The Murder of Princess Diana by Noel Botham Page A

when Burrell entered the witness box. The royal family was, understandably, extremely unhappy at the prospect of a close link being disclosed between Diana and another royal. It was an added reason to keep Diana’s “insurance” from falling into the public domain.
    After the Burrell trial fiasco Viscount Linley, now a married father of two, said he and the princess were “nothing more than good friends.” “I didn’t have an intimate relationship with her,” he said. But at that stage, with the Queen having saved his reputation from being shredded in court, it is hardly likely he would have confessed to an adulterous relationship with his cousin-in-law!
    At the time the letters were written, Viscount Linley was still living with his mother, Princess Margaret, in Kensington Palace. She and Diana had neighboring apartments in the same building.

    The royal visit to India and the death of Diana’s father, Lord Spencer, were the two events which were ultimately to bring about the beginning of the end of the Waleses’ marriage.
    Inexplicably, Charles and his aides turned down the opportunity to have his photograph taken with Diana in front of the Taj Mahal. He had once promised the Indian people that some day he would bring the Princess of Wales to see the incredible tomb built by the seventeenth-century emperor Shah Jahan for his late wife. Photographs taken with this ethereal vision in white marble as a backdrop might, alone, have convinced the world that the royal marriage still had a chance. But Charles’s defunct romantic antennae failed to divine this golden opportunity, and he chose instead to address a group of very unromantic business leaders in Delhi while Diana posed alone—abandoned, said the press—in front of this symbol of true love.
    In truth, Diana had reveled in this fabulous solo photographic coup, but to the world’s media she felt it necessary to devise a “revenge” on the man they had described as her “neglectful and uncaring” spouse. The revenge she devised was painfully cruel to watch and was, without doubt, the most devastating public put-down of any man by his wife.
    It came on the eve of St. Valentine’s Day and at the end of a polo match in Jaipur, and was executed, as royal reporter James Whittaker recorded, in front of 100 professional cameramen and 5,000 laughing Indians. Charles’s team had won, and he dutifully lined up with its members to receive the winner’s trophy from the princess.
    Wrote Whitaker, “With triumph in her eyes, Diana waited until her husband’s lips were almost on hers; then she turned her head away. Not suddenly so as to allow Charles to pull back—no, it was much more calculating than that. Instead she moved her head to the left, slowly.
    “Charles, who knew the world would see what happened next—television was there too—politely and gallantly tried to follow Diana’s turning head. He chased it all the way around until he could reach no further without falling over. He ended up kissing Diana half in midair, half on her gold earring.”
    He was still fuming when he returned to England and told a sympathetic Camilla, “That’s the last time she holds me up to ridicule.” Both agreed it was time he went on the public relations offensive.
    In April, after spending a week with Camilla in Milan, Charles flew to join Diana and the princes in Lech in Austria on their skiing holiday. Diana was ordered to stay out of the way and William and Harry were waiting outside the Arlberg Hotel for Charles’s arrival. The press was treated to two days of father-and-sons pictures, which made the world’s front pages, and Charles was able to congratulate himself on making the PR releases ahead of his wife.
    Then came the news that Earl Spencer had died in hospital.
    After a massive row, and finally only after the direct intervention of the Queen who personally issued an order to her daughter-in-law, did Diana agree to Charles flying home on the same plane as