PRINCE WILLIAM exchanged letters with his nanny about the impending separation of his parents when he was ten, the Old Bailey was told yesterday.

The young Prince was a conscientious little boy who kept his personal mail in his school tuck box to stop it falling into the wrong hands, it was said at the theft trial of the former royal butler Paul Burrell.

Olga Powell, who was nanny to William and his brother Harry, said that her reply to the Prince about his parents’ separation “should be with William”. In fact her “very personal” letter to the Prince at his school in Ludgrove, dated November 28, 1992, was allegedly found at Mr Burrell’s home in Farndon, Cheshire.

William Boyce, QC, for the prosecution, asked: “So far as you are concerned, is there any reason why Mr Burrell should be in possession of your letter?” She replied: “No.”

Mr Burrell, 44, denies three charges involving the theft of 310 items belonging to Diana, Princess of Wales, the Prince of Wales and Prince William. Miss Powell was employed as a nanny when William was 18 months old and remained in the post until the Princess’s death in August 1997.

After the separation of the royal couple, the two Princes divided their time when they were away from school between Kensington Palace, where their mother lived, and the Prince’s Highgrove home. Miss Powell said: “They usually kept their letters in their tuck box and brought them home and destroyed them if they didn’t want to keep them. If they wanted to keep them, they put them in their drawer or cupboard.”

Miss Powell was shown a Christmas card that she had sent Prince William, allegedly found among the butler’s possessions, and again said she could think of no reason why he should have it. Thirteen cards and letters affectionately addressed to “Darling Wombat” from the Princess, using her pet name for her elder son, also found at Mr Burrell’s home, were also identified by the grey-haired nanny.

“Is there any reason why Mr Burrell should be in possession of them? Where should these cards be?” Mr Boyce asked.

She said: “They should be with William.”

The evidence came amid Miss Powell’s recollections of the lives of the young Princes before their parents separated, at Highgrove where William got into scrapes with a gardener called Denis.

Cross-examined by Lord Carlile, QC, for the defence, Miss Powell said that she had formed a very close relationship with the two Princes. “I lived at either Kensington Palace or Highgrove, wherever I was needed,” she said. “I lived wherever the boys were.”

When they went off to school, she would pack their suitcases and trunks, and ensure that they had whatever they needed in their tuck boxes. She agreed that the Princess looked after her sons as much as she could because she wanted as normal a life as was possible in the circumstances. The Princess felt “as comfortable with ordinary people as with ceremonial”. She needed people around her that would cherish her, she said, and she was generous with gifts. On Miss Powell’s 60th birthday she received a silver paperknife from the Princess and a silver box from the boys.

Mr Burrell’s two sons, Alexander and Nicholas, she conceded, were regular “playmates” of the Princes. There were times when William especially got into trouble. He scraped a wall driving around to the butler’s house in a “rather handsome” working miniature of an Aston Martin sports car “which didn’t go very fast”.

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