BY DOMINIC KENNEDY AND PAUL MCCANN

THE Queen and Prince of Wales yesterday condemned the private secretary of Diana, Princess of Wales, for writing his memoirs but conceded that it was impossible to ban them in the Internet age.

In one of the most strongly-worded denunciations from Buckingham Palace, Patrick Jephson was accused of "exploiting for personal profit" his relationship with the Royal Family. His book, titled Shadows of a Princess, due to be published on both sides of the Atlantic, will upset Prince William, Prince Harry and Diana's family, the Palace said.

The most startling admission was that the Queen's lawyers had conceded defeat in their ambitions to ban the book in Britain because it would doubtless be put on to the Internet. The Palace, and every other employer, will be dreading that this will provoke a rash of books disclosing celebrity and corporate confidences.

The Princess's estate also abandoned plans to take legal action against the book. Mr Jephson is reported to have owed her a duty of confidentiality. Like all members of the Royal Household, he has signed a permanent undertaking to keep his silence.

The Palace statement is its most comprehensive accusation of disloyalty against a former employee but Mr Jephson is the most senior courtier to sell his secrets. Buckingham Palace is carefully portraying the Royal Family as wounded victims of a once-trusted servant's disloyalty, before the public can read any damaging allegations he has against it.

Reports that Mr Jephson had been writing a book first appeared in January 1998, and the House of Windsor was swift to stifle him. Within a month, it believed it had an assurance that he had abandoned his writings.

The Windsor family is famously sensitive about employees who betray its confidences. Marion Crawford, who wrote saccharine accounts of the childhoods of the Queen and Princess Margaret, was banished for life. The Internet age offers the fear that the British people will be able to read Royal secrets once confined to foreign markets. In the 1980s the Prince of Wales's former valet, Stephen Barry, had to go to America to publish his memoirs of life in the royal court.

In the 1990s, Kitty Kelley's scandal-packed biography of the royals was a bestseller in America but the publishers never tried to get it into print in Britain. Mr Jephson said yesterday: "I take full responsibility for my decision to write about my personal experience of HRH The Princess of Wales between 1987 and 1996.

"During her lifetime I was discreet and utterly loyal. Since her death I have been dismayed by the indiscriminate comment she has received, much of it inaccurate, some of it apparently intended to diminish her memory.

"This book is a truthful and balanced account, and therefore intended as a service to the late Princess and those who worked with her. "As such it can be a protection for those who would be hurt by speculation about her character or motives in public life. I understand the concerns felt by those close to the Princess, and when they read the book I am confident that they will be reassured."

The Palace said it was impossible to get a permanent injunction banning the book "with worldwide effectiveness and covering all forms of media (including the Internet)".

Legal experts said that the Palace was reluctant to begin a humiliating and futile attempt to ban a book which could be published in America and read by millions of Britons on the Net.

Mr Jephson, a former Royal Navy commander, was utterly trusted by Diana and was in 1993 made an executor of her will, along with her mother Frances Shand Kydd. He was later replaced as executor by her sister Sarah McCorquodale.

The book is being published worldwide by HarperCollins in time for the Christmas sales boom and will be serialised soon in The Sunday Times.(London)

Diana, Princess of Wales,
with Patrick Jephson at her side.

Man who knew secret of the royal marriage

NEVER has so senior a servant of the Royal Family decided to sell his secrets and rarely has one witnessed such turbulent times.

Patrick Jephson guided Diana, Princess of Wales through the breakdown of her marriage, the doomed affair with Captain James Hewitt, her emotional traumas and her eating disorders.

He described the mood at Kensington Palace memorably as "like a slowly spreading pool of blood seeping out from under a locked door".

The Cambridge-educated Mr Jephson was an officer on the frigate Arethusa in 1987 when he was chosen to work for the Princess by Richard Aylard, who was her equerry.

He quickly found himself privy to the House of Windsor's most explosive secret: that the fairytale marriage was a loveless sham. Buckingham Palace has everything to fear from Mr Jephson.

Uniquely, he had a foot in both camps, knowing the confidences of the rival courts of the Princess and the Prince of Wales.

When their marriage broke down, Mr Jephson effectively took sides by leaving their shared office to become the Princess's private secretary. At the time she was in a state of war with her husband.

It was Mr Jephson who chose Anthony Julius of Mishcon de Reya to represent the Princess's interests when the marriage faltered. Mr Jephson saw every document relating to the settlement.

He was there when Buckingham Palace stripped the princess of the title Her Royal Highness, a decision mocked bitterly by Earl Spencer at his sister's funeral.

The Buckingham Palace spin machine is certain to portray Mr Jephson as a money-grabbing traitor as the book's publication nears.

His sense of rectitude was troubled by the Princess's relationship with Captain Hewitt. He has never spoken with approval of the romance. He said only: "People do what they think is right at the time."

Writing a book will give Mr Jephson the chance to explain the curious remark he is said to have made to Captain Hewitt, allegedly warning the soldier that his safety could not be guaranteed.

Another mystery which the book is likely to unravel is the reason for his abrupt departure from the Princess's employment. He left in 1996 eight weeks after the ill-advised Panorama interview in which she confessed to adultery and predicted that Prince Charles would never be King.

Mr Jephson left the Princess to work for the public relations firm Lowe Bell and later set up his own company with a correspondence address in St James's.

He never thrived in public relations, though, and was soon reported to be writing his memoirs. He now lives in a rented flat in London with a divorcée. His former wife lives in the Devon home to which he travelled by train every night from Kensington, often arriving in the early hours.

Mr Jephson can expect much vitriol over the coming months. Having worked at the heart of the Royal Family in its most difficult days, he is used to making philosophical compromises.

He once said: "You had to have a moral compass in what were uncharted waters. So long as I believed her work was for the benefit of people she was trying to help, I felt we were getting it about right."

He now hopes that the same judgment will be made of his avowed aim to put the record straight for the Princess and those who served her.

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