There were no photocalls
Sir: I do not know how much of the rest of Mark Honigsbaum's article on 'Diana and the tabloids: the real story' (27 September) has been sucked out of his thumb, but I can say that it is quite untrue that 'every day there was effectively another unofficial photocall on the Jonikal' Dodi Fayed and Princess Diana did their best to evade the media and discourage the paparazzi; indeed, on their first cruise together they had returned to this country before the first fuzzy photographs were offered for sale, and those were shot by a photographer who it was said had chanced upon them in Corsica. However, neither of them was prepared to hide when run to ground by paparazzi, as they sometimes were, and no one should be compelled to live their lives constrained by the unjustifi- able presence of stalkers with Nikons around their necks.
Mr Honigsbaum says, 'Given the resources of the Fayed family, if she hadn't wanted to be seen we wouldn't have seen her.' Before the deaths of Dodi and the Princess, Mohamed had instructed his French lawyers to begin legal proceedings against a number of French publications and news organisations which had invaded the privacy of his family and that of the Princess at St Tropez, even sending photog- raphers to crawl through the undergrowth at night. Such was his determination to resist these violations that 20 security peo- ple were deployed day and night to try to maintain the privacy which Mr Honigs- baum implies was not really desired. It is not true to say 'there was a clear, unstated co-operation there'. The Princess and rep- resentatives of Mr Al Fayed asked on sev- eral occasions for the photographers to withdraw, but their pleas were greeted with dumb insolence or smiling amusement.
It really will not do for a publication of your prestige to continue to try to blame the victims of media harassment for their own demise.
Michael Cole
Harrods, London SW1
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