Ministers waging a bitter battle over royal diaries and letters may be trying to cover up an affair of Prince Philip’s, a historian claims. Author Andrew Lownie estimates the Government has spent around £2 million trying to stop him seeing all the archive left by Philip’s uncle Lord Mountbatten and his wife.
Mr Lownie says he has already spent £460,000 in legal fees since trying to prise secrets concealed in the 30,000 pages. The Mountbatten family sold the papers to Southampton University in 2011 for £2.8million, most of which came from lottery funding.
Dr Lownie, 60, used freedom of information laws to try to get access to them for a book on the Mountbattens, backed by the information commissioner. The Cabinet Office and Southampton University appealed and he estimates the bill to try to stop him has now reached more than four times the money he has spent.
