LETTER: Diana's monument

Sir: In Deborah Orr's knockabout piece "The forgotten princess" (31 August) she wrote of this fund that "rather than quietly getting on with its job - raising money for good causes - it ... spends a vast amount of money on maintaining the image of the late ... lamented".

In fact, it is by asserting, defending and using the intellectual property rights owned by the Princess's estate that this fund has been able to raise so much new money for the charity sector: well over pounds 70m of our income has been linked to the sales of products. And as for quietly getting on with our work, we have already pledged pounds 22m in grants to many different charitable causes in this country and overseas.

In this important sense, the Princess's work of supporting and championing charitable causes, often causes which others would have preferred to forget, continues.

Dr ANDREW PURKIS

Chief Executive, Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund

London SE1