Mother didn't talk to Diana for months

They had a row in April 1997, after which they did not communicate, despite attempts to heal the rift by Paul Burrell, Diana’s butler, who called the princess’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, to tell her: "She needs you".

Giving evidence at Burrell’s trial for theft, Mrs Shand Kydd, of Seil Island, near Oban, admitted her relationship with her daughter had been "tempestuous" at times, but denied the row was over Diana’s boyfriends.

Burrell, she said, had misinterpreted her daughter’s reference to him as her "rock" - a term which has become his epithet - because it did not refer to him alone. Diana used it to describe her drivers, her protection officers and her family, including Mrs Shand Kydd herself.

She told the court the princess was "unfortunate" to have employed people who later breached her trust, such as Ken Wharf, a protection officer who wrote the book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secrets, and Burrell, although she was told by Lord Carlile QC, who is defending Burrell: "The jury have to decide on that".

Mrs Shand Kydd, 66, told the jury that the day before Diana’s funeral, she had given Burrell a gold cross and told him: "You are family".

During almost two hours of questioning, in which she answered in a barely audible voice which often reduced to a croak, Mrs Shand Kydd never once glanced at Burrell in the dock just a few feet away.

Wearing a black jacket, with a velvet scarf and a large gold crucifix around her neck, she stood in the witness box gripping a walking stick for support. She sat down to be cross-examined.

She told the court she had not spoken to Diana for four months before her death and letters she had sent were returned unopened and, in her daughter’s handwriting, marked "return to sender".

But she vehemently disagreed with Lord Carlile’s assertion that the long rift had been caused by an argument over her daughter’s "private life and the company she was keeping". Mrs Shand Kydd, who was often difficult to hear, replied with a resounding: "No."

Lord Carlile continued, suggesting that "the profound nature of that last quarrel you had with her was because you didn’t approve of some of the people" with whom she had been having "close relationships?" She replied: "Incorrect."

Unbeknown to Diana, Burrell had phoned Mrs Shand Kydd the day after the row, to beg her to end the feud, the court heard. He told her: "She needs you as a mother."

The day before Diana was buried, a ceremony at which Burrell and Diana’s driver were the only non-Royals present, Mrs Shand Kydd handed the butler a cross to wear to "keep him safe" and told him: "It will protect you. After all, you are family, you are family too".

When asked by Lord Carlile if she was aware Diana regarded Burrell as her rock, Mrs Shand Kydd replied: "Not in the terms you are implicating." She said: "I think there has been a misinterpretation by Burrell when he infers he is referred to as ‘my rock’. This was a term she used regularly and often to many people."

Diana also used the term "star" for people, she added, saying: "It was not unique".

Diana’s mother told the court Burrell never had permission to take anything from Kensington Palace.

She was shown a set of photographs of china and crockery with the Prince of Wales’ crest on it, and asked where the princess would keep it.

She said: "In a safe in her own home - nothing which received the Royal cipher ever left a place of safety."

Prosecutor William Boyce then asked her where photographs of the princess, Prince Charles and their children, William and Harry, should have been. "In her family house under lock and key - they were totally private and personal," she replied. She said that it was a family tradition to keep family albums and pass them on to the next generation.

Lord Carlile said Mrs Shand Kydd had spent "many hours or days" in Kensington Palace with a bottle of wine, shredding a "large number" of Diana’s documents. Mrs Shand Kydd said: "It was not days," and added that did not remember the wine and it was only "about 50 or 100" of her daughter’s documents, mostly thank-you letters.

Lady Sarah McCorquodale, Diana’s sister, also gave evidence. She told the court that she had asked Burrell if he wanted any of her things, but he refused. Lady Sarah said: "I offered him anything he would like to take and he said he didn’t because his memories were in his heart and that’s all he needed."

She said that after her sister died, she shredded some of her letters and took some personal clothing home.

"The letters were just thank-you letters and the clothing was underwear and I thought it was appropriate I should destroy them myself and know it was done.

"I did not want them to fall into wrong hands."

Lady Sarah told the jury that she had also handed the clothing that the princess had died in to Burrell for him to dispose of. But she said she was unaware of other "intimate apparel" that he had burned in a brazier in the back garden of his home in Farndon, Cheshire.

Lord Carlile said that Burrell burned swimsuits, underwear and stockings, along with the clothes Diana was wearing on the night she died, so "other people didn’t get hold of that kind of item". He told Lady Sarah: "You and he shared that sense of purpose."

A large wooden box which Lady Sarah said had been taken from Kensington Palace was also shown to the court. It contained sensitive documents relating to the princess’s divorce as well as the signet ring of Diana’s former lover, James Hewitt.

Lady Sarah said she had asked Burrell for the items in it to be returned "on several occasions", but later admitted that between the end of 1998 and today, she had never made a request to Burrell for the items.

The trial continues.