The note is believed to have been written in either 1995 or 1996 but did not come to light until excerpts were published in a British tabloid in 2003.

“My husband is planning an accident on my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry (former royal nanny) Tiggy (Legge-Bourke),” -?Lady Diana.

The extent of her worries were revealed in two notes presented to the inquest, one written by her lawyer Lord Mishcon and the other by the princess to her butler Paul Burrell.

Her laywer said Princess Diana had long-held fears about secret plots by the royal family to kill her in a car crash, the inquest into her death has heard.

The coroner heading the inquest, Lord Justice Scott Baker told the jury of six women and five men that Diana’s fears for her life stretched back about two years before her fatal 1997 car crash in Paris.

A huge crowd of photographers gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice for the arrival of Fayed’s father, Harrods department store owner Mohamed Al Fayed, who alleges that secret services and Prince Philip engineered the fatal crash. “I have been fighting for 10 years, at last I want to have justice,” said Al Fayed.

Coroner Scott Baker told the jury its duty is to answer four questions: who died, when and where they died, and most controversially, how they died.

He said the couple began their romance on July 14, 1997, when Dodi Fayed arrived in St. Tropez, where Diana was vacationing as a guest of his father.

“A famous photo of Diana in a leopard-print bathing suit – often cited as evidence that she was pregnant, because her stomach appears rounded – was taken before Dodi arrived, so she could not have been pregnant by him” – Baker.

Diana died in the early morning of August 31 1997, after the Mercedes she was travelling in crashed at high speed in the Pont D’Alma underpass in Paris.