Prince Harry's new book Spare takes a swipe at tell-all Derbyshire butler Paul Burrell for 'milking' Princess Diana's death for money

The attack in Harry’s controversial book of memoirs, Spare, which hit shops on Tuesday, January 10 was sparked by Princess Diana’s former aide publishing his own revelations in 2003.

Mr Burrell’s tell-all book, A Royal Duty, ‘made my blood boil’ wrote Harry but he doesn’t refer to his mother’s former trusted confidante directly by name.

The prince said that he found out about Mr Burrell’s publication when he was working as an unpaid farmhand in Australia at the age of 19 after leaving Eton.

He wrote that he was sent a package from Buckingham Palace that contained memos from the Palace communications team about “a delicate matter.”

“Mummy’s former butler had penned a tell-all which actually told nothing,” he said. “My mother once called this butler a dear friend, trusted him implicitly. We did too. Now this."

At the time that Mr Burrell’s book was published, Princes William and Harry issued a statement through Clarence House accusing their mother’s former butler of “a cold and overt betrayal." Harry claims in his book that he had “nothing to do with the drafting” of the Clarence House statement and that he would have “gone much further”. He also wrote that he wanted to fly home to “confront” Mr Burrell but Charles and William talked him out of it, saying all they could do was “issue a united condemnation”.

Burrell welcomed a suggestion of a meeting with the princes to justify his book and enlighten them on accounts involving Princess Diana that they had not witnessed, but the meeting never happened. Harry wrote in Spare: “I didn’t know why; I presume the Palace quashed it. I thought of that man as the one errant steer that got away that summer.”