The Princess and the President by Valery Giscard d'Estaing

It seems that the controversy surrounding the late Princess Diana is not over yet. In a bizarre development, ex-French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing has written a novel in which an unhappy British princess, has a passionate love affair with a French President (the implication being of course that the French President in question was none other than Valery Giscard d'Estaing himself (VGE to the French)).

The novel, entitled La Princesse et le Président - The Princess and the President - will be published on October 1 by French publishing company Editions de Fallois but people are already speculating and tongues are wagging. Is the novel fact or fantasy? Well only Giscard himself knows for certain.

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, was French President from 1974 to 1981, in the novel he gives calls his fictional President Jacques-Henri Lambertye, and calls the unhappy heroine Princess Patricia of Cardiff, "a town in Wales" he points out (just in case anybody didn't get the point).

The fictional pair meet at an official dinner at Buckingham Palace where the princess opens her hear to the very understanding French President. Princess Diana and President Giscard actually met in Versailles Palace in 1994.

In the book Lady Pat says "A dozen days before my wedding, my future husband came and told me that he had a mistress and that he had to decided to carry on seeing her after our marriage," which is similar to Princess Diana's situation when she married Prince Charles.

The book will of course fuel rumours that the tale could be true and this is fed even further by the fact that Giscard d'Estaing prefaced the novel with a cryptic epigraph "Promise kept."

Le Figaro expects the book to ruffle some feathers and the publishers no doubt expect it to be a best-seller, given the enduring populairty of anything related to Princess Diana.

The British royal family will no doubt be less amused by the whole affair.

Le Figaro says that only Giscard holds the key to whether the novel is fact or fiction.

Giscard lost power when he was 55 and there are photographs showing that he did indeed meet met Diana publicly in the years that followed his election defeat.

Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 with her boyfriend, Dodi al Fayed and there has been much speculation as to whether this car crash was an accident or not. A poll a few years ago showed that most British people do not believe it was an accident. According to media reports ex-President Giscard and his wife were the first to send flowers to the hospital where Princess Diana's body was taken.