Diana 'death plot' Royal is named

The senior member of the Royal family who Diana, Princess of Wales, believed was plotting to kill her in a car crash has been named.

Diana's allegation was made in a letter written 10 months before she died in a Paris car crash in 1997.

The letter was included in a book by her former butler Paul Burrell last year.

Penguin, the book's publishers, and the Daily Mirror, which serialised A Royal Duty, blanked out the name at the time.

The relevant passage read: "** ******* is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury..."

But the Daily Mirror has revealed what it claimed was the identity of the person named by Diana in the letter.

The newspaper said Mr Burrell was prepared to hand over the letter to Royal coroner Michael Burgess, who is opening inquests into the deaths of Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed.

The newspaper said it had "decided to publish the blanked out name because it will inevitably appear in the public domain".

Dodi Fayed's father Mohamed al Fayed has waited more than six years for the first official public hearings in Britain into the deaths of the couple in the Pont d'Alma underpass in Paris.

The inquests were being formally opened at separate venues before being adjourned. The full inquest hearings are not expected to take place for several months. It is hoped the inquests could eventually shed light on the flurry of conspiracy theories surrounding the events of August 31, 1997.

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