He talked about performing tasks of a "very personal nature, including very late at night" and described her family relationships as "very strained".So, it appears, are his relations with the Spencers, who are angered by his claims about his closeness to Diana. This may be motivated by guilt on the part of Mrs Shand Kydd – mother and daughter had not spoken for four months before the Princess's death – or an aristocratic distaste at the notion of friendship with servants. But there is also a Dickensian flavour to the story, with the butler demonstrating as intense an attachment to Diana's garments as Miss Havisham, the jilted bride in Great Expectations, did to her wedding finery.The Princess herself implied that Burrell offered her emotional support, but few observers have remarked on the power imbalance between them. For all her superficial modernity, Lady Diana Spencer was born and bred in one aristocratic dynasty and married into another; she was unable to thrive in either, and it may be a sign of her isolation that Burrell was not the only member of her entourage with whom she had an ambiguous relationship. She became close to some of her police bodyguards, and her former private secretary, Patrick Jephson, published a book that catalogued her difficulties in forming lasting relationships.Friends can answer back, but employees have to suffer in silence or find other jobs.

There is still a great deal of kudos attached to working for a royal – something has to compensate for the appalling wages – and there is no doubt that the Princess inspired enormous affection in some of her staff. But while very emotional people are often drawn together, these were not relationships among equals.Burrell's acquittal has offered fresh insights into the Princess, the Royal Family and the kind of people – servile and self-justifying by turns – they gather around them. However Burrell perceives his story, it offers dramatic confirmation of the anachronistic and emotionally unhealthy atmosphere of royal households More from Joan Smith. There is an exhibition newly opened at the Imperial War Museum called Anthem For Doomed Youth, celebrating the war poetry of the First World War. It was reviewed at the weekend by Thomas Sutcliffe's crew of merry men and women on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review, and at one point Sutcliffe said quite sagely that not all WWI poetry fell in the same bracket. Some was gung-ho (Brooke, Grenfell), some was grim (Sassoon, Graves, Owen, etc) and quite a lot of it was sentimental and not very good.

We have been so brainwashed into thinking that Great War poetry must be serious, committed, passionate, indignant and so on, that it seems appalling even to think that people got humour out of the fighting.But they did.Here's the opening of one of my favourite World War One poems. It's called "The Lost Leader".The men are marching like the best; The waggons wind across the lea;At ten to two we have a rest, We have a rest at ten to three;I ride ahead upon my gee And try to look serene and gay;The whole battalion follows meAnd I believe I've lost the way.Full many a high-class thoroughfare My erring map does not disclose,While roads that are not really there The same elaborately shows;And whether this is one of those It needs a clever man to say;I am not clever, I suppose.And I believe I've lost the way.That was published in July 1917, in Punch, and was written by a serving infantry officer. His name was Alan Patrick Herbert, A P Herbert, who later became well known as a brilliant comic writer and poet.Aha! you will say A comic poet A writer of light verse That's not real poetry.Be blowed to that, I say. It's good stuff, whichever way you slice it.The soldiers sing about their beer; The wretched road goes on and on;There ought to be a turning here, But if there was, the thing has gone.Like some depressed automaton I ask at each estaminet;They say, "Tout droit" and I say "Bon".But I believe I've lost the way Herbert wasn't a dilettante poet.