AUSTRALIA’S High Court has authorised the publication of letters between Queen Elizabeth II and the late Australian governor-general John Kerr.

The 211 letters could expose the suspected role of the British monarch, who also reigns in Australia, in the dismissal of the latter’s elected prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1975, described by journalist John Pilger as a “British-American coup that ended Australian independence.”

The High Court’s 6-1 majority decision in historian Jenny Hocking’s appeal overturned lower-court rulings that the letters were personal and could never be made public.