Prince Philip denies Diana insults
Saturday, November 23, 2002 Posted: 10:22 AM EST (1522 GMT)
LONDON, England -- Prince Philip has denied writing insulting letters to Diana, Princess of Wales, in the latest twist following the collapse of the trial of royal butler Paul Burrell.
In a statement on Saturday, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II denied calling Princess Diana "a trollop and a harlot."
A statement authorised by the Duke of Edinburgh said: "Prince Philip wishes to make it clear that at no point did he ever use the insulting terms described in media reports, nor that he was curt or unfeeling in what he wrote.
"He regards the suggestion that he used such derogatory terms as a gross misrepresentation of his relations with his daughter-in-law and hurtful to his grandsons."
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Burrell trial, faith healer Simone Simmons said the princess had shown her letters from the duke in which he branded Diana a trollop and a harlot.
Simmons, 47, told a Sunday newspaper the letters were handwritten on cream-coloured A5 headed notepaper, were short and to the point, and signed curtly "Philip."
However, a source close to Prince Philip told the UK's Press Association that the duke typed all his personal letters, rather than write them by hand, and used white A4 paper, not the smaller, cream A5 notepaper.
The royal source told PA said the duke's letters to Diana were not short and were signed "With love from Pa" rather than a curt "Philip."
The whereabouts of original letters have apparently been lost but, according to Prince Philip's Buckingham Palace statement, he kept copies as well as Diana's replies.
But the duke refuses to make the letters public, insisting the correspondence was private.
The authorised statement said the duke started the correspondence in June 1992 "in a friendly attempt to resolve a number of family issues" during the period before the Prince and Princess announced their official separation in December that year.
While the duke would regard any publication of his original letters -- should they be found -- as a breach of his copyright as their author, the emergence of the original letters would confirm his statement, said the royal source.
Should any copies of the letters seen by Simmons, and purportedly handwritten by the duke, be published, the handwriting alone would show these alleged letters did not come from him, said the source.
Whatever letters were seen and described by Simmons, they were certainly not written by the duke, the source added.
The faith healer, who says she was a close friend of Diana for four years, made her statements to a Sunday newspaper two weeks ago, saying she had been prepared to reveal the contents of the letters when called as a defence witness for Burrell.
But a last-minute intervention by the queen caused the trial's collapse and the acquittal of the ex-butler who was accused of stealing 310 items belonging to Diana, the Prince of Wales and their son Prince William.
Simmons told the newspaper Diana kept the bundle of correspondence in a now infamous mahogany box with a signet ring given to the Princess by her lover James Hewitt, and a tape-recording detailing an alleged homosexual rape by a close aide of the Prince of Wales on then Royal valet George Smith.
The contents of the box, referred to during the Burrell trial as the "Crown Jewels", have since gone missing.
Immediately after the damaging allegation against the duke, he considered various courses of action including taking legal advice and making a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, PA reported.
However, on reflection, said PA, the duke and his palace advisers decided to issue a statement -- albeit delayed -- timed for the Sunday media where the allegation first appeared
Link:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/11/23/uk.philip/