The jury in the Diana, Princess of Wales inquest today returned a verdict of unlawful killing through negligent driving by Henri Paul in the Mercedes and the vehicles of the paparazzi.

They singled out Henri Paul’s drink driving as a contributory factor for the crash in the Alma Tunnel in Paris in which she and Dodi Fayed were killed on August 31, 1997.

They were being followed by paparazzi after leaving the Ritz Hotel, and a large amount of evidence centred on how closely they had followed the Mercedes in the minutes before the crash.

At last the focus of the blame is being turned from the outrageously improbable conspiracy theories to the real culprits : the Ritz Hotel’s security arrangements and the chasing pack of photographers who appear to have had Henri Paul in their pockets.

All this has been clear since the French magistrate’s meticulous report many years ago.

An interesting point arising is that the verdict clashes with that of the Paget Report by Scotland Yard, which concluded it was “a tragic accident”. The jury has defined culpability here and that has not pleased Mohamed Fayed whose representatives still maintain his blame-deflecting case.

This verdict leaves him open to private prosecutions for what the jury calls “gross negligence”.