The affectionate way Prince William and Harry addressed James Hewitt,
He is inextricably tied to Diana’s personal history in ways much more intimate than her former husband Charles – but James Hewitt also had a special bond with their children for a time.
Charles and Diana’s marriage was plagued by infidelity on both sides during the 11 years they were together, before separating in 1992.
The same year that Charles and Camilla embarked on an affair that would, ultimately, lead them down the altar, Diana started dating former cavalry officer James.
Diana is believed to have been enamoured by the young officer the minute she laid eyes on him.
According to Robert Lacey’s book Battle of Brothers, the ‘devil-may-care’ Hewitt was recruited to give Diana riding lessons and very quickly charmed the then-Princess of Wales.
He was just as popular with Diana’s boys, William and Harry, with the royal author suggesting Hewitt’s influence helped shape the ‘army element’ of their careers.
However, unbeknownst to the princes, the man they adoringly called ‘Uncle James’ had gone from being their mother’s instructor to her lover.
It wasn’t until the contents of Anna Pasternak’s ‘syrupy and sensational’ account of Diana’s five-year affair with Hewitt were reproduced by ‘every newspaper’ that they would unwillingly learn ’embarrassing intimacies’ of Diana’s life, Mr Lacey wrote.
Until then, however, William and Harry would spend ‘long hours on horseback’ with Hewitt ‘improving their riding technique’.
Mr Lacey wrote how they would eagerly follow the dashing army officer into ‘the cavalry barracks to experience the thrill of mingling with real-life soldiers in uniform’ – memories that must have shaped their own military ambitions.
These would have further been fuelled by William and Harry’s very own, genuine khaki uniforms ‘complete with small boots and Guards insignia’ that Hewitt reportedly had made by his regimental tailor.
‘”I’m going to be a soldier when I grow up,” Harry was once heard to declare while clambering into the turret of a tank – and when the time came, the prince joined the Guards, just like Hewitt,’ Mr Lacey wrote.
Battle of Brothers contains tender descriptions of the boys’ getaways with Diana to Hewitt’s ‘sweet cottage’ that he shared with his mother Shirley in Devon.
‘They called him “Uncle James”, and drove down with him and Diana quite regularly to stay in Devon for breaks with his approachable and natural mother Shirley, who ran a riding school,’ one section in Mr Lacey’s book read.
The royal author wrote how the boys were eager to be ‘good guests’ and would help their mother ‘carry out the dishes after lunch and do the washing up’.
Mr Lacey claimed those weekends away in Devon, when they were not up in Highgrove, were the ‘closest’ William and Harry came to experiencing the ‘fabled texture of “ordinary”, non-royal family life’.
This would be terribly disrupted with the publication of Anna’s book in October 1994, Mr Lacey added.
The serialisation of his book later caused controversy after Anna noted what she called an ‘unedifying scene’ about Hewitt and Diana that suggested they were reckless during their weekends away at Highgrove.
She condemned Mr Lacey’s ‘brutal’ Battle of Brothers in an opinion piece for Tatler as Anna described the great lengths she went to to capture Diana’s love and devotion towards her sons.
Contradicting the version of events in Battle of Brothers, she wrote: ‘Why would I write such a damning view of Diana when I was sympathetic to her, describing the devoted mother she was?
‘I specifically wrote in Princess in Love: “During their days at Highgrove, they were careful not to let William or Harry have so much as a glimpse of their secret.”‘
Nonetheless, the contentious book, which sold 500,000 copies, caused a royal scandal that led Diana to admit the affair in her infamous Panorama interview with Martin Bashir the following year.
‘Yes, I was in love with him, but I was very let down,’ she said.
Yet Anna has claimed it was Diana’s idea for the army officer to share their story with her as the Princess of Wales tried to get ahead of biographer Andrew Morton’s second book after Diana: Her True Story.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Anna noted how Diana had not ‘cooperated’ with Morton and was worried it would expose her affair with Hewitt in ‘unflattering terms’.
‘She was worried and wanted control,’ Anna claimed. ‘She was adamant that if their affair was presented in a book as a true love story, the world would not condemn the couple but would understand why they came together as they did.
‘So it was decided I would write a book. I had just five weeks to write it, and it was published on 3 October, 1994, ahead of Morton’s second offering.’
Anna relied on the 64 letters Hewitt and Diana exchanged during the time they were together to write the book.
They were all written on airmail ‘blueys’ [thin blue notepaper sent free to service personnel overseas] and Diana’s ‘loving and sentimental’ correspondence was always signed as ‘Julia’ to keep the affair under wraps.
‘Often Diana wrote to him twice a day. No mundane detail, including the colour of her nail polish, was overlooked,’ Anna noted.
‘The most heartfelt letter read, “I have lain awake at night loving you desperately and thanking God for bringing you into my life – my darling one, you are the most magical and special person I’ve ever met, and how extraordinarily lucky I am to have been loved by you.”
The publication of Anna’s widely criticised book, which sold 500,000 copies, caused a royal scandal – and led Diana to admit the affair in her infamous Panorama interview with Martin Bashir the following year.
‘Yes, I was in love with him, but I was very let down,’ she said.
By then, their relationship had irretrievably broken down and Hewitt reportedly told Anna: ‘After the initial pressure from her to speak to try to control the narrative of our relationship, Diana very much left me on my own to cope thereafter. It was extremely difficult knowing that government officials, the Royal Family, MI5 and certain members of the Press knew of the affair.’
When the affair became public, it was also widely speculated that the ginger-haired Hewitt was Prince Harry’s real father, considering he is the only red-headed Windsor – even though Diana met the cavalry officer long after Harry was born.
The rumour has dogged Harry for most of his life, with the Duke of Sussex even writing about it in his memoir Spare.
Harry described how Charles had once visited a psychiatric hospital where he met a man claiming to be the Prince of Wales.
According to Harry’s version, Charles wagged his finger at the patient and said ‘I am the Prince of Wales’ before the man responded with ‘the same gesture’.
According to the Duke’s retelling, Charles then joked: ‘Who knows if I’m even your real father? Perhaps your father really is in Broadmoor, my dear son!’ Harry wrote that the joke was ‘in poor taste’ given the rumour about his parentage.
