Prince Charles last night launched what is believed to be his first ever legal action when Clarence House announced that he was suing the Mail on Sunday newspaper for publishing extracts last weekend from a journal the prince wrote eight years ago.
It concerned the handover of Hong Kong, and in it he described the Chinese Communist leadership as "appalling old waxworks" and railed against Tony Blair and his coterie of advisers. The action, if it comes to court, is for infringement of the prince's copyright and breach of confidentiality. A spokesman admitted that the move in effect confirmed the authenticity of the remarks and said there were no plans to take similar action against other newspapers, including the Guardian, which reprinted them.
Sir Michael Peat, the prince's principal private secretary, said: "This is a matter of principle. Like anybody else, the Prince of Wales is entitled to write a private journal without extracts being published. This journal was copied and passed to The Mail on Sunday without permission. We made this clear to [the newspaper] on five occasions, both orally and in writing. Nevertheless the Mail on Sunday proceeded to publish these extracts despite the knowledge that it was in breach of the Prince of Wales's copyright and confidence."
Officials at Clarence House said they could not recall the prince taking legal action against the media previously. Two years ago the Queen took out an injunction against the Daily Mirror to prevent further disclosures by its reporter Ryan Parry, who spent several weeks employed at Buckingham Palace as a footman.
The prince consulted a specialist media law firm rather than the royal family's normal solicitors, and is being represented by Gerrard Tyrell of Harbottle and Lewis, whose high-profile clients include the model Kate Moss. Mr Tyrell also represented Prince William's girlfriend, Kate Middleton, recently in warning off media intrusion.
Prince Charles's action is a clear sign of his exasperation that, not for the first time, his private comments have been leaked. The memorandum was written in 1997 after the handover of Hong Kong to China, at which he represented his mother.
Entitled The Handover of Hong Kong or the Great Chinese Takeaway, the prince's note criticised the "ridiculous rigmarole" and "awful Soviet-style display" of goose-stepping Chinese soldiers during the ceremony, referred to the diplomatic jockeying to prevent royal loss of face beforehand - in the event he was not required to bow to the then Chinese president, Jiang Zemin - and mocked the Chinese leadership.
He added: "After my speech the president detached himself from the group of appalling old waxworks who accompanied him and took his place at the lectern. He then gave a kind of 'propaganda' speech which was loudly cheered by the bussed-in party faithful at the suitable moment in the text."
The prince castigated the Blair government because of its decision to axe the royal yacht, Britannia. "If only [the prime minister] could have seen the yacht with the receptions and dinners under way and heard people's reactions ... but they are all in such a hurry, so never really learn about anything ... there was a kind of exasperated sadness experienced by all and sundry."
He added - novel for the period, only two months into Mr Blair's term in office - that the prime minister and his colleagues "take decisions based on market research or focus groups or the papers produced by political advisers or civil servants, none of whom will have ever experienced what it is they are taking decisions about."
The newspaper's excuse for publishing the remarks was last week's state visit by the current Chinese president, Hu Jintao. Prince Charles, who boycotted the last official state visit in 1999 because of the Chinese authorities' behaviour in Tibet, was also absent from last week's state banquet because he and his wife the Duchess of Cornwall were flying back from their visit to the US. Charles is a supporter of the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.
The Mail on Sunday insisted the prince habitually circulated such memorandums to a wide range of friends and advisers, including selected journalists, after every foreign trip. But Clarence House said only 11 copies were made, circulated to close friends.
The newspaper last night defended its "classic journalistic enterprise" and denied any any breach of copyright or confidentiality. "This was not a private journal. It was widely distributed and viewed ... as a historic document intended for eventual publication."