Royals feared Prince Charles would be attacked at Diana’s funeral

LONDON - Prince Charles was apparently at the risk of being attacked by a member of the public at Princess Diana’s funeral, reveals a new account.

According to Alastair Campbell’s diaries, a senior official was sent by Buckingham Palace to warn Prince William of the perceived threat, reports the Telegraph.

Tony Blair’s former spin doctor disclosed that fears for the Prince of Wales’s safety became clear during a conference call on Sept 4 1997 with courtiers for the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh at Balmoral.

Sandy Henney, then press secretary to the Prince of Wales, was included in the call and was sent to Balmoral to advise Prince William that his mother would have wanted him to follow her coffin.

Sir Robin Janvrin, then the Queen’s deputy private secretary, was with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at Balmoral and was also in on the call.

That time Campbell was at Buckingham Palace with Sir Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary.

Campbell has written in Power and the People that the courtiers were divided over whether the Prince of Wales should walk behind the coffin with his two sons.

“Robin said if William did not do it then Charles couldn’t ‘for obvious and understandable reasons’. So he was back to proposing cars for the princes but Charles S[pencer] was against that.

“They realised that if William doesn’t go behind the coffin, they have a real problem because Charles would have to go behind the coffin with Charles Spencer. There is no way he can do this without the boys, he said. When I said to Fellowes it was possible to sell the idea of the boys going behind by car if they left from Kensington Palace, he said they were just against cars full stop. He said they had to keep pushing for it,” writes Campbell.

In extracts from the diaries, serialised in The Guardian, Campbell has also written that Prince William had a “total hatred” of the media after the relentless press harassment of his mother. (ANI)