Diana, Princess of Wales, should never have been in the car which crashed killing her and her companion Dodi Fayed, according to official documents released today.

She got into the Mercedes driven by chauffeur Henri Paul - who, tests later revealed, had been three times the legal alcohol limit - only after the car in which she was intending to leave the Ritz Hotel failed to start.

Diana, 36, and 42-year-old Mr Fayed were killed along with M. Paul when they crashed in a Paris underpass in August 1997.

Papers released by the Cabinet Office under the Freedom of Information Act reveal correspondence between officials in the aftermath of the event.

Conflicting accounts appear in the documents about why the couple had got into the car, and there is one suggestion that they were trying to avoid paparazzi photographers who were following them. But two other documents put forward the explanation that the car in which they were supposed to leave Paris’s Ritz Hotel failed to start.

One of the documents is a memo to Tony Blair written on August 31, the day of Diana’s death. It told how the couple arrived at the Ritz the day before and were "immediately subject to media attention". When they left, they were surrounded by journalists.

"They tried to leave quickly but the first hire car failed to start," says the document, whose author is not revealed.

"The second car then left the hotel at speed. It travelled along a stretch of the river and entered the tunnel in which the car crashed."

A separate document, signed "Jay", was sent from Paris on the same day to Robin Cook, the then Foreign Secretary, who was in Singapore. Sir Michael Jay was ambassador to France at the time.

Describing Diana and Dodi’s departure from the Ritz, it said: "Because, apparently, their getaway car failed to start, they got into another nearby car driven by a Ritz driver."

But another paper sent by Sir Michael on September 23 to the Foreign Office gave a quite different explanation. It said the switch to another car had been "a last minute change of plan aimed at diverting the waiting paparazzi".

The same document also details how Mohamed Fayed, the Harrods boss and father of Dodi, had engaged a UK-based pathologist to challenge the results of the tests showing high levels of alcohol in blood samples from Henri Paul.

This resulted in a third test involving the "medically more conclusive sample of fluid from the white of the eye" which confirmed the alcohol level and also showed Paul had been taking anti-depressants.

The flurry of papers sent from Paris following Diana’s death reveal the hurried diplomatic discussions which followed as arrangements for removing the body and beginning the investigation into her death got under way.

Sir Michael noted how he was told by French Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement that French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin wanted to return from La Rochelle to pay his last respects to the Princess. "I explained that paying last respects was not a strong British or Anglican tradition," he wrote.

In the event, Chevenement and Jospin, as well as a series of other dignitaries, came to the Pitie Salpetriere hospital where Diana died.

A further concern about diplomatic niceties between the two countries related to the appointment of a senior police officer to liaise between UK coroners and French investigators. It was felt that there was a "risk of media suggestions" that this suggested that "the UK had concerns about the French enquiry".

In a later memo, Sir Michael attempted to explain the enormous outpouring of emotion there had been in "Republican France" over Diana’s death, concluding that she was a "genuine star" who connected with the French people. He added: "I have detected no significant feeling of shame that her death occurred in France."

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