'Nasty and untrue': Meghan Markle's father makes bombshell claim about private letter in court

The Duchess of Sussex's father Thomas Markle kept her impassioned handwritten letter "totally private" until an attack against his character in a US magazine prompted him to release extracts, a court has heard.

On the closing day of a three-day appeal brought by newspaper publisher Associated Newspapers, lawyers claimed Markle, 77, was provoked into sharing details of the letter as a right of reply after a 2019 People magazine article had left him "in a lonely place".

The five-page letter Meghan Markle had written was described as having "potential public consumption in mind", as lawyers for the Mail on Sunday argued the duchess was "arguably" behind the "nasty and untrue" articles published about her father, The Guardian reports.

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Andrew Caldecott QC, representing the publisher, said the People article suggested Meghan had always been a "dutiful" daughter and that her father had "cold-shouldered her at the wedding, in one of the most important parts of her life".

He argued it was reasonable for Markle to assume his daughter was behind the article and to reply to the claims in the article by releasing extracts of the letter.

"[Mr Markle] had honoured the privacy in this letter until the People article appeared," Caldecott said.

"Either we believe in freedom of expression or we do not. Mr Markle has been royally attacked in the People magazine in precisely the way he there describes, and this is his reply."

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Meghan's palace aide at the time, Jason Knauf, provided the court with emails and texts which reveal the duchess had composed the letter with the "understanding it could be leaked".

"Obviously everything I have drafted is with the understanding that it could be leaked so I have been meticulous in my word choice but please let me know if anything stands out for you as a liability," Meghan wrote.

"If he leaks it then that's on his conscience but at least the world will know the truth. Words I could never voice publicly."

Knauf told the court Meghan asked whether she should address her father in the letter as "Daddy," adding that "in the unfortunate event that it leaked, it would pull at the heartstrings."

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Meghan successfully sued the newspaper publisher in February for breach of privacy and copyright regarding five articles, which published extracts of the five-page handwritten letter the ex-royal had sent to her father.

A judge ruled in the duchess' favour, describing publication of the private letter as "manifestly excessive and hence unlawful", however the publisher ANL appealed the ruling.

Publisher NL has argued the privacy case should be brought to trial, claiming Meghan "forfeited any automatic right to privacy" over the letter, citing evidence of collaboration with the authors of the Sussex biography, Finding Freedom.

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The duchess apologised to the UK Court of Appeals last week week for forgetting about emails she exchanged with a palace aide, who briefed the authors of the unauthorised biography on Meghan and Prince Harry.

"I did not have the benefit of seeing these emails and I apologise to the Court for the fact I had not remembered these exchanges at the time," Meghan told the court.

"I had absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the defendant or the Court."