Lady Diana inquest background

The jury at the inquest into the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales, has blamed the pursuing paparazzi for her "unlawful killing" and her driver, Henri Paul for the car crash in Paris. There was not the slightest proof that the Duke of Edinburgh or the secret service had planned her death.

They have been looking into the conspiracy theories that have followed their death mostly raised by Dodi's father, the highly controversial Egyptian-born millionaire Mohamed al-Fayed, owner of Harrods department store, who has sought to implicate the Duke of Edinburgh as being in league with the secret service to eliminate her.

Mr Fayed is a person with a grudge - he has for years applied for British citizenship, well before the accident, but this has been refused him. Lord Chief Justice Scott in his summing up told the jurors there was no credibilty in the evidence given by Mohamed al-Fayed and he had produced not a shred of evidence to support his allegations. The inquest has cost over £7,000,000.

The court has sat for over 91 days, stretching over six months, and more than 240 witnesses have been heard, several of whom had lied, according to Lord Justice.

A previous inquiry by the French authorities had concluded the crash was accidental due to the chauffeur Henry Paul driving over the legal drink limit. The London Metropolitan Police inquiry, led by its former chief, Lord Stevens, had in December 2006 concluded the crash was a tragic incident and the driver was drunk.

The 832-page report concluded: "There was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of that car." Diana was not engaged to Dodi and was not pregnant, Lord Steven told the press. Some 400 people had been interviewed, including Prince Charles and the Duke of Edinburgh and the heads of the secret services, M15 and M16. Dodi was the only son of Mohamed al-Fayed and his first wife, Samira Khashoggi, and was a Hollywood film producer and a playboy . He liked fast cars and beautiful women and had had a string of models and film-star friends, although he had been married for eight months to model Suzanne Gregard.

He had met Diana in July 1997 when she had accepted a much publicised holiday for her and her two sons at his father's villa in St. Tropez. He was at that time on his yacht Jonikal moored nearby with his latest girl-friend Kelly Fisher who told the inquest that Dodi had given her a ring six months before the crash which she believed signified their engagement.

She had later seen the photographs in the newspapers of Dodi kissing Diana and realised she was being jilted. One of the key witnesses was Diana's friend, Rosa Monckton, whose mother Lady Monkton, is the niece of Miss Mabel Strickland. When Diana received the invitation to holiday at the villa in St Tropez, Rosa Monckton had tried to dissuade her and not to get mixed up with al-Fayed. Diana ignored her friend's advice.

Rosa Monckton is married to Dominic Lawson, former editor of The Sunday Telegraph and the son of Nigel Lawson, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer. She herself was the daughter of Viscount Gilbert Monckton of Brenchley, who had married Marianna Bower in Decemner 1950, the daughter of Cdr. Robert Bower and Henrietta Strickland, daughter of Lord Strickland and sister of Mabel Strickland.

Rosa has two daughters, Savannah, 14 and Domenica, 12, who has Down's Syndrome and whose godmother was Diana. Diana was born on July 1, 1961, the third daughter of Viscount Althrop. Her parents separated in 1967 after 14 years together. Her mother was accused of leaving her husband and four children for another man, Peter Shand Kydd, a former Naval officer. There followed an acrimonious divorce battle which left young Diana scarred.

Later her father married Raine Spencer, who was the daughter of the popular novelist Barbara Cartland and whom Diana disliked. Prince Charles noticed Diana during a game of polo at Cowdray Park in July 1980 at a period in his life when he was being pressured to find a wife. At the same time he was attracted to Camilla Parker-Bowles, whom he had also met during a game of polo years previously and whom he had not been allowed to court openly.

She was the daughter of a former army office and wine merchant, Major Bruce Shand, and in 1973 she had married Andrew Parker-Bowles, a friend of Prince Charles. The engagement between Charles and Diana was announced on February 24, 1981 and they were married at Westminster Abbey on July 29, 1981 in what was described by the media as a fairy tale romance.

But even then Diana sensed she was being betrayed by her husband, with Camilla hovering in the background. Diana leaked her marital problems to journalist friends. In June 1992 Andrew Morton published "Diana, Her True Story" but this was dismissed as a fabricated account as it described in sharp details the claustrophobic life the princess was leading as a member of the Royal Family. Moreton kept silent for a time but, eventually published documents to prove that he had written the account in cooperation with Diana. I had known this as later I was involved with Andrew Moreton in London and in Malta in a televison documentary on the Duke of Edinburgh.

In 1995 Diana, now determined to take on the Esablishment who sided wth Charles, had agreed secretly to be interviewed by Martin Bashir for a B.B.C. television programme Panorama which proved a sensation. She described in the interview what she had told Andrew Morton in private; her eating disorders, her depression and Charles's relationship with Camilla. She remarked to Bashir: "There were three of us in this marriage so it was a bit crowded." But she also admitted her own liaison with a former army officer, James Hewitt.

Their divorce was announced by her on February 28, 1996. Buckingham Palace disapproved of her various relationships. She had formed a liaison with her bodyguard Barry Mannakee in 1986; he died shortly after in a motor-cycle accident. She then linked up with James Gilbey, heir of the famous gin producers and a car dealer, and the taped conversation they had on mobile phones on New year's Eve 1989, with sexual innuendoes, provided a scandal when published in British newspapers.

Then came Major Hewitt who wrote a book about their five-year relationship. Next was a well-known art dealer Oliver Hoare. Her liaison with England rugby captain Will Carling led to the break-up of his marriage. Before Diana met Dodi she had a two-year romance with Dr Hasnat Khan, whom she wanted to marry.

Rosa Monckton told the inquest earlier this year that her relationship with Dodi was a distraction to help her get over her heartache over the Pakistani doctor's refusal to marry her.

Rosa Monckton also dismissed speculation that Diana was pregnant as she had had her period 10 days before the crash while they were together on a holiday around the Greek Islands. The inquest is not a trial. There is no prosecution or defence but it aims to answer the cause of death, when and how. The jury had to decide on the evidence as proved, not speculate. The Royal Family has never been far from the public gaze over the private lives of some of its members.

As early as the 1850s Malta was the setting for the amorous escapades of the 2nd Duke of Cambridge, first cousin of Queen Victoria, who visited the island five times between 1839 and 1895 mixing business with pleasure, to review the troops and in pursuit of a lady friend; in 1847 he had married an actress, Sarah Fairbrother, with whom he already had two children and a third on the way - a marriage in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act and legally void under British law but this did not stop his appointment in 1856 as General Commanding-in-Chief of the British Army, a post he held for 39 years during which period he was Honorary Colonel of the Royal Malta Artillery.

Edward VII was a womaniser and frequently betrayed his wife, Alexandra, a life which has featured in television and film productions. There were allegations that George V had married an admiral's daughter in Malta while serving in the Navy; he squashed these stories in 1911 by taking to court a journalist who had published the story which was proved a fabrication as the girl in question was only nine years old at the time he was in Malta as a midshipman.

Edward VIII, the uncle of Queen Elizabeth, had abdicated in 1936 to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, having previously had a sixteen-year relationship when Prince of Wales with Freda Dudley Ward, the estranged wife of a Liberal Member of Parliament; the extremely attractive wife of a post-war governor of Malta was reputed to be their daughter.