PAUL BURRELL claimed last night that the Queen warned him that there were dark forces at work in Britain that could threaten him.

The former butler said the warning was issued during a three-hour meeting soon after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. He said the Queen looked him in the eye and said: “There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge.”

She is said to have added: “Be careful, Paul, no one has been as close to a member of my family as you have.”

Mr Burrell told the Daily Mirror: “She made sure I knew she was being deadly serious. I had no idea who she was talking about. There were many she could have been referring to. But she was clearly warning me to be vigiliant.”

Mr Burrell, who was cleared last week of stealing hundreds of the Princess’s personal possessions, did not explain what “powers” may have posed a threat to him.

He went on to describe how he told the Queen that he was looking after some of the Princess’s possessions. “I told Her Majesty that I intended to protect the Princess’s world and keep safe her secrets. The Queen responded by nodding her approval and smiling.”

He added that they spoke about the Queen’s relationship with her former daughter-in-law. He said she had told him: “I tried to reach out to Diana so many times”, to which he replied: “But, Your Majesty, you only spoke in black and white; the Princess spoke in colours.

“I felt a surge of emotion and wanted to embrace her. I knew the Queen was hurting like me. But even though we were alone, I couldn’t put my arms around her because she is a Queen.”

Mr Burrell said he had chosen to speak publicly because he was concerned that the Queen’s reputation was being tarnished by speculation over her intervention that prompted the collapse of the case against him just before he was due to give evidence.

He had never “in his wildest dreams” thought that she would intervene. “I’m not having the Queen’s reputation destroyed. I’m not having her carrying the can for all this. She is a woman of truth and honesty,” he said. Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

Mr Burrell also described how his barrister Lord Carlile, QC, had “nearly fallen off his chair” when he mentioned the meeting with the Queen. His lawyers had thought him “nuts” not to have said anything before, but he aid: “I’m just loyal. That discretion put my liberty at risk, but I would do it again.”

As the Mirror went to press last night, Mr Burrell won an injunction preventing The Sun publishing excerpts from the statement he gave to police while the theft allegations were being investigated. Yesterday the paper quoted claims that Mr Burrell smuggled the Princess’s lovers into Kensington Palace and that she had wanted to marry the heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.

The Mirror today publishes part of the statement on Mr Burrell’s authority, but he had censored some of it.

It describes how he saw the Princess’s mother and sisters removing her effects and shredding documents and how he realises “issues may be raised” about some things in his possession. “I had absolutely no dishonest intent — only an intention to preserve as decently and respectfully as possible the memory of Diana.”

Mr Burrell also offers his explanation of why he was holding each of the 415 items that appeared on his charge sheet.

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