White families in Zimbabwe are furious over a
goodwill message sent by the Queen to
President Robert Mugabe on the day a farmer
was murdered by an armed mob of his
supporters.
However the message was picked up on by the
Zimbabwean media, sparking fury among white
communities angry that Buckingham Palace had
sent words of encouragement to Mr Mugabe on
the day he branded white farmers "enemies of
the state".
Mr Mugabe, denying that he was "anti-white",
said the land crisis would be solved "soon".
Royal dresses designed to spare
blushes (UK Times)
PRINCESSES Elizabeth and
Margaret wore unusually short
dresses to their father, George
VI's, coronation so that they did
not trip on the hems,
embarrassing the Royal Family
so soon after the abdication of
Edward VIII.
Royal rumours (The Guardian)
Genetic experts claimed yesterday that
they had solved a 205-year-old mystery
surrounding the fate of the boy-king Louis
XVII, by proving that he died in prison in
1795, aged 10.
The "congratulations" message, signed by the
Queen, was sent by the UK Government on
Tuesday, the 20th anniversary of Zimbabwe's
independence.
It was drafted by the Foreign Office and
passed to the Queen for approval before being
delivered by the British High Commission in the
capital Harare.
It is routine for the Queen to send a message
on national days to all countries which have
diplomatic relations with Britain.
Tim Savory, a white
farmer, told The Times
newspaper: "The
regime here will
interpret this as a
green light to do as it
pleases.
"Her Majesty should
know she has let us
down badly."
Another, Charme
Kennedy, 66, who
owns a farm outside
Kwekwe in the Midlands province, was less
diplomatic.
"Has the Queen gone senile or insane? That
can be the only explanation."
Explaining the note, a Foreign Office
spokeswoman said: "We always send a
message on the National Day of every country.
It was a message of goodwill to the people of
Zimbabwe."
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: "In a
case such as this the Queen is acting
constitutionally on the advice of her ministers."
Meanwhile, the tense stand-off between white
farmers and black squatters is continuing,
despite a pledge by leaders of the illegal
occupations to halt political violence.
Landowners have agreed to further discussions
on a demand by squatters that farmers sign
over land they have claimed on more than
1,000 farms.
'Not anti-white'
He told the BBC: "We want to be positive. We
want to correct this land question in the
interests of everybody.
"We are not anti-white, not at all, but on the
land question I think... the people in Europe
don't understand how deeply this land question
touches our heart."
Asked why police were not investigating
violence against farmers, Mr Mugabe there
were war veterans in the police and he wanted
to avoid a clash between them.
"This may be a long way to the solution but it
is a much smoother way, I can assure you."
~*~
BY ALEX O'CONNELL
That episode had been shameful
enough and it was vital that the
girls, whose appearance on
May 12, 1937, was aimed at
boosting public morale,
performed gracefully.
The cream-coloured lace robes,
which stopped at the shins of
Elizabeth, 11, and Margaret, 7,
to show their silver shoes and
little socks, are on display for the first time. They are in a
new exhibition of six generations of royal children's clothes
which opens today and as part of the Royal Ceremonial
Dress Collection at Kensington Palace in Central London.
The display's curator, Joanna Marschner, said that the
dresses were "a sensible, practical detail" because the girls
had had to negotiate the steps of Westminster Abbey, while
at the same time managing their short trains.
The robes were stored in Clarence House before being
moved to Kensington Palace. Conservationists have
strengthened fastenings and dealt with a stain on one.
The dresses reflect the gradual modernisation of the Royal
Family. Mixing fashion with tradition, they were designed by
Ede Ravenscroft, a maker of ceremonial costumes.
The exhibition also features a white muslin dress worn in
1810 by the 14-year-old Princess Charlotte, daughter of the
Prince Regent - later King George IV - and Princess
Caroline. She died in childbirth, aged 18, and it is said that
she was so loved that London's drapers ran out of black
cloth before her funeral.
Other highlights of the show include a silk-velvet dress worn
by the 14-year-old Princess Victoria - later Queen Victoria -
and the outfits that the young Prince Charles and Princess
Anne wore to the coronation of their mother, Elizabeth, in
1953.
~*~
Paul Webster in Paris
The results of DNA tests on a heart (right,
in its crystal vase container) presumed to
be his contradict the myth that the boy -
the son of Louis XVI and Queen
Marie-Antoinette - did not die of TB but
was smuggled out of prison after his
parents were guillotined, and that another
child's body was placed in his bed.
It is claimed that he then founded a new
dynasty before dying in Holland in 1845.
The legend has led to claims by at least
100 pretenders to the Bourbon regal
inheritance.
Thousands of articles and 600 books have
kept the myth alive, but the geneticists,
Jean-Jacques Cassiman and Bernd
Brinkmann, said that DNA from the heart
matched samples from locks of hair cut
from Marie-Antoinette.
Although royal pretenders believe that the
heart, which resembles a piece of dark
stone, had been mishandled over the
years and could not provide proof, the
genetic evidence appeared to be
conclusive.
The historian Philippe Delorme, who
launched the affair, said science had
confirmed the verdict of history, and there
was no doubt that it was the boy-king who
died in 1795.
"There is no longer an enigma around
Louis XVII."
The results of earlier examinations had
already persuaded Prof Cassiman, from
Louvain University in Belgium, and Prof
Brinkmann, from Münster University in
Germany, that the most likely living
pretender, Charles de Bourbon, Duke of
Normandy, was not related to the royal
family.
Among the many previous investigators
was the late French president François
Mitterrand, who went to Germany and
Holland in a failed attempt to disprove the
story that the royalist doctor who carried
out a post-mortem examination on the
boy in 1795 saved the heart when the rest
of the body was thrown into a common
grave.
The heart, which the doctor pickled, was
later stolen by a medical student, and
when it was eventually recovered it was
rejected by the Bourbon family as a fake.
It was preserved by the Spanish Bourbon
line before being transferred to the royal
crypt in Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris, in
1975.
The latest scientific findings are unlikely
to quash counter-claims.
Another historian, Philippe Boiry, said that
it was impossible to draw conclusions
from a heart that "had lived through a lot
after being lost, stolen, found and then
taken from its reliquary after being kept in
alcohol for years".