Destroyed: the letters that fuelled a Royal feud
Andrew Morton, biographer of the Princess of Wales, reveals why Princess Margaret burned correspondence between Diana and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

Andrew Morton writing in The Telegraph,20 Sep 2009

Queen Mother with Princess Margaret (far right) and the Prince and Princess of Wales (background), on the Queen Mother's 90th birthday outside Clarence House in London in 1990 Photo: PA Archive/Press Association

On the day of Princess Diana’s funeral, I joined commentators Peter Jennings and Barbara Walters to describe the historic day for their American network, ABC. Perched high above Westminster Abbey on scaffolding erected specially for the big event, we had a bird’s eye view of the drama unfolding below.
As the funeral cortège approached Buckingham Palace where the Queen and the rest of the Royal family had gathered, I whispered to Jennings: “Watch Princess Margaret.” As Diana’s bedecked coffin passed the royal party, the Queen and other members of the family bowed their heads in respect. Princess Margaret remained upright and upstanding, looking like she would rather be somewhere else.

It was a moment that somehow symbolised not only the estrangement between two former royal neighbours, but the genuine distance that existed between Diana and the Royal family. So the confirmation in the weighty 1,059-page official biography of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, by William Shawcross that the Queen’s younger sister deliberately burnt correspondence between her mother and Diana comes as little surprise.

This was no bonfire of the inanities, the routine thank-you notes and other confetti of royal life, but intimate and private letters that could have, it is assumed, damaged the Queen Mother and the Royal family. “No doubt Princess Margaret felt that she was protecting her mother and other members of the family,” says Shawcross as he discussed his 5lb doorstopper. “It was understandable, although regrettable from a historical point of view.”

But let’s weigh the evidence more carefully. Her actions took place in 1993, months after the formal separation between the Prince and Princess and the publication of my book, Diana, Her True Story, which first revealed Diana’s unhappiness inside the Royal family. At that time, Margaret’s relations with the occupant of apartment eight and nine Kensington Palace were cool but still cordial. After the Wales’s separation, she wrote to Prince Charles and informed him that she was going to continue the association with his estranged wife.

They occasionally went to the theatre together and sometimes travelled to royal engagements in the same car. She even derived a frisson of vicarious enjoyment watching the Princess’s clumsy antics when she smuggled a male friend into the backdoor of her apartment after releasing him from the car boot where he had been hiding. While Princess Margaret was irritated that her courtyard space was being used by Diana’s car, her displeasure did not stop her peering round the double doors she kept open to try to identify Diana’s secret visitor.

The full Morton story at The Telegraph online.