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Burrell attacks Diana's family
LONDON, England -- Former royal butler Paul Burrell has launched a scathing attack on the family of Diana, Princess of Wales. In his second interview published in Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper, Burrell criticised Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, calling him a "hypocrite" for his speech at the Princess's funeral. He also said Diana's mother, Frances Shand Kydd, made "shocking" late-night telephone calls to her daughter. In a pointed attack on Earl Spencer, Burrell said: "I, for one, would never have paraded her life before a museum and charged £10.50 a time." The former butler said his "stomach turned" as he sat listening to the earl's emotional eulogy during Diana's funeral at Westminster Abbey. Burrell also said the princess insisted he listen in to conversations with her mother. "It was horrible. She was using the kind of language you would never expect to hear a mother ever say to a daughter," he said. Burrell said Shand Kydd had been angry with her daughter for dating Muslim men. During the former butler's Old Bailey trial which collapsed last week, Diana's prickly relationships with both her mother and brother were exposed. The court heard the princess died without healing a rift with her mother, and that the pair did not speak for the last four months of her life. Shand Kydd, 66, conceded letters to her "tempestuous" daughter were returned unopened, but denied the row was caused by her disapproval of the company Diana was keeping in her private life. Meanwhile, a stormy episode in Diana's relations with her brother was also aired during the case. After the Princess's marriage collapsed, Earl Spencer rebuffed her request for a country retreat on the family estate. A series of letters dated June 1993 began with the earl offering his sister the Garden House on the Althorp estate for £12,000 rent a year, including a gardener and cleaner. But later letters reveal he changed his mind because of the disruption to his family life her presence would bring, apologising: "In theory, it would be lovely to help you out and I'm sorry I can't do that." In the Mirror interview, Burrell also said Diana's sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, was nicknamed "Lady Sarah McCrocodile", and was "jealous" of the Princess. In his first interview in yesterday's Daily Mirror, Burrell said Britain's Queen Elizabeth II warned him his close relationship with Princess Diana could put him in danger. Burrell said the queen told him: "No-one, Paul, has been as close to a member of my family as you have." And he said she warned: "There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge." It was the queen's intervention that forced the collapse of the theft trial last week, when she recalled that Burrell had told her he was looking after some of Diana's belongings. (Full story)
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