According to her friends and relatives, she felt her life had been ruined by the Queen Mother's decision to cut all ties. 'It is symptomatic of the ruthless and brutal cold-heartedness of that family and of the way they treat the victims they leave in their wake who, including Diana, have generally done them great service.'įor 30 years - during which time she was publicly vilified for her apparent treachery - Crawfie protected her former royal employer by keeping these letters hidden. 'Crawfie was extremely badly treated by the Queen Mother and by all the royals,' he said. The royal writer, Anthony Holden, believes the discoveries prove that the popular, 'pearly queen' image of the Queen Mother is far from the steely truth. This would be quite all right as long as your name did not come into it.' 'I know you understand this, because you have been so wonderfully discreet all the years you were with us.'īut the letter goes on to refer to a Times journalist, Dermot Morrah, who had been engaged to write pieces based on information supplied to him by Crawfie: 'Mr Morrah, who I saw the other day, seemed to think that you could help him with his articles and get paid from America. 'I do feel, most definitely, that you should not write and sign articles about the children, as people in positions of confidence with us must be utterly oyster,' it reads. Typewritten, it appears to come from the then Queen and is addressed in informal terms to Crawfie. She eventually succumbed to cancer and died alone in a nursing home - but not before passing on a number of key documents to her solicitor, Bruce Russell, with instructions that they should be released once they could no longer hurt those involved.Īmong them is a letter, never seen before, which forms a central part of the programme to be broadcast tomorrow evening. In fact, the deal was brokered with the Palace by the Foreign Office, who believed the magazine articles would be good for Anglo-American relations.Ĭhildless and separated in later life from the famous sisters she had cared for, Crawfie attempted to commit suicide twice, nearly succeeding in the late Eighties. The revelations came to light as a result of research carried out for a Channel 4 documentary and have been criticised this weekend by Lord St John of Fawsley, the royal commentator, as a 'strange kind of birthday present' for the Queen Mother, who will be 100 on 4 August.Ĭrawford, or 'Crawfie' as the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret both knew her, was an intimate companion of the royal family for 17 years, but was ostracised for supposedly selling her story to the press without the permission of her former employers. Now held by Crawford's solicitor, the private papers show that the Queen Mother was secretly involved in a government plan to sell anecdotes about her daughters' childhood to an American magazine - a publicity stunt for which the nanny was pilloried for the rest of her life.
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