Word: butlerism
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Everyone was expecting fireworks, but all they got was a damp squib. On Monday, the inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed adjourned with her former butler Paul Burrell reluctantly agreeing to bring in a letter she had written to him just before she died. The letter, which is partly quoted in one of his books, referred to a special upcoming weekend and a "secret" the two of them shared - a secret that Burrell had refused on Monday to disclose, before the judge demanded the letter. Was Diana going to announce her pregnancy that weekend...
...quite. On Tuesday afternoon, the butler was back and he had a letter - just not the one Diana had written. Instead, Burrell wrote his own letter, a "private and confidential" one to the judge, Lord Justice Scott Baker who, in turn, paraphrased it for the court. Burrell had made a mistake: the Diana letter wasn't in his Cheshire home, but actually at his house in Florida. He would send it to the court once he retrieved it; in the meantime, Burrell would let the judge in on the secret - as long as he didn't tell. But Baker said...
...secrets. He became an indispensable part of her life and probably knew her better than anyone else. And even after writing two tell-all books following her death, he insisted there were stories he would take to his grave. So when Paul Burrell, Diana's former butler, first refused to answer the question, you knew the answer...
Sure, Burrell said, Diana told him Dodi was "charming, handsome and very attentive." But, from what the butler saw, he was just "a rebound," and it was Khan who Diana wanted to spend the rest of her life with. "This was her soul mate," he said. "This was the man she loved more than any other. It was a very deep and spiritual relationship." Khan would often visit Diana and her boys at Kensington Palace, Burrell added, because the Princess was "adamant" that William and Harry get to know and grow to like Khan. Dodi, on the other hand...
...opera, this episode ended on a cliffhanger. In an attempt to show that Burrell knew something significant about Dodi and Diana that he wasn't telling, Mansfield read out the last page in Burrell's 2003 book A Royal Duty. It quotes a letter Diana had written to the butler not long before she died. In it, she refers to "the coming weekend" being an important one. Then she goes on to say, "I wanted to write on paper how enormously touched I am that you share this excitement with me as well. What a secret!" Mansfield wanted to know...