Was it 10 years ago ?

It was as much as the resurrection of the old canard about the likeness between Nazi loving Prince Harry and Captain Scarlett by Famous for 15 Megapixels as much as the surprise discovery that the fabled wildlife destroyer and Chairman of the World Wildlife Federation, the Queen's rubbing rag for sixty years , the grumpy Duke of Edinburgh, had not after all organised the grisly slaughter of Lady Diana (then no longer Princess of Wales), his daughter in law and mother of the future king in the Pont D'Alma tunnel, that drew me once more to my trophy collection of intimate apparel. Limp, but lustrous mementos, redolent of exciting and dare we say it ? Happier times ?

Beside the swapsies with Oliver Reed and Peter O'Toole lay the treasured memories, and, fragments of a romance, silent and silken, gossamer playthings - these , torn caught on a Kensington Palace handle, as, idly draped over a keyhole - "to keep out our butler from seeing" - an idle happy remark echoing in the vast bedroom underlined it seemed only moments later when "Oh God and " other mangled cries could be heard outside..."Don't worry" she cried, like a huntress, "those ejaculations are the Butler" ... "now it's your turn," the rest is a blur. (As Boofy could be encouraged, late on a November evening at the fireside in Boodle's to say, yet again, "Sex - all you remember is the first time and the last time - all the rest's a blur d'ya see ?")

Also hidden in the same drawer were some rather interesting (if intimate - Testino eat your heart out) photographs and a contemporary one of a portrait (from the ancestral halls) of a younger Lord Patel (much cropped here to remove some remarks she scrawled over it in a fit of passion, which I publish here alongside her gorgeous son and future King.

There was also the curious brief manuscript sent mysteriously by a messenger some years ago which appear to be the outlines of a short story of how a deranged woman, who spent her time sat on a sofa, writing cheap romantic novels, who had a brief acquaintance / liason with Prince Carol ll of Romania (a tale mentioned in Olvia Mannings Spoilt City)and plotted the overthrow of the House of Saxe Coburg.

This fanciful tale involved her daughter inveigling herself into the one of the great families and ensaring the royal heir in a loveless ( and childless because of a familial streak of syphilis) marriage, and by producing a male child by an incestuous relationship establishes her line as one of the major royal families of Europe.

A fanciful story in which there are evidently many pages missing but there are some rather odd notes in Greek(Coptic ?)throughout the text which, if someone had the time might be worth examining. Full of tales of the Illuminati, rituals of motherhood, and the cheap imagery of popular romances, horses and their riders, mounting polo ponies, the Great Park at Windsor. An absurd place called the Russian Tea Rooms in Kensington.

Also nonsense about some queer picture dealer (friendly it appears with a chap called Liddle) and distant relative of the Monarch (!) flying to Germany after the war and retrieving some embarassing Nazi documents, files, about a mad impotent uncle and Hitler. Definitely not your Beevor sort of stuff. More like the heirs of Beaver (brook). Do his papers still publish anything about the Royal Family ?

Wistfully closing the drawer, denying the room the frangrance, it is worth remembering that with modern PCR analysis DNA can be recovered and identified 20 - 30 years after the being deposited on clothes.Even after being washed many times.

Which reminds my Research staff that the last scion of the House of Saxe Coburg und Gotha, young Simeon,(Симеон Борисов Сакскобургготски) who is a political leader in Bulgaria, (and until August 2005 Prime Minister) will of course become a European from January 1st 2007.

Now if that tale were true - could the TRUE Saxe Coburg's regain their throne and lands from the infertile usurpers ? Now THAT would make a fascinating tale.