Read an Excerpt of 'The Way We Were'

Paul Burrell's first book, "A Royal Duty," fueled worldwide speculation about the late Princess Diana.

In his new tell-all book, "The Way We Were," Diana's former butler and confidant reveals the princess only he knew.

Burrell throws open the gates to Kensington Palace and gives readers a tour of the princess' home, complete with previously unseen photographs.

He details Diana's Hollywood relationships and her sisterhood with Sarah Ferguson, and sheds light on the true nature of her romance with Dodi Al Fayed.

Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's longtime confidant and butler, has stirred controversy with new revelations about Diana's private life.

(www.amazon.com)

In stores today, "The Way We Were" offers a rare glimpse of Diana in her private world.

Read an excerpt from "The Way We Were" below:

The gold Yale key turned in the lock, and my stomach lurched as the back door of Kensington Palace opened. I stepped inside and walked forward, as the heavy black door slammed behind me, sending an echo throughout the emptiness that lay ahead. It was as dark and gloomy as ever in that part of the palace so I flicked the light switch. Nothing happened. The bulb must have blown, I thought.

Then I looked up to the ceiling and saw that the entire light fixture had been ripped out, leaving only dangling wires. I walked on, my footsteps echoing, to what had been the engine room of the 'home' I called KP, where tradesmen, staff and deliverymen had once busied themselves. I was in the middle of the lobby, once filled with the buzz of the refrigerator, the whirr of the ice-making machine, the swish of the dishwasher, the chatter of people coming and going. Now there was a void. The mail pigeon-holes were empty; black garbage bags, empty drawers and chairs lay about, discarded. KP looked as if it had been ransacked by thieves. Apartments 8 and 9 had been reduced to a shell, there wasn't a single hook for my memories.

It was 2002, and I had gone back to the apartments of Diana, Princess of Wales for the first time since I had left them in July 1998 when, even then, they were being emptied. Fine furniture was transferred to the Royal Collection. Jewellery was returned to Buckingham Palace. As the family was entitled to do, Princes William and Harry and the Spencer family had taken some items, and the Crown Estates had reclaimed the property. On the day I moved out, 24 July 1998, the apartments were being stripped. It was too painful for me to witness. I wanted to leave with a mental picture of what had been, dismissing the reality of what was taking place. In the ensuing four years I steered clear of the palace. I never imagined I'd ever see the day when I'd need to go back.

I didn't want to go back. But it became necessary to return 'home' when Scotland Yard and the CPS charged me with theft from the boss's estate – the system's response to my spontaneous protection of her legacy. In preparation for my Old Bailey trial, which ended in acquittal in 2002, I had to walk my legal team through the palace to build up a picture of what life, and my role, had been like.

That day, accompanied by my barrister Lord Carlile, QC, and solicitor Andrew Shaw, I steeled myself for what I knew I would see – the dismantling of the princess's world had long been complete. But I was still unprepared for the devastating scene of erasure and decay that confronted me when I walked up the main staircase, then went from room to room. Each had been stripped with a disregard that said everything about how the princess had been treated in life.

Nothing had been respected. Workmen had moved in, ripping up carpets, tearing down the silk wall panels that had decorated the drawing room and sitting room, leaving the doors of fitted cupboards hanging off their hinges. Even plug sockets had been removed. There were horizontal gaps where the odd floorboard had been pulled up and left propped against a wall. Newspapers were scattered on the floor. A blue mattress was propped against one wall. Junk lay everywhere. And it was dirty. It seemed that the place hadn't been cleaned in the four years since 1998. A layer of dust covered the once polished banisters, giant cobwebs were spun round grubby cornices, and the air was musty. A once pristine home was now as dark and unhealthy as Charles Dickens had depicted Satis House in Great Expectations.

Those with no reason to care about the princess's world, and the devastation I saw, might have shrugged and said, "Well, she's dead. It's time to move on. Who cares?" But moving on shouldn't mean forgetting.

I could have cried as I walked round those rooms. It was a stark illustration of how quickly some people had wanted to forget her, how eager some people were to remove every vestige of her.

It also represented a lost opportunity. A potential museum of memories had been wrecked.

After Princess Margaret's death in 2002, the administration of her home, Apartment 1A, was transferred to the care of Historic Royal Palaces so that part of her living quarters could be viewed for educational and exhibition purposes. Today, although the place has been stripped of its furniture, the public has the chance to visualize Princess Margaret's life, and study the photographs of her. Would it not have been possible to do the same with Apartments 8 and 9 five years earlier? Also, when the Queen Mother died in 2002, the Prince of Wales ensured that there was a fitting tribute to his grandmother: he arranged for the World of Interiors magazine to photograph the inside of her home to show how she had lived; to capture her way of life, her tastes and style, for posterity. It was published in October 2003.

That is why I've decided to share with you my photographs, taken inside Apartments 8 and 9.

I took them, with my own camera, in the weeks after the princess's death, for purely sentimental reasons – to preserve what had been a special place to me. They also catalogued the precise location of her possessions, which was useful to me in my role as guardian of her world.

Over the years, the photographs have been a comfort, and have helped me remember details and moments that might have blurred with time. Many people from around the world have written to me, or asked me face to face, what life was like with the boss, how she lived, and what her inner sanctum really looked like. Well, the photographs in this book provide the answer; you will enjoy a virtual tour of Apartments 8 and 9. They show the rooms as she left them.

Today, Apartment 9, which housed the princess's bedroom, bathroom, dressing room, wardrobe rooms and part of the nursery, provides accommodation for members of the Queen's household. But Apartment 8 – the main staircase, sitting room, drawing room, dining room, kitchen and my pantry – remains a shell. I hope my photographs recapture the spirit of this home and offer a vivid image of what life was like with the boss. Her private rooms deserve to be remembered for the vibrancy, drama, laughter, tears and magic of a life lived to the full. That is why, as butler to that residence, I'm opening the doors to show you around. This is the way we were . . . She called the walled garden her 'little oasis', her place of escape and solitude. There was only one key to the black door set in the surrounding brickwork and, as the resident of Apartments 8 and 9, the princess had exclusive access, shared with me and the gardener. It was the only set of four walls behind which she found complete relaxation and sanctuary, with the sky as a roof.

Almost a decade since her death, my memories of that garden, and life at KP, are as vivid as ever. If I close my eyes, my mind evokes those special years of duty between 1993 and 1997. Her garden was scented, with roses of all colours climbing half-way up the ten-foot-high walls. There was a flowering cherry, a pergola in one corner, a long, rectangular lawn with a wide border, a central oak in which squirrels nested, a potting shed and a dilapidated old greenhouse.

In summer, on blazing hot days, I knew the routine. I can see her now, in a pair of shorts and a vest, and wearing her Versace sunglasses, almost skipping out of the front door, with a paleblue wicker basket filled with correspondence, books, CDs, a Walkman, a low-factor Clarins suncream and her mobile phone. She never went anywhere without her phone.

Then she'd settle down with her hair tied back. When she was relaxing, in the garden, in the sitting room before bedtime or at breakfast, she scraped back her blonde hair with an elasticated cloth band. She had several, in black, blue and purple. If the world remembers the princess for her signature hairstyle, I remember her for that band! Sometimes, as she talked on the phone, that hairband would be wrapped round her fingers, and she'd toy with it, then put it back on her head. I never joined the boss in the garden. It was her private time. When that black door swung shut, she was alone, as she wanted to be. Often, she returned to KP with a bunch of roses for a vase on her desk. She never stayed out there long, maybe an hour or two. She was too restless to keep still for longer than that. As much as she portrayed herself as a sun-worshipper, she was too impatient to lie immobile for long. The sun-bed, in half-hour bursts, was more her cup of tea.

If the garden was her sanctuary, Apartments 8 and 9 were the home that was filled with the laughter of the young princes William and Harry, but also the tears and sadness of the boss's well-documented personal strife. The entrance was a set of black double doors, flanked by two giant wooden planters.

One day in early spring, I decided to fill them with rows of hyacinths, like the ones at Windsor Castle planted round the Queen's private entrance, called the 'dog door', because Her Majesty used it when she walked her corgis. In my eleven years' service as footman to the Queen – from 1976 to 1987 – the gardeners at Windsor planted row upon row of blue hyacinths, to flower around Easter time, and I was met by their heavenly scent each time I was on corgi-walking duty – up to eight times a day. Those dogs never tired of walks! I suppose I planted the hyacinths because I thought that the scent would be a lovely welcome for visitors to KP. Except one visitor didn't agree. When Prince Charles saw what I had done, he chastised me. He told me it was far too early to plant hyacinths outside. "It's such a waste, Paul!" he said.

And, of course, he was right. What the prince didn't know about plants and gardening could have been written on the back of his mother's head – on a British postage stamp. I had witnessed his skills in the garden many times during my service as butler to the Prince and Princess of Wales at Highgrove, from 1987 to 1993, so I knew he was talking sense, even if his manner was somewhat brusque. Not that I was going to give him the satisfaction of watching me dig the bulbs out. Instead, each night for the next month, I covered them up with an old bed-sheet to protect them from the frost. I did it my way –