James Hewitt – still obsessed with Diana
James Hewitt’s sad new life
As the 20-year anniversary of Princess Diana’s tragic death looms, it’s been revealed that her disgraced former lover James Hewitt is leading a sad life just minutes away from the ‘love cottage’ where many of their illicit royal trysts took place. Snapped walking around his home village in Devon in the English countryside last week, the lonely 58-year-old looked nothing like the strapping young army officer who charmed his way into Diana’s life three decades ago.
His luscious ginger locks are now thinned out and grey, his dazzling smile now a sombre grimace and his high-end suits replaced with baggy hunting vests and worn-out jeans.
It’s been exclusively revealed to New Idea that love rat James – who’s reportedly broke, with barely a cent to his name – is now living with his elderly mother Shirley, and spends his days pining for Diana and the romance they once shared.
‘James Hewitt is a shadow of himself, make no mistake of it,’ says a local.
‘He might have once been the confident dashing army major who stole a princess’s heart, but now he’s a quietly spoken man who lives as a recluse.
‘He rarely leaves the home he shares with his mother, unless he needs to buy supplies from
the shops. He is sometimes seen parking outside the small cottage where he and Diana used to meet for romantic weekends away together.
‘He spends hours in his car, just staring at the house.
‘While no-one’s doubting that James didn’t want to be with his beloved mother in her final years, there’s no doubt of the real reason he has moved back home – to be close to the one place that reminds him the most of Diana.
‘Their illicit affair may have ended disastrously, with James betraying Diana in the worst way, but now that he’s older, he really misses that time in his life and the joy Diana brought him.
‘Staring at their love cottage is all he has left now that every other part of his life has gone to hell. He can’t move on and is still obsessed with Diana.’
It’s the latest tragic chapter in a life that spiralled out of control after his affair with the princess went public in 1992.
As well as being declared persona non grata by his former military regiment, he was also shamed worldwide after selling out Diana by providing details of their affair for the bestselling 1994 book Princess In Love.
Just six years after Diana’s death in a horrific car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997, James was publicly slammed for attempting to sell 64 of his private letters from the late princess for $16 million.
An angry Sarah, Duchess of York described his betrayal as ‘the most horrible, horrible, disloyal thing you can do to anyone’.
A year later, James was arrested for cocaine possession, and subsequently fled to Spain to start again. Now he’s popped up in his old home town with his mother, who he once credited with saving his life.
Depressed at how his highflying lifestyle was dead in the water after his repeated scandals, the disgraced army major says he was close to suicide.
‘I got in my car and loaded a few things up to get on the ferry to go to France – to shoot myself... and then my mother insisted on coming with me,’ he told The Telegraph.
‘And if she hadn’t, I would have probably shot myself. So I owe her my life really.’
THIRTY YEARS AFTER STEALING DIANA’S HEART, THE HAGGARD LOVE RAT JUST CAN’T MOVE ON... ‘Staring at their love cottage is all he has left now that every other part of his life has gone to hell’