Focus: What the butler knows

Paul Burrell kept his counsel and waited for the lady to 'come through'. It seems incredible that he risked prison rather than embarrass his former boss. But then he is used to keeping his mouth shut. And, oh, the secrets he could tell. By Cole Moreton

Disbelief was about the only possible response when Paul Burrell walked out of the Old Bailey on Friday, tears in his eyes, and spoke a line that achieved instant fame: "The Queen has come through for me; the lady has come through for me." Disbelief that Her Majesty was the only person in Britain who had not known that her former footman was accused of stealing things; disbelief that she had not realised that those things were the same as she had given him permission to have; disbelief that she had not thought it worth mentioning this until her husband blurted out to her son that the situation was "difficult for Mummy"; and of course disbelief that her dysfunctional, greedy household might continue to play out the role she wrote for it, as the model British family at the head of us all.

Even stronger than that, however, was the urge to shake Mr Burrell by the shoulders and ask in utter disbelief why it had not occurred to him even now that "the lady" herself was the one who had stitched him up, in a right royal way, or at least by her silence condemned him to all those awful edgy days in court when Scotland Yard and the legal establishment seemed to hover over him like a bigger ton of bricks than Buckingham Palace. And of course the disbelief, shared by so many, that even when it looked as though he was going down, the butler kept his vow of silence to the Queen. They call it omerta in Sicily, where bewildered mafia underlings often keep their mouths shut even as they pay the price for all the murky doings of some boss too powerful to touch.

There was never any chance that Mr Burrell would betray the head of the family, even if it meant going to jail, because he appears to believe in her. Totally, and without question, even now. It was well known how far Mr Burrell had travelled from from life in a Derbyshire mining village where his father drove a Coal Board lorry and his mother was a cleaner, but the court case revealed how obsessed he had become with the privileged world of his new employers. The house in Cheshire that detectives turned upside down was full of royal memorabilia, not just articles that had belonged to Diana. Even though he had been privy to the tears and hatred that flowed between Buck House and Kensington Palace, even though his volatile Princess had told him a thousand times what she thought the family was doing to her, Mr Burrell kept photographs and framed letters from the Queen and Prince Philip on his shelves at home.

The Windsors did not believe the accusations at first. Prince Charles opposed the trial, until Scotland Yard laid out two killer facts: Mr Burrell had been photographed dressing up in Diana's clothes, and was selling her possessions to fund a new-found celebrity lifestyle. How else could he afford two homes? Never mind that he was actually selling one and moving into another. Never mind that there was no such photograph, and absolutely no evidence of his selling anything. When the trial began, Prince Charles, for one, was still under the impression that these allegations were true. The detectives hadn't bothered to correct him – but then the leader of this crack squad which had spent a great deal of time and effort investigating Mr Burrell would later confess that she was unaware he wrote a column for a national newspaper, or a book on etiquette, or gave lectures for thousands of pounds. It must have taken quite an effort of will for the team to know less about him than the average reader of the Daily Mail would have done.

That advice on etiquette is the real clue to why Mr Burrell became what he was, and what he might do next. It told readers how to lay out the family silver correctly, how to address visiting dignitaries, and so on. It didn't talk about how to sit on the sofa with a distraught princess who is engaged in a media war with her estranged husband; or how to lay out this stunning, image-obsessed woman as best you can after she has been mangled in a car crash.

Those who saw Mr Burrell in the dock at the Old Bailey were struck by two things. One was all the secrets he must have overheard or been told, or helped to facilitate, in those years of royal service. His first proper contact with Diana was when he found the relatively naive teenager, not yet betrothed to the prince who was in love with another, wandering lost in Balmoral. He was there when she began to realise what this man she had married was like; there when the marriage disintegrated; there when she fought back; and there when she wanted to smuggle lovers in and out of her apartments. If anybody knows who Harry's father really is, whether Diana did have an affair with that Asian surgeon, or Will Carling, it is he. Worse, for the Queen, he must know more than you or me about the private life of Prince Philip, the reasons Andrew and Fergie split up, the disastrous working lives of Sophie and Edward, and other family intrigues going back years that would be worth millions to a publisher. And certainly worth freedom to a butler in the dock, although the case ended just as he was about to speak.

Second, spectators were struck by his bearing and manners. He was, remember, a servant. Not a very well paid one at that – maybe £40,000 a year at the end, much less for most of his time there – and the family is beastly to those below stairs. It demands devotion, silence, obedience, then makes them redundant with little warning. He may have been her rock, but he always called Di "Ma'am" or "Your Royal Highness", even when her mascara was running on his shoulder. If she confided in him it was because she knew he would do exactly what he was told.

The truth is, as his book and bearing show, that after he was accepted into the Royal Household at 18 Paul Burrell became totally absorbed in it. Like an obsessive flatmate who wears your clothes, he became more royal than the royals. As their public image degenerated, he became the guru of etiquette. Poorly born, in royal eyes, he became the epitome of breeding.

Now that he has been cleared, he has a choice. He can tell us everything he knows about all that is rotten in the House of Windsor. Or he can keep his counsel, and the dignity that now seems far greater than theirs, and trade on the way this wasteful trial has made him a proper celebrity, representative of old-fashioned regal values, particularly in America. He'll coin it in. Diana would have loved that.

Mystery of the mahogany box

"We've come for the Crown Jewels," said the detectives knocking on Paul Burrell's door in January last year. A mahogany box that had once belonged to Diana was now at her family home, but the contents were missing. Lady Sarah McCorquodale, Diana's sister, had apparently rung the police after seeing an episode of Through the Keyhole about the former butler's home, believing that the royal memorabilia seen there would include the contents of the box. She knew the items to be potentially highly embarrassing. They included a signet ring from Diana's former lover, letters from Prince Philip, and a tape recording of an interview between the Princess and a male servant who claimed to have been raped by another. Lady Sarah and Mr Burrell had both been present when the box was opened after Diana's death, but she had not seen the contents since. Neither were they found in Cheshire that day. When a police officer was asked in court what the box had contained he felt able only to pass a note. Mrs Justice Rafferty decided the world could be told about the signet ring, but the full nature of the other contents was never discussed in court. The chance of them being described may have jogged the Queen's memory about her chat with Mr Burrell, but the secrets of the box may never be told.