London - Hundreds of private papers and letters belonging to Britain's 97-year-old Queen Mother have been destroyed in an attempt by Princess Margaret to prevent them becoming public, the Sunday Times reported yesterday.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment. The paper said the correspondence covered mainly the last 10 years and was largely from close friends of the Queen Mother. It said the clean-out began in the autumn of 1993 after Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth's younger sister, found "piles of letters and documents strewn around her mother's sitting room".