Princess Diana Praised Philip´s Counselling Skills

The inquest was told press reports had alleged that he had written ´unpleasant, nasty and insulting´ letters to Diana.

Princess Diana thanked her father-in-law Prince Philip for trying to save her crumbling marriage and praised his skills as a counsellor, the inquest into her death was told on Thursday.

Letters between the two, heavily edited to omit personal details, were presented to the inquest jury probing the death of Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed in a high-speed Paris car crash in August 1997.

Dodi's father Mohamed al-Fayed, owner of the Harrods luxury store in London, says Diana and his son were killed by British security services on the orders of Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband.

Fayed believes the killing was ordered because the royal family did not want the ex-wife of Prince Charles and mother of the future king having a child with his son. He says Diana's body was embalmed to cover up evidence she was expecting a baby.

The "Dearest Pa" letters were produced in court by Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt-Davis, Prince Philip's private secretary, who said there was nothing derogatory in the 1992 correspondence. Diana and Prince Charles were divorced in 1996.

The inquest was told press reports had alleged that he had written "unpleasant, nasty and insulting" letters to Diana. But the excerpts produced in court painted a different picture.

Philip wrote in one typewritten letter: "If invited, I will always do my utmost to help you and Charles to the best of my ability, but I am quite ready to concede that I have no talents as a marriage counsellor!!!"

In her handwritten reply, Diana said: "Dearest Pa, I was particularly touched by your most recent letter which proved to me, if I didn't already know it, that you really do care.

"You are very modest about your marriage guidance skills and I disagree with you."

She told him: "Even if you are unable to succeed in this, I still would like you to know how much I admire you for the way in which you have tried to come to terms with this extremely difficult family problem."

The brigadier said the letters showed a father-in-law doing his very best to help his daughter-in-law as her marriage disintegrated in the harsh glare of worldwide media publicity.

"At no point did he ever use the insulting terms described in media reports," Hunt-Davis told the court.

Under English law, an inquest is needed to determine the cause of death when someone dies unnaturally.

The inquest, expected to last up to six months, was opened after major British and French police investigations both concluded Diana and Dodi died because their chauffeur Henri Paul was inebriated and driving too fast.