Princes think of Diana 'every day'

Updated 07.05 Wed Jun 13 2007

Princes William and Harry have been speaking as a preliminary hearing into the death of their mother gets under way.

The princes said the last decade had passed "really, really slowly" and Prince Harry added that he will always wonder what happened in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel on the night she died.

"There's not a day goes by I don't think about it once in the day" - Prince William

He said: "Whatever happened in that tunnel - you know no one will ever know. And I'm sure people will always think about that the whole time."

Asked if he had stopped wondering, the prince said: "I'll never stop wondering about that."

He also said: "Over the last ten years I personally feel as though she has been... she's always there."

Prince William said: "After it happened we were always thinking about it. And there's not a day goes by I don't think about it once in the day. And so for us it is very slow and it's a lot - it has been a long time."

The new coroner for the Princess Diana inquest will hold his first preliminary hearing in the case later.

Lord Justice Scott Baker is the fourth coroner to handle the case, after Dame Butler Sloss stood down.

He will preside over the latest hearing at the High Court in London, coming face-to-face with Mohamed al Fayed's team of lawyers including Michael Mansfield QC.

At the last hearing in May in front of Lady Butler-Sloss, lawyers for Mr al Fayed launched a bid to involve the Queen in the inquests.

They called for the monarch to be "directly approached" over claims she told former royal butler Paul Burrell that there were "powers at work in this country which we have no knowledge about".

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