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Princess Diana's former butler has hit out at Prince Harry over the royal's claims that he sold items belonging to the late princess, and for once describing him as a "two-face s***," during a High Court appearance in London on Tuesday.
Paul Burrell worked for Diana from 1987 up until her death in 1997, after which the butler gained public notoriety culminating in a legal scandal that saw him accused of stealing hundreds of items belonging to Diana, Prince William and King Charles III after a police raid on his home in 2001.
"I'm finding deeply upsetting and hurtful and I need to process what's been said because I think it's careless and callous," he told GB News' Dan Wootton on Tuesday evening, following Harry's testimony.
The trustees of the princess' estate took Burrell to court, in a lawsuit which ultimately collapsed at trial following an intervention from Queen Elizabeth II, who stated that the butler had informed her after Diana's death in 1997 that he was in possession of a number of royal items for safekeeping.
Burrell became a focus of Prince Harry's witness testimony at the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday, as he argued information in a British tabloid story in 2003, stating that he had a disagreement with Prince William over whether or not to meet the butler, was obtained illegally.
Harry is suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) publishers of the Daily Mirror and Sunday People, over allegations of phone hacking and other illegal acts used to obtain information about his private life between 1996 and 2011.
In 2003, unhappy with his treatment during the collapsed theft trial, Burrell wrote a tell-all memoir about his life with Diana, William, Harry and other members of the royal family, which included personal details about their lives, including the princess' romantic encounters.
In his witness statement, supplied to the court, Harry said of MGN's Burrell article, it "accurately sets out the position that my brother was open to fixing a meeting with Paul to discuss his ongoing exposés about our mother, however I had made up my mind about the kind of person I thought Paul was and was firmly against meeting him at this point in my life. To the best of my recollection, I do not believe a meeting went ahead in 2003."
He then continued to add: "Both my brother and I had very strong feelings about how indiscrete Paul had proven to be with the way he had sold our mother's possessions and how he had given numerous interviews about her. We firmly believed that she would have expected some privacy in death, especially from someone she had trusted, and we were so upset at the way he was behaving—I didn't want to hear his reasons for it. Therefore, our disagreement over to how to handle the situation going forward was not something I wanted splashed across the Defendant's newspapers."
He also noted that a quote used in the article, describing Burrell as a "two-face s***," was language he "would have used" to describe him.
In response, Burrell slammed the royal's assessment of his character in the interview with Wootton on Tuesday evening, calling the prince "petulant" and accusing him of making defamatory statements.
He cited the prince's witness statement claim that he had "sold" Princess Diana's possessions as a main concern.
"That is not true. That is defamatory and I want him to apologize and say sorry for saying that because that is not true," he said. "He knows full well I have always protected, I've loved and cared for his mother and himself and William when they were children. So really I don't know what tangent he's gone off at here because it is not true what he's saying in court."
In 2002, as part of the legal case against him following the raid that found Diana's property in his home, the police pursued lines of inquiry suggesting that Burrell had been the source of royal items belonging to Diana that had surfaced on the open market.
At the trial, no evidence was found tying Burrell to the items nor was there evidence he had sought to sell any of those in his possession.
A statement released from Buckingham Palace in November 2002, detailing Queen Elizabeth II's involvement with the trial stated: "On 22nd October 2002 it was made clear during the trial that, contrary to their earlier advice, the police had no evidence that Paul Burrell had been selling the items in question."
"I've tried 20 years to get away from what happened to me a long time ago," Burrell told GB News. "What happened to me was I put through a a judicial system blamed for doing something I didn't do. Harry, you know full well that that court case collapsed. You know your grandmother intervened in that court case. She had vital evidence, yes, which saved me."
The prince's lawsuit against Mirror Group Newspapers is ongoing.
Newsweek approached representatives of Prince Harry via email for comment.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more