Diana Inquest: Coroner Rules Burrell Journal Is 'Not Relevant'
Written by Joanne Leyland
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Page 1 of 2
The
coroner at the Diana inquest has ruled that the private journals retrieved
by Paul Burrell from his Cheshire home are "not relevant" to the inquest into
the deaths of the princess and Dodi Fayed.
It’s been revealed that Paul Burrell wrote a private letter to Lord Justice
Scott-Baker in which he explained why he didn’t wish these journals to be put
into the public domain.
Having
read this letter, the coroner has now ruled that the journals don't actually
reveal any hidden "secrets" and said that these unspecified pieces of
information have already been made public in Paul Burrell's two
autobiographies about his years in royal service.
Addressing the open court, Lord Justice Scott-Baker said: "[There is] not in fact one secret but two secrets and you describe them to me in the letter."
"But having examined the matter it doesn't seem to me
that they are secrets at all. Both pieces of information are fairly and
squarely in the public domain in one way or another, one of them indeed
appears in your book The Way We Were".
Having belatedly taken to the stand at just after 3pm this afternoon, a weary
Burrell told the court he'd had just two hours sleep, having driven a
400-mile round journey from London to his home in Cheshire overnight to
retrieve a box of documents, including his private diary.
This journey came after Lord Justice Scott Baker told Burrell to "hot
foot" it to his Cheshire home to retrieve these documents during his
first appearance on Monday.
However, ahead of his appearance, Burrell was quoted as telling a
family friend that he would take the princess's "innermost secrets" to
his grave.
A similar promise to this prompted laughter in the courtroom on Monday
due to Burrell's earlier decision to write not one but two books about
life behind the doors of Kensington Palace.
