secret arrangements had been made for Prince Charles to meet Burrell a few hours later. But before the police arrived, the spindoctor became suspicious that the plan had been leaked to the police, probably by one of Charles’s own protection officers. the meeting with Burrell must be cancelled, he advised. Charles agreed.
Next, the prince discussed the approach he planned to take with the police. he intended to ask, ‘Does this really matter? Yes, some items may have been pilfered, but just how serious is it? Not very.’
In the event, however, Charles didn’t get round to saying any of this. Instead, he was palpably shocked when the police told him 2,000 items had been seized at Burrell’s home. It was the first time he’d heard the actual number.
‘ he’s taken the lot!’ Charles exclaimed.
After listening to more evidence against the butler, the prince was asked if he supported a prosecution. ‘We’ve got no alternative,’ he sighed. Before leaving, the police asked Charles not to have any contact with Burrell. THE PRINCE was now in a fix. officially, he had to support the CPs’s charge that Burrell had stolen the items but privately, he still wanted the prosecution halted. Another big sticking-point was that Diana’s sister and co-executor, lady sarah McCorquodale, was adamant that the butler should be brought to trial. If she refused to change her mind, there was little Charles could do. Meanwhile, the police confronted Bolland to ask if he’d talked to Burrell. Yes, replied the spin- doctor. his admission confirmed police suspicions. Bolland was then asked to sign a formal statement as a potential prosecution witness. legally, this prevented him having any further contact with the suspect. he was relieved — though he worried about whom Charles would rely on now. Fiona shackleton? Not if Bolland could help it. While he and Charles wanted the prosecution stopped, she had seemed to waver. they could no longer rely on her, he told Charles. As for the prince’s private secretary, stephen lamport, he was ‘weak and tired’. It was all becoming ‘a mess’, Bolland concluded.
August 18
IN AN attempt to avert prosecution, Burrell’s lawyer handed the police a 39-page statement signed by his client.
Among other things, it described the butler’s close relationship with Diana — how he would smuggle her boyfriends into Kensington Palace, cancel public engagements so she could be with her lovers, and provide meals for the princess and her man of the moment.
In addition, Burrell hinted that he’d tell what he knew about Diana’s nocturnal visits around Paddington, where she tried to persuade prostitutes to give up their trade by plying them with gifts.
even the police could see that if Burrell gave detailed testimony about Diana’s sex life in court, the monarchy would be seriously harmed. still, there was nothing in the butler’s statement that undermined the charge of theft. so Burrell was once again interviewed. this time, he claimed that the items found in his house should be seen either as gifts, taken by mistake or handed over to him to be destroyed. he didn’t offer to return anything. there was no mention of any conversation with Diana’s executors, her sons or the Queen about taking items for ‘safekeeping’. At 2.40pm, Burrell was charged with theft. A MONTH later, Burrell’s lawyer wrote to Charles, asking for an audience so he could explain ‘the extreme delicacy of the situation’ if his client had to testify. Charles, who’d taken legal advice, did not reply. the lawyer then sent further warnings about Burrell’s intention to speak about events of ‘extreme delicacy’ and ‘matters of a very private nature’, and how his enjoyment of Diana’s ‘ intimate’ trust would require ‘close examination’ at trial. Again Charles did not reply. this provoked Burrell’s lawyer to threaten to summon the prince as a witness.
February 13, 2002
Yet another statement from Burrell was delivered to the police — this time about a meeting with the Queen.
they’d talked for three hours, he’d said, sitting on her sofa together shortly after Princess Diana’s death. the Queen had told him, he said, that his relationship with Diana was unprecedented. she had spoken about how much she herself had tried to help the princess, and also warned him to be careful — so many people were against Princess Diana, and he had sided with her.
however, the CPs lawyers decided that since Burrell’s statement made no mention of Diana’s property, it wasn’t relevant to the case.
August 27
Burrell’s lawyer again approached the police, insisting that a message be passed on to Charles. his client, he said, was offering to return all the royal items in his possession if the prosecution was dropped.
the message was never delivered, though somehow the prince became aware of the butler’s offer — and hoped it would stop the trial going ahead.
legally, however, that was impossible: the CPs now had sole responsibility for the prosecution.
Nevertheless, Charles ordered his new private secretary, sir Michael Peat, to express his concern about continuing with the prosecution if it was a lost cause.
August 30
ON THE PRINCE’S orders, Peat summoned Maxine de Brunner and another police officer to st James’s Palace. At the outset he directed de Brunner to a low chair so he could look down on her — a higher chair was noticeably moved away — and thereafter spoke only to the junior police officer, roger Milburn. ‘how can you be sure that these items were not gifts?’ he asked Milburn.
Milburn redirected the question to de Brunner. Not persuaded by her answer, Peat was emphatic that the prosecution should be stopped. ‘You have not got enough evidence,’ he said. ‘We want the property back without a fuss.’
Both officers were disturbed by Peat’s performance. In his concern to protect Charles, he seemed to forget that Burrell had actually
been charged with stealing property belonging to Diana’s executors, not the prince. Or that any decisions about the prosecution now had to be taken by the Director of Public Prosecutions, who was sure he could prove Burrell’s guilt.
September 11
This time, Peat summoned two of Diana’s executors to the palace — her sister Lady sarah and the princess’s former private secretary, Michael Gibbins. Both knew that the initiative for the meeting had come from Charles.
‘The police,’ Peat told them, ‘don’t have enough evidence to mount a successful prosecution and the case must be stopped. There is a risk of acquittal.’ his disdain for Commander John Yates — who was in overall charge of the investigation — and de Brunner and Milburn was obvious, and Gibbins shared some of his doubts.
he also spoke frankly about Charles’s fears that, among other things, Burrell would testify in detail about both Diana’s love life and her anger at the way she’d been treated by the Royal Family.
But it was no good. After two hours of discussion, he’d failed to persuade Charles’s sister-in-law to change her mind.
‘sarah McCorquodale wanted Burrell to get his come-uppance,’ said Gibbins, who was less certain himself about pushing for the case to go ahead. ‘ she was convinced that he had made away with the property. she wasn’t interested in deals.’
After the meeting, McCorquodale called Maxine de Brunner, with whom she’d built up a working rapport. The trial, she warned the senior policewoman, would be thwarted in some way.
October 14
PAUL BURRELL, aged 44, stood in the dock of Court One at the Old Bailey, accused of stealing 310 items together worth £4.5 million.
Other items taken from his house were not listed because they allegedly belonged to either Charles or William, and neither wished to appear in court as witnesses.
The day’s proceedings made blazing headlines in all the media, raising increasing concern at st James’s Palace.
October 28
JUST after 8.30 that Monday morning, 11 days into the trial, Crown Prosecutor William Boyce was reading his papers in a small room adjacent to the court. he was unexpectedly joined by Commander Yates.
‘i’ve just had a conversation with Michael Peat,’ said Yates, then repeated the private secretary’s exact words: ‘her Majesty has had a recollection.’
On the previous Friday, Peat had explained, the Queen had recalled a meeting five years earlier, soon after Diana’s death. Burrell had come to the palace to tell her about preserving some of the princess’s papers.
‘The Queen agreed that he should care for them,’ said Peat.
Boyce visibly paled. Taking off his wig, he seemed to shrink.
Only by questioning the Queen in court could Burrell’s version of the conversation be rebutted, and that was constitutionally impossible. No reigning monarch could appear in ‘her Majesty’s’ court.
‘That’s the end of the trial,’ was Boyce’s view. Later in the day, Peat told CPs lawyers more about the Queen’s recollection. On the previous Friday, she, Charles and Philip had driven together to st Paul’s for a memorial service for the victims of the Bali bombing.
Driving past the Old Bailey, she asked why a crowd was standing outside. Charles answered that Paul Burrell was on trial. The Queen was apparently unaware that he was being prosecuted.
Then she mentioned that, some years before, Burrell had sought an audience with her to explain that he was caring for some of Diana’s papers, and she’d agreed that he should do so.
What Peat didn’t go into was what had happened afterwards.
After the Royal Family returned from st Paul’s, there had been unusual activity in st James’s Palace. Lawyers — among them Robert seabrook, QC, who’d been advising Charles on the Burrell case — were summoned for a conference to discuss the Queen’s recollection. Peat was told that Crown Prosecutor Boyce should be informed immediately.
Next, sir Robin Janvrin was called. Told about the new evidence, the Queen’s private secretary expressed his astonishment. ‘Oh my God,’ an eyewitness heard him exclaim.
Thereafter Janvrin did nothing, allowing Peat to continue managing the crisis on Charles’s behalf. The reason for that at least was clear to observers inside the palaces: Janvrin wanted no part in the undertaking.
Then something very strange occurred. Contrary to QC Robert seabrook’s advice, neither Boyce nor the CPs was told on that Friday afternoon about the ‘recollection’, and the lack of communication continued through saturday and sunday.
According to palace rumours, however, Peat did tell Peter Goldsmith, the attorney general, that the recollection was a ‘golden opportunity to get rid of this embarrassment’.
early on Monday morning, Peat had finally called Commander Yates to report the Queen’s remarks.
To some in the prosecution and to police at the Old Bailey, the circumstances of the recollection described by Peat lacked credibility.
First, Janvrin, an assiduous official, had been regularly briefed about the Burrell investigation, not least because William and harry were involved. he would certainly have reported the main details of the case to the Queen during their daily meetings.
second, the Queen was known to read the newspapers regularly, and for over a year Burrell’s plight had been widely reported. The trial itself had dominated the front pages for the nine days before her drive to st Paul’s.
Third, it was unusual for the monarch and her heir — who seldom spoke to each other — to travel in the same car, for security reasons. The coincidence that mother and son should have been so publicly united on that particular day while driving past the Old Bailey was one that raised questions.
Fourth, the version offered by Peat contradicted that of others in the palaces.
edmund Lawson, QC, would later explain, in a report commissioned by Michael Peat, that the Queen had in fact been aware of
Burrell’s lawyer threatened to summon the Prince as a trial witness
the ongoing trial and had been prompted by the publicity relating to it to mention her conversation with Burrell to the Duke of Edinburgh.
According to the report, she had not previously considered the conversation of any relevance, since the correspondence belonging to the Princess of Wales was but a small part of the property alleged to have been stolen by Mr Burrell.
Lawson’s report would also say that it was the Duke of Edinburgh who had mentioned the Queen’s recollection to the Prince of Wales before the memorial service at St Paul’s.
Peat failed to explain why the prosecution was not told about the Queen’s recollection for two-and-a-half days; he failed to report his own consultation with a lawyer to understand the significance of the recollection; and he omitted to explain why he, rather than the Queen’s own private secretary, Sir Robin Janvrin, asked the Queen about her recollection.
Inevitably, some of those involved in the case questioned whether the Queen had ever met Burrell in the ‘ three-hour’ audience he had described in his statement of February 13, 2002.
But three witnesses would have been available had the police sought that information, among them a palace page who claimed to have accompanied Burrell to the Queen’s sitting room, where he remained for between 45 and 90 minutes.
Few believed the butler’s version of spending three hours with the Queen, and in any event his description of their conversation — about documents, and not hundreds of Diana’s personal possessions — was irrelevant to the charges he faced.
Similarly, none of the prosecutors or police expressed at subsequent meetings their outright belief of the Buckingham Palace spokesman’s explanation that ‘ the Queen did not realise that her evidence was important, and no one told her’.
Nevertheless, that explanation could well have been true. There was no reason for the Queen, by nature a reactive person who absorbed enormous amounts of information, to have taken any initiative after meeting Burrell.
The surprise was the timing of her revelation, coinciding as it did with Charles’s increasing despair — and the palace’s highly convenient interpretation of that meeting.
‘An act of genius,’ was the judgment of one Whitehall observer. ‘Only a golden bullet could have stopped the trial.’
October 30
ONLY two people could order the trial to end: the Director of Public Prosecutions, David Calvert-Smith; and the Attorney General, Lord( Peter) Goldsmith.
Calvert- Smith prevaricated, so Goldsmith took the lead. He went to see the Queen to explain the consequences of what he termed the ‘ fiasco’, then consulted Tony Blair. Robin Janvrin had also called Downing Street.
At that moment, Blair was immersed in deciding the size of Britain’s military commitment for the invasion of Iraq. Now he was being asked to consider how to save the monarchy. His decision was that the trial should be brought to an end.
November 1
CROWN Prosecutor Boyce announced in the courtroom that the trial was over. Charles and Peat breathed sighs of relief. So did Burrell: ‘ The Queen came through for me,’ he exclaimed. In the ensuing excitement, his brother, Graham, told a journalist: ‘He will have his revenge, but he will do it with dignity.’
Within days, Burrell had offered a string of tawdry revelations about Charles and Diana to the Daily Mirror. He would later follow this up with an explosive book that betrayed Diana’s secrets and portrayed the prince as a heartless schemer.
November 2
WITH the trial in ruins, everyone was blamed except Charles. The police were widely accused of incompetence, and Maxine de Brunner — who’d kicked everything off by raiding Burrell’s home — was singled out for particular censure.
At 2.30 that afternoon, de Brunner’s mobile rang. To her surprise, Diana’s sister was on the line.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Lady Sarah McCorquodale. ‘They shouldn’t have done that to you. It’s disgraceful. We’re totally behind you.
‘A deal was struck by Paul Burrell and the Prince of Wales,’ she claimed.
‘ They agreed that the trial would be stopped if three things happened. First, Burrell would not mention certain things in his book; second, William’s property will be given back to William; and a third thing which I don’t know.’
Diana’s sister concluded: ‘They couldn’t afford for Paul Burrell to go into the witness box. Burrell had told the Prince of Wales that he would tell all unless the trial was halted. The Palace have maintained that they didn’t know about the Queen’s and Burrell’s conversation.’
De Brunner wrote down every word of this extraordinary tirade.
But Edmund Lawson, the QC commissioned by Michael Peat to investigate the allegation that Charles’s household had influenced the halting of the trial, said in his report that such an allegation did not stand up to scrutiny: there was simply no evidence to suggest there was any interference by Prince Charles ‘to procure the termination’ of the trial.
Nor was there any evidence to suggest that the Queen’s recollection had been made in order to derail the trial.
December 12-19
AT THE police’s request, both McCorquodale and Diana’s former private secretary Michael Gibbins agreed to sign a note describing their September 11 meeting with Charles’s private secretary.
Peat, they agreed, had sought to t stop the trial going ahead.
‘Let’s nick Peat for seeking to pervert p the course of justice,’ Detective D Sergeant Roger Milburn said to Commander John yates after showing him the signed note.
yates apparently agreed, telling Milburn: ‘ you’ve set off an Exocet.’
The scandal, had the prince’s private secretary been formally cautioned and interviewed, would have been immense. But nothing happened.
March 13, 2003
KEEN to lay the whole matter to rest, Michael Peat published the report that he had personally commissioned from Edmund Lawson, QC, on the Burrell fiasco.
At no stage, Lawson wrote, did the prince or anyone on his behalf try to stop the prosecution.
That was plainly untrue. Bolland, Shackleton, McCorquodale and Gibbins had all described various such attempts, as had the prince’s former private secretary Stephen Lamport, the CPS lawyer and various police officers.
That left the most important mystery — the Queen’ s recollection.
And now the circumstances differed from the account Peat gave to the CPS lawyers. In Lawson’s version, she no longer inquired about the crowds outside the Old Bailey that Friday as she was being driven towards St Paul’s.
Instead, before the memorial service Philip had told Charles that the Queen’s recollection had been triggered by publicity about the trial.
According to Lawson, Charles had told Peat about the recollection only on Saturday — the day after the St Paul’s service.
But this was inaccurate. Charles’s lawyer Robert Seabrook had been told about the recollection the previous day, and had immediately gone to Clarence House to advise Peat to inform the prosecution as a matter of urgency.
According to Lawson, Charles suggested to Peat that he might speak directly to the Queen, and he did so on Sunday when she confirmed her recollection to him.
As we know, the police weren’t informed until Monday morning. So who told them? Lawson said it was Charles’s lawyer Fiona Shackleton who’d given the news to Commander yates.
yet yates had actually told Lawson that he was ‘100 per cent certain’ that it was Peat who’d phoned him.
The effect of Lawson’s apparent distortion was to impugn Shackleton. LAWSON’S fee for compiling Peat’s report was never disclosed. He died six years later, without receiving an honour, which he might justifiably have expected.
As for DCI Maxine de Brunner, the chief of Scotland yard showed his robust support by promoting her to deputy assistant commissioner.
Burrell made about £4 million from his book, while hinting that ‘there are many, many more secrets I have not written about. Very personal, very damaging... not very pleasant’.
Michael Peat, when he left the prince’s service, was rewarded with generous severance terms, including the right to stay on in his five- bedroom flat at Kensington Palace for nearly another year.
And Charles? In the polls, his popularity fell back to the dismal level last seen in the days after Diana’s death.
REBEL Prince: The Power, Passion And Defiance Of Prince Charles, by Tom Bower, published by William Collins on Thursday at £20. © Tom Bower 2018. To order a copy for £14 (30 per cent discount) visit mailbookshop. co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640. P&P free on orders over £15. Offer valid until March 31, 2018.
TOMORROW: The Queen had several Martinis, then told Charles what she thought of his adultery