LETTER: 'Great communicator' fights for sanity and has the Royal Household on toast

From Mr Sen Dell

Sir: Nicholas Soames MP, "close friend of Prince Charles", speaking on television last night, and on Radio 4 this morning, was clear proof of Diana's point that Prince Charles's friends had systematically portrayed her as mad and unstable. He as much as admitted it. Yet you felt, not for the first time, that the upper classes were the ones who had finally lost touch with the reality of modern Britain.

Manipulative she may be, obsessive probably, vengeful most certainly, but Diana showed in her interview that she is also far more sanely aware of what ordinary people think and feel than Nicholas Soames and the other courtiers with whom Prince Charles surrounds himself and from whom, presumably, he takes advice.

Yours faithfully,

Sean Dell

London, W2

21 November