A LEADING perfumer has accused Buckingham Palace of reneging on an
agreement to allow him publicity about his royal patronage in return for
creating new scents exclusively for the Queen.
John Stephen has defied instructions from the Queen's staff not to issue a
press release highlighting his four new perfumes and fragrances for senior
members of the Royal Family.
Mr Stephen was unrepentant about his actions yesterday saying he had been
approached out of the blue to design new scents for the Queen. When a
housekeeper raised concerns that the work might be too costly, he said that
he would do it without charge provided he could get publicity for the contract.
Mr Stephen released copies of two letters sent to him by Palace officials to
support his case. In the first from Windsor Castle, signed by Annette Wilkin,
a housekeeper, he is thanked for sending samples of the commissioned
perfumes to the Queen. She wrote: "The Queen is happy that you mention the
perfumes in your newsletter [press release]."
Mr Stephen said, however, that after completing the work and drawing up his
press release, he was sent another letter from Buckingham Palace signed by
Dickie Arbiter, then the assistant press secretary to the Queen. Mr Arbiter
said: "Following our discussion yesterday I have now had an opportunity of
discussing your press release with The Queen and her private secretary and
while the detail in it is accurate, it does read like an advertisement.
"The Lord Chamberlain's guidelines are quite clear in that members of the
Royal Family and their residences cannot and should not be used in any [way]
for advertising or promotion. Nor at any time do members of the Royal
Family endorse commercial products. Your press release quite clearly
breaches all the guidelines."
Now, Mr Stephen has ignored Buckingham Palace's instructions and issued a
press release headlined "The Queen requests a personalised perfume". The
information can be read on the website for the Cotswold Perfumery, a family
business begun in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, in the mid-Sixties.
Mr Stephen said yesterday: "I made the fragrances and then they changed
their minds." He said the Queen, through her housekeeper, initially asked for
two fragrances - a white floral perfume based on day-lily, dianthus and
freesia, and a second, spicy scent to include vanilla, patchouli and musk for
use in linen drawers at Windsor Castle.
Several perfumes were created and eventually narrowed down to a shortlist
of four. Mr Stephen said he also received a call from a steward of Prince
Edward, who wanted fragrances made as personal gifts for other close
relatives. A new "gentleman's cologne" - called Georgian Lime - was designed
for Prince Phillip.
Mr Stephen said that all his perfumes for the Royal Family were well received
and that Prince Edward paid for his products. He did not expect the Queen to
pay for her goods.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment.
~*~
Berlin refuses kaiser a final resting place(Electronic Telegraph)
By Tony Paterson in Doorn
A PLAN by the Dutch government to close the former home of Germany's
last monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who spent his final years in exile at a manor
in the Netherlands, has caused a row between Berlin and The Hague.
Holland is threatening to close the former home of the kaiser who still lies in
state on Dutch soil, but Germany is making it clear that it does not want his
body or his possessions back. The kaiser fled to Holland after Germany's
defeat in the First World War to take up residence in exile at a manor house
at Doorn near Utrecht until his death in 1941. The Dutch government
confiscated the premises in 1945 claiming it as "war booty". Since the early
Fifties it has run the Doorn house and mausoleum containing the kaiser's body
as a museum commemorating the last days of the Hohenzollern dynasty.
In a radical break with previous policy, however, Holland's Social Democrat
culture minister, Rick van der Ploeg, last month announced plans to withdraw
the annual £160,000 grant used to fund the museum. The Doorn estate earns
about £83,000 a year from ticket sales.
Dick Verroen, the director of Doorn, said: "This covers only a third of our
outgoings. We would not be able to survive without additional government
funding. It is highly embarrassing. After seizing Doorn as government property
after the war, Holland will now have to go to the Germans with a begging
bowl if it wants to prevent the museum's closure."
Doorn has 45,000 visitors annually. Many are Germans who buy souvenirs
bearing the kaiser's Prussian coat of arms. The Doorn estate comprises a
moated 24-room manor house, a 14-acre park and a huge collection of
furniture, mementos and other personal belongings that were shipped in 59
railway wagons from Germany to Doorn after his abdication. The house is
valued at £47 million, which would go to the Dutch government if Doorn were
sold.
The closure threat has met with a mixture of embarrassment, lack of interest
and guarded optimism in Germany. Some leading members of Germany's
Protestant Church have launched a campaign to return the kaiser's remains for
burial in the Hohenzollern crypt at Berlin's turn-of-the-century cathedral, built
by the kaiser to rival St Paul's in London.
Wilhelm Huffmeyer, the chief administrator of Berlin's cathedral, said: "One
should not destroy long-established traditions, but there is an open question as
to whether the last German kaiser should lie for eternity in Doorn."
Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's government is alarmed at the prospect of
inheriting the kaiser's legacy. The former Emperor of Germany and grandson
of Queen Victoria is still regarded by many as a nationalist who plunged
Germany into the catastrophe of the Great War, paving the way for the Nazi
dictatorship.
Michael Naumann, Germany's Social Democrat culture minister, said: "The
kaiser is not my favourite subject. The Dutch government would find it very
difficult to sell off Doorn because the Hohenzollern family could make a legal
claim for it." The return to Germany of the kaiser's coffin and his belongings is
seen as sending the wrong signals about a country that this month celebrated
the 10th anniversary of its reunification.
The Berlin government has ruled out the idea of buying back the estate or its
contents. A government official in Berlin said last week: "Doorn is the
responsibility of the Dutch government." Several German historians point out
that far from opposing the Nazis, the kaiser entertained the hope that they
would restore him as a monarch.
Wolfgang Wippermann, the Berlin historian who argues against the return of
the kaiser, said: "Wilhelm II was the representative of the old system that had
nothing in common with parliamentary monarchy." The last in line of the
kaiser's Hohenzollern family, Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia, 24, also
rejected the idea of returning the contents of his great-great grandfather's
estate to Germany.
Mr Wipperman said: "We would prefer Doorn to be left intact. Wilhelm
stipulated in his will that he did not want his body returned to Germany unless
the monarchy was restored there."
The trustees of the manor house in Doorn have deliberately kept it as a "living
museum" to the former kaiser. Its rooms are packed with memorablilia
including uniforms, portraits of the kaiser and his wife Empress
Auguste-Victoria and even a kilt given to the kaiser by Queen Victoria when
he was a child.
The hallways are decked out with photographs and paintings of German
troops attacking the enemy or being reviewed by the emperor. The kaiser's
private sitting room is furnished with a tapestry-covered cushion bearing the
now banned verse of the German national anthem Deutschland, Deutschland
Uber Alles. In a mausoleum the kaiser's coffin lies in state covered with the
Prussian standard and surrounded by wreaths.
Mr Verroen said: "If the kaiser were to rise from his coffin and walk into the
house today, he would have no difficulty in recognising it. We have done our
utmost to keep it exactly as it was."
The Dutch government has given the trustees of the Doorn estate 10 months
to find alternative methods of funding the kaiser's last refuge otherwise it will
close. Mr Verroen said: "Despite their reservations, the Germans may have to
rescue their kaiser. Doorn is too valuable a part of European history to lose."
~*~
Al Fayed slams 'secret Diana files'(The Guardian)
Mohamed Al Fayed has hit out at a US court's decision to
deny him access to "secret" documents about the crash
that killed Diana, Princess of Wales and his son Dodi.
A Washington federal appeals court panel yesterday threw
out Mr Al Fayed's bid to overturn a lower court ruling that
he could not see the intelligence relating to the 1997
tragedy in Paris.
The Egyptian-born tycoon wanted the CIA to hand over
files including information he claims proves the pair did not
die by accident.
He has now launched a further bid to have the files
released under American freedom of information
legislation.
Mr Al Fayed said: "This is typical of the American
government to protect their intelligence services. That is
why we have issued, under freedom of information, a new
bill to seek the intelligence documents."
He added: "The National Security Agency claims divulging
the information they have on Diana, Princess of Wales and
my son Dodi would 'seriously jeopardise the national
security'. What can they be hiding that they are trying to
protect so much?"
Mr Al Fayed has previously come under fire from Frances
Shand Kydd, the mother of Diana, Princess of Wales, for
his theories about the fatal smash in August 1997.
National Security Agency officials acknowledged in 1998
that the agency picked up some references to Diana in its
monitoring that were casual and incidental, but maintained
she was never a target of US intelligence efforts.
Mr Al Fayed has alleged the deaths resulted from a
murder conspiracy carried out by people who
disapproved of Diana's relationship with his son.
Their driver, Henri Paul, also died in the crash, and a
French magistrate's investigation blamed the accident on
Paul, saying he was drunk and had been speeding.