LONDON: Princess Diana said she “should never have married into a German family” during her divorce from Prince Charles, her lawyer said in book extracts published by a British newspaper today.

Anthony Julius also said Diana lived “as if in a vacuum” and seemed alienated from the world around her.

Julius was hired by Diana to handle her divorce from the heir to the British throne, which went through in 1996.

He said Diana contacted him after receiving letters from Queen Elizabeth II and Charles within an hour of each other requiring her to agree to a divorce.

Julius’s comments came in a book he has written about anti-Semitism, extracts of which are being published in the Sunday Times.

“She was interested in Jews but had no idea about them, save that Jewish men (she had heard) were more likely than the men of her own class and background to treat women decently,” wrote Julius, himself a Jew.

“She was happy to take Jews to be hostile to everything to which she herself was hostile.

“She once said to me that she should never have married into a German family.” He added of Diana’s personality: “She was under-educated in the approved style of her class and gender. “She was very receptive to new experiences, which meant that she was sometimes taken by odd fancies. She had a strong desire to please”. The British royal family’s roots can be traced to German nobility as far back as the 18th century. Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997.