Word: dianas
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...under questioning called the proceeding a character assassination. And, in a sense, he was right - that was the whole point. On the last day of his testimony at the inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed, former butler Paul Burrell was forced to defend his credibility against an army of lawyers intent on, if not destroying it, then at least giving it a good beating. But early on it became clear that this was not going to be the courtroom drama everyone had hoped for. Instead, there was back-pedaling, name-calling and quibbling over semantics...
...lawyer for Dodi's father, Harrods boss Mohamed Al-Fayed, that Burrell had to answer to. Richard Keen - the lawyer for the parents of Henri Paul, the driver who also died in the 1997 crash in Paris - and Ian Croxford, representing the Ritz Hotel, Paris, the starting point for Diana and Dodi's fateful journey, also got in on the act. Questioning him one after the other, they all seemed to be trying to prove the same thing: there are three sides to every story - Paul Burrell's, Paul Burrell's, and the truth. Using his books and articles...
Burrell's biggest about-face had to do with his feelings on Diana's relationship with Dodi. On the first day of his testimony, Burrell had told the court that nobody minded them being a couple, a statement that takes a bite out of Mohamed Al-Fayed's claim that they were assassinated to stop them getting married. But Mansfield opened to a page in Burrell's 2003 book A Royal Duty, and read out a passage that indicated some people did mind - including the former butler himself. In the book, Burrell describes a conversation he once had with Diana...
Later, Burrell also told the court that the Queen had her own reservations. In a private meeting with the monarch a few weeks after Diana's death, Burrell said, the Queen admitted to him she thought Diana had been "overexcited" about the romance with Dodi. And when Mansfield asked if Burrell agreed that "the establishment" thought Diana's closeness to the Al-Fayed family was "an alliance made in hell," Burrell said he did. By the end of questioning, it seemed that the only people who didn't mind Diana and Dodi being a couple were Diana and Dodi...
...game of "he said, he said" continued, Burrell also had to take back a statement he'd made earlier about the "friendship ring" Dodi had given Diana. In A Royal Duty, he wrote that, after a conversation he'd had with Diana about the ring a few days before the crash, he hadn't seen or spoken about it ever again. But, in fact, he had picked up the ring along with Diana's possessions after she died. He had decided not to mention that fact in the book because "I didn't feel I had to at the time...