Princess promotes Royal equerry

Press, 13 April 1989, Page 1

Princess promotes Royal equerry

By

TONY VERDON

in London

Princess Anne has sealed her close friendship with Commander Timothy Laurence by giving him a key job as one of her most trusted personal advisers. She has appointed the Royal equerry, at the centre of publicity over her marriage, as a trustee to her private charity. Buckingham Palace has confirmed that Commander Laurence is one of only three officials who oversee the Princess Royal’s Charity Trust, a charity under her personal supervision that distributes funds to deserving causes. Officials were reported last evening as suggesting she could have given the unpaid job to her husband, Captain Mark Phillips. Instead, she chose the man revealed this week as the writer of four affectionate letters to the Princess. The other two trustees are both senior Buckingham Palace officials — the Queen’s solicitor, Sir Matthew Farrer, and Princess Anne’s personal secretary, Lieu-

tenant-Colonel Peter Gibbs. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard detectives have established the letters were taken from Princess Anne’s personal briefcase, and not, as first thought, from her private study at Buckingham Palace. But detectives have reportedly yet to establish where the leather case was when the letters were stolen. They do not know whether it was stolen from Princess Anne’s home at Gatcombe Park, in Gloucestershire, or at Buckingham Palace. It was also disclosed last evening that Princess Anne did not even know the letters were missing until she was approached by the police. One is understood to have been written late last year, and the other three were written over the last three months. The letters were handed to a reporter from the “Sun” newspaper on March 29, which, after holding on to them for a week, passed them to the police, without publishing their contents. The “Sun” has invited its 12 million

readers to “turn detective to solve the biggest Royal whodunnit of the century.” It said senior detectives had three main theories about the theft — money, mischief or malice. Captain Phillips flew to Spain yesterday for a private business meeting. The flight followed a six-hour encounter at Gatcombe Park between Princess Anne and her husband. The couple are not expected to spend any more time together this week with Princess Anne travelling to Florida for an equestrian meeting, and Captain Phillips riding in Northampton on Sunday, and opening a shop in Monte Carlo on Monday. The “Daily Express” newspaper said the Princess and Captain Phillips’s once happy marriage was now clearly on the rocks, with the relationship so frosty that any attempt at a public reconciliation would be pointless. But its Royal correspondent, Ashley Walton, said a Royal divorce was not an imminent possibility.