Prince Charles fights for privacy

Feb 10, 2006, 15:55 GMT

British newspaper, the Mail on Sunday, will today go to the high court to argue that its legal battle with the Prince of Wales should be open to the public and media.

Prince Charles wants his case against the Mail on Sunday - over the publication of extracts from a private journal - to be held in closed court.

But Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Mail on Sunday, will today ask a judge to order a special hearing on the secrecy issue.

According to Britain's Guardian newspaper, Associated Newspapers is vigorously opposing the summary judgment application - and wants the entire trial to be held in open court.

Other British media organisations, including the Guardian, the Times, the Independent, the BBC and ITN, are understood to want to make representations over the secrecy issue.

The prince is suing after the Mail on Sunday published extracts from his journal on the Hong Kong handover in 1997, in which he described Chinese diplomats as 'appalling old waxworks'.

He claims that the article was a breach of confidence and an infringement of his copyright, and seeks the return of the copied material.

His solicitors, Harbottle and Lewis, had planned to ask at the start of the trial that parts of the hearing, and some of the evidence, should be dealt with in secret and kept from the media and public.

It is believed that one reason the prince wants a secret trial is because Mark Bolland, his former deputy private secretary, and one of his most trusted advisers, is giving evidence on behalf of Associated Newspapers.

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