This is one aspect of the circumstances surrounding Diana’s death that could be elucidated by the British

This is one aspect of the circumstances surrounding Diana’s death that could be elucidated by the British hearings – but may not be if Mr Burgess decides it is irrelevant to the inquest. (The French investigation took this view, which is why the question of Diana’s pregnancy was not addressed in the official report of September 1999.)It remains to be seen how much of the French file Mr Burgess will have translated, and how much of it will then be made public. Why, for instance, was her body partially embalmed before it was flown to Britain while Dodi’s was not? This threatened confusion, at the very least, when blood samples were taken from Diana in London. Some readers questioned our decision to publish the new assertion of pregnancy, but there has been so much speculation – and deliberately engineered confusion – surrounding Diana’s death, that any new, and credible, piece of evidence about the events of August 1997 is worth reporting. When the Daily Mail followed up our story it claimed there was evidence that Diana had sought a pregnancy scan at a “leading London hospital” in the month she died.Why should the pregnancy matter? Not because of the feeble notion that it would support a murder theory – the senior police source in France who told us Diana was pregnant was also sure her death was accidental – but because a cover-up may help explain some of the puzzling events seized on by conspiracy theorists. (Had she been wearing a seat-belt, she would have been alive today.

This may indicate how seriously Diana took her own premonition – touted recently by her former butler Paul Burrell – that she would be killed in a faked road accident.) The investigation file contains the medical records from the efforts of doctors in the emergency operating room to keep her alive.Her friend Rosa Monckton was with Diana 10 days before the crash and says it would have been “biologically impossible” for her to have been pregnant when she died. According to our source, the evidence that Diana was pregnant is somewhere in the medical papers now with Mr Burgess.Diana died at Piti?alpetri? hospital from heart failure as the result of multiple internal injuries. A senior police source in France told us that the Princess – contrary to the official version and the statements of her friends – was pregnant when she died. He has never given an interview or a press conference to explain his findings. If he is called to give evidence at the inquests, he will refuse – not because he has something to hide, but because he is still bound by his professional oath of secret d’instruction, or the secrecy of investigation.Before Christmas The Independent on Sunday reported that there had been a cover-up of sorts in the days after Diana’s death.

The 6,000-page file assembled by Judge Stephan has never been made public. Like almost all the legal actions that delayed the inquests, it was started by Mr Fayed.And yet the conspiracy theories thrive, fuelled, in part, by the secretive French way of investigating and deciding these things. Another action was then brought against some of the photographers who had pursued the car, accusing them of invading Dodi’s privacy That case was thrown out last month. So why has it taken so long? Mr Fayed has complained vigorously about this, but the main reason for the delay is that British inquests could not take place until French legal processes had been completed. The decisions of the examining magistrate, Herv?tephan, were appealed through the French courts until they were finally thrown out in 2001.

The British inquests are not being held because there is any official doubt about the thoroughness of the French investigation. The law requires a British coroner to hold an inquest on any British citizen who dies abroad in accidental or suspicious circumstances. But he retired in 2002, and at the end of last year it fell to his successor to start proceedings.The twin inquests – linked only by the coincidence of Mr Burgess holding office in both Surrey and the royal palaces – are unlikely to disturb the findings of the French investigation: that Diana and Dodi and their chauffeur died because, Henri Paul, the man at the wheel of the armoured Mercedes pressed into use by Dodi at the last moment, had been drinking heavily and taking anti-depressants.All the capricious decisions placing Diana and Dodi in that city in that car with that driver in that under-pass at that moment (not wearing seat belts) were decisions taken by the doomed couple themselves – and mostly by Dodi. It would have required an act of God-like omniscience and utter foolhardiness by M16, the CIA or whoever – even assuming the motive and will – to have organised an assassination of a beloved public figure in such unpredictable and rapidly changing circumstances.