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Journalism of Courage
The staff of Britain’s embattled royals fuelled a trade in memorabilia, offering everything from the late Princess Diana’s fingernail clippings to royal letters, tabloid newspapers said on Sunday.
Apart from fingernail clippings, California collector Alicia Carroll described a trade in everything from locks of hair to ‘‘Wombat letters’’— letters written by Diana to Prince William by his pet name ‘‘Wombat’’.
She told the Mail on Sunday: ‘‘There is a network of people inside the palaces on the lookout for cards and gift tags because they are worth thousands to a collector.’’
Carroll said after Diana died in a Paris car crash in 1997, her phone was ‘‘ringing off the hook’’ with offers.
‘‘The money that was changing hands at the time was scary,’’ she said, adding that she had sold one ‘‘Wombat letter’’ for 32,000 pounds.
Meanwhile, Prince Charles has won a court order preventing a Sunday newspaper from publishing details of a book by a former housekeeper to the royal family.
The Glasgow-based Sunday Mail planned to print details from The Housekeeper’s Tale by Wendy Berry. In 1995, a British court banned the book’s publication, but it was released in North America, selling 1,00,000 copies.
Lawyers for Prince Charles argued that the Sunday Mail article would infringe the prince’s privacy and serve no public interest.
Berry worked as a housekeeper to Charles and Diana for nine years till 1992.
