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After 20 years, a letter from Prince Charles criticizing Princess Diana’s contentious butler Paul Burrell has surfaced.
The Prince of Wales accuses him of having shown “every consideration over the years” to “people like Burrell.”
In the November 2002 letter, he berates staff members of the Royal household who “exercise their sad jealousies and vendettas in public.”
A few weeks prior, Burrell had been put on trial for theft in connection with 310 items valued at £4.5 million that belonged to the late Princess of Wales.
But when the Queen realized that Burrell had informed her he was storing some of Diana’s belongings, the Old Bailey trial was abandoned midway through.
According to testimony given in court, Prince Charles was a “pampered prince” who had teams of staff at his disposal, one of whom squeezed his toothpaste.
In his letter to Miss Majorie Dawson, who served as Princess Alexandra’s personal maid and dresser for 36 years, Charles bemoans the “ghastliness” of the entire incident.
He also faults the “media circulation battle” for paying staff members “huge sums of money.”
The four-page handwritten letter, which is being offered for sale by a collector, is anticipated to bring approximately £2,000 at Chiswick Auctions in London.
Burrell, 60, worked for the Queen as a footman before becoming Diana’s butler for ten years, until her death in 1997.
‘Bless you for taking the bother to write as you did in the aftermath of all the ghastliness that has been going on,’ Charles writes on November 29, 2002.
I find it completely unbelievable since over the years, all I have done is show folks like Paul Burrell every regard.
“Unfortunately, we are now being used as mere pawns in a terrible and ongoing media war of circulation, where the actual facts are completely ignored and exorbitant sums of money are offered as bribes to former and current employees to indulge their pitiable jealousies and vendettas in public.
“One employee has received a total offer from the newspapers in recent weeks of £5 million.”
It is uncommon to find a letter from Prince Charles that is so honest about his thoughts, according to Valentina Borghi, specialist at Chiswick Auctions.
The Royals were going through a tough time, and I think he was rather distraught when he penned this letter.
We are used to a much more composed Prince Charles, so it must have pained him deeply to learn that so many individuals, including those he felt he could trust, were eager to profit by disclosing personal information about his family.
Diana was killed in a vehicle accident in Paris in 1997, and Burrell published his autobiography, A Royal Duty, in 2003.
Prince William and Prince Harry described the book as a “cold and overt betrayal” of their late mother, which caused a schism with Buckingham Palace.
William, then 21 and speaking on behalf of his younger brother, expressed his intense hurt at Mr. Burrell’s discoveries in his tell-all book in a 2003 statement that was unmatched in its intensity of feeling.
The Princes urged him to stop his disclosures, claiming that the late Diana, Princess of Wales, would have been “mortified” by them if she were living today.
In a statement issued by Clarence House, Prince William stated, “We cannot accept that Paul, who was entrusted with so much, could abuse his position in such a callous and overt way.”
If we may say so, we feel we are better able to speak for our mother than Paul because it is not only terribly difficult for the two of us, but also for everyone else involved.
If we may say so, it would mortify our mother if she were living today.
Burrell amassed enormous wealth from the assertions he made in his books about his relationship with Diana and also from lucrative endorsement deals with reality TV programs like I’m A Celebrity. Get me out of this place.
Before she passed away in 2003, Diana allegedly discussed a conspiracy to interfere with her car’s brakes and expressed dread for her life, according to Burrell’s testimony.
He also claimed that Dodi Fayed, who was assassinated with Diana in 1997, and heart surgeon Hasnat Khan were both labeled “wh***s” by Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, for dating Muslim men.
Burrell asserted “That’s what you are,” someone said to Diana. I brought up a wh***, who**** in the company of Muslim men.
You ought to be embarrassed by yourself.
Diana begged her mother not to say terrible things to her while she was sobbing.
Please refrain from calling me those names.
She asked for her. She kept pleading with her to hold off. ‘
Diana seemed to distance herself from her mother following the outburst, and soon after that she was murdered in a vehicle accident in Paris in 1997.