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YOU ARE THE magıcal MOST PERSON I’VE EVER MET
That’s how Diana described James Hewitt in the love letters that became the 1994 book Princess In Love. For the first time, its author Anna Pasternak tells the full story behind it and lets you be the judge: was he really the cad he’s been made out to be?
Twenty-five years ago I wrote Princess In Love, about Princess Diana’s fiveyear affair with James Hewitt. The question I am still asked is, ‘Do you regret writing it?’ I don’t regret writing the truth of a relationship that played a significant part in royal history – Hewitt was a crucial ballast for Princess Diana when she was at her most unstable – and I am proud today that everything I said in the book about Diana (and Charles’s early relationship with Camilla) was reiterated at the poignant 20-year anniversary of her tragic death.
But any vindication I feel is hollow, as it has taken me decades to rehabilitate myself. Not being defined by writing Princess In Love, and recovering from the Press crucifixion, has been far more complex than my naïve 26-year-old self could have envisaged. Actually, I now realise that I do have regrets. I regret the toll the book took on my family and my reputation, and I certainly regret any pain caused to the Royal Family, especially William and Harry. That was never my intention.
I met James Hewitt at a dinner party when I was a features writer on the Daily Express in the autumn of 1993. I was seated next to Hewitt, whom I knew was in Princess Diana’s inner circle and was in the Army. He was a charming, stripyshirt-wearing Sloane Ranger. Fun and debonair. Shortly afterwards, it was announced that the Tory MP David Faber was divorcing his weathergirl wife, Sally. She was having an affair with Hewitt, whom David cited in the divorce proceedings. I biked round a letter to Hewitt, via Sally at her TV studio, requesting an interview. I didn’t expect to hear from him. In a quirk of fate, the following morning I bumped into Hewitt in South Kensington. I was astonished when he patted his breast pocket, indicating that he had my letter. He told me he couldn’t say anything then but would ring me in January.
I was surprised when he contacted me that New Year, as I didn’t expect it. Over dinner in a Kensington restaurant, he explained that he had been discharged from the Army as rumours of his close correspondence with Diana during the Gulf War had leaked to gossip columns. The Army took a dim view of their ‘ friendship’. I firmly believe that Hewitt, who spent 17 years in the Household Cavalry and was a tank commander hero in the Gulf War, would never have spoken to any newspaper had he not been asked to leave the Forces. His heroism saved many lives when he refused to turn his tank squadron’s guns on what turned out to be an Allied field hospital.
That night, Hewitt was bitter and in shock. He could not envisage what his future would hold without the structure and camaraderie of regimental life. He was also worried for his financial future. I was flabbergasted when he asked me if he could do a paid interview about his friendship with Diana, whom he had met in the summer of 1986 at a drinks party in London.
Naturally, the newspaper was thrilled and dispatched me to Devon, where Hewitt lived in a sweet cottage with his delightful mother Shirley. During the time I interviewed him, mostly in local pubs, I made it clear that if my notepad was closed, anything he said was off the record. Hewitt opened up, telling me Diana had been devastated to discover on her marriage that Charles was still in love with Camilla. Charles and Diana had alternate weekends at Highgrove; one weekend would be for Charles and Camilla and their friends, and the next for Diana and her coterie. Diana was enraged that Camilla would move the drawing room furniture around to prove that she was the real chatelaine. Hewitt was regularly bundled into car boots and driven to Kensington Palace when their affair ensued. He told me he was terrified the first night he stayed in Kensington Palace, relieved at least that Charles and Diana had separate bedrooms. Apparently, she had 30 childhood cuddly toys lining the end of her bed.
It surprised me that Hewitt was a fan of Prince Charles’s, with whom he played polo. As is de rigueur in aristocratic circles, Charles knew of and welcomed their affair as it distracted Diana, taking pressure off him and Camilla. Camilla’s husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, also knew of and condoned Charles and Camilla’s relationship. Hewitt confided that he supported Diana through her ‘rampant bulimia’, a disease he had never heard of, let alone understood. She had told him it had begun the day before her wedding due to the stress and nerves. In the turbulence of Diana’s deep unhappiness, in which she admitted to selfmutilation and violent mood swings, Hewitt was her mainstay. During all the time she was with Hewitt, Diana controlled her bulimia. I listened to the story, stunned. Although Andrew Morton’s book, Diana: Her True Story, had been published in 1992, no one knew the full extent of
‘Hewitt can be the image of Charles at his grandest’
Diana’s and her friends’ collaboration with Morton. The public didn’t believe the royal marriage was this fractured. When Hewitt asked me if I wanted to read all of Diana’s letters to him, I declined. Ironically, it seemed too voyeuristic.
What sort of journalist was I? Clearly not a rabid tabloid hack as I would discover to my cost, painfully lacking in the ‘skin of rhino hide’ that Morton later told me was essential to survive this game. Not one word that Hewitt confided to me off the record made it into my tepid series in the Daily Express. Instead, I wrote about how much Diana loved stealing away to the Hewitts’ Devon cottage to do the washing-up with Shirley. I described Hewitt’s boarding school-type bedroom with its two wooden single beds, where Diana stayed, while her protection officers slept in the guest room. It seemed an ironic juxtaposition, the princess swapping her palace boudoir to sleep in a modest twin- bedded room, full of military memorabilia. Yet Diana, utterly unpretentious, relished the simplicity.
In one extract I detailed Hewitt’s obvious appeal to the princess: ‘Occasionally, Hewitt becomes the image of Prince Charles at his grandest. He walks with his hands clasped firmly behind his back. When he chews on a question, he grimaces. At the bar he stands straight- backed, one hand in his pockets, twiddling nervously with his chunk of a signet ring.’ Hardly the stuff of controversy.
Diana was in constant contact with Hewitt during this time. Their affair had ended after his return from the Gulf in 1991, which had hurt Hewitt. He felt rejected by Diana and admitted to feel ing used by her but remained her friend. Diana wanted to move on, and for her that meant embracing a new, faster, more glamorous set: media figures and flashy socialites who saw Hewitt as pedestrian rather than international. Diana was transforming from Sloane Princess to Hollywood star. Hewitt would go on to be discredited for talking to the Press, yet it still galls me that it was Diana who had first suggested he speak out about their ‘friendship’ in an effort to conceal rumours of an affair. He went skiing in Meribel when my articles came out. Diana rang him there and said, ‘ Thank you for talking, as you know I can’t. At least people will know the truth.’
Naturally, I was unaware how manipulative Diana had had to become in order to survive. She was obsessed with the world knowing how badly she had been treated by the Royal Family, hence her initial collaboration with Andrew Morton. In June 1994, 25 years ago this very day, when Prince Charles admitted in his television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby that his marriage had ‘ irretrievably broken down’, Hewitt rang me during the commercial break. With his posh, strangulated vowels, for a millisecond I thought Prince Charles was on the line. He told me that Diana was worried that Andrew Morton’s second book, due out that autumn, with which she had not co-operated, was going to expose their affair in
‘He handed Diana’s letters to my mother in a Sainsbury’s plastic bag’
unflattering terms. She was worried and wanted control. 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. As I hadn’t written any notes during our Devon pub encounters as the affair was off the record, Hewitt suggested that I finally read their correspondence from the Gulf War. While I was squirrelled away in an Oxfordshire cottage writing, my mother went to the Kensington Hilton hotel at Hewitt’s request to collect the 64 letters, all airmail ‘blueys’ [thin blue notepaper sent free to service personnel overseas], which he handed to her in a Sainsbury’s plastic bag. I sat up all night reading Diana’s sprawling hand; each letter was signed ‘Julia’. It was a surreal experience. They spanned a variety of styles, from gushing Sloane and ‘whoopee- cushion’ humour to the raw pain of therapy speak. She guffawed about sending joke Valentine cards to Prince William at Eton (her love for her sons shone through all the letters) and thanked Hewitt endlessly for letting her ‘blub’ when they spoke over the phone.
These billets-doux, which formed the basis of my book, were loving and sentimental. They showed Diana at the zenith of her affair, grateful for Hewitt’s compassion. It was agonising to read how needy and sad Diana was. How she craved recognition from Prince Charles and the palace for her charity work, only to feel snubbed by both. All she felt was the force of their jealousy over her popularity, while her fury at Charles’s feelings for Camilla scorched the page. She was hurt that the Queen liked Camilla. I was touched that Diana regularly visited Shirley Hewitt in Devon during this time, often taking Prince Harry too, as he enjoyed playing in the stable yard.
It’s clear that regardless of Hewitt’s follies since and his constant muddled attempts to make a living out of his relationship with the princess, he and his family were her only support then. Often Diana wrote to him twice a day. No mundane detail, including the colour of her nail polish, was overlooked. 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.’
I never officially met Diana, but another fateful encounter occurred the day I took the manuscript to the publishers, which unsettled me. I knew that Diana knew of me, and knew I was writing the book. A girlfriend, Petronella Wyatt, recommended that I go to Daniel Galvin hairdressers to have my hair done. The book complete, I welcomed a treat. As I sat back at the sink,
having my hair washed, I noticed the gleaming red nails clutching a Hermès Kelly bag close to my side. With a jolt of shock, I realised it was Diana. The manuscript was literally in a bag at my feet. I assumed that the princess would be escorted to a private room to have her blow-dry, but we were taken to the same mirror space. She clearly recognised me and stared at me through the mirrors and, I am ashamed to admit, I looked away. It felt like she wanted to get the measure of me. I always assumed that this was fate rather than engineered, but was never sure. Diana loudly told her
hairdresser where she was going to dinner that evening – Harvey Nichols Fifth Floor with her girlfriend Catherine Soames. I wondered if it was a test, to see if I would tip off the paparazzi. When I telephoned James
‘I would have died for Diana,’ Hewitt said, ‘but instead I’ve died a million times inside’
about it that evening, he already knew about our encounter. She had rung him that afternoon.
The minute the book hit the shops, Diana distanced herself. She knew the author, title and publication date, yet at no point sought to take out an injunction. Mistakenly, I had decided against a newspaper serialisation, so a journalist picked it up live on breakfast TV, deriding it as Mills & Boon in style. With only weeks to write 85,000 words, I used too many gushing adjectives, adhering to my ‘love story’ brief. The Press, and royal hacks, furious that I had landed ‘the scoop of the decade’, lampooned me. I was erroneously accused of having a relationship with Hewitt, when all I did was befriend him. I was in freefall. My friends snubbed me, my mother’s friends wrote her vitriolic letters, while my Oxford academic father remained bemused. Despite the fact that the book was selling 12,000 copies an hour at Heathrow and sold 500,000 copies internationally, making hundreds of thousands of pounds, for 24 hours I was genuinely suicidal. If it hadn’t been for my mother’s love and support, goodness knows how I would have rallied. Hewitt felt similar. ‘I would have died for Diana,’ he told me as the furore intensified, ‘but instead I’ve died a million times inside.’
People rightly said, ‘ But you were a journalist . You must have known this was going to happen?’ I was young; naïve to the point of insanity. I never envisaged that level of flak, which I was unable to detach from. Infamy was agony for me. A year later Diana confessed to the affair on Panorama, admitting of Hewitt, ‘Yes, I adored him. But I was very let down.’ Hewitt spoke to me then about how used he felt. ‘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.’ The deception, he explained, had weighed him down.
A quarter of a century later, I look back and feel sad about it all. I definitely felt manipulated and used by Diana, whom I have such sympathy for. The affair undoubtedly ruined Hewitt’ s life; how could he settle down with a country mouse after the high- octane glamour of Diana? I haven’t spoken to him for over 20 years but it’s clear he hasn’t found his purpose since.
Diana’s death proved that she was irreplaceable. Thanks to her sons, her electric persona will never be forgotten. The greatest sea change for me, which I never thought I’d write, is that I can now see that Camilla is the perfect consort for Prince Charles. She understands and soothes him, never seeking to outshine him. Diana blamed Camilla – ‘the Rottweiler’ – for the demise of her marriage but having spent the last two years researching royal history for a book about Wallis Simpson, I can see that like his greatuncle the Duke of Windsor, it was Charles who decided he could not live without Camilla, not the other way around. It’s very difficult to refuse a tenacious Prince of Wales. Charles declared Camilla ‘nonnegotiable’ and I believe this Prince of Wales will be a better king with his ‘darling Camilla’ by his side.
In Princess In Love, I told the truth about Diana; an innocent who married into the monarchy, wideeyed with love for her prince, only to face a baptism of fire as to the reality of what this entailed. Chronicling it was no less devastating. Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess Of Windsor by Anna Pasternak is published by William Collins, £20.
‘It’s galling that it was Diana’s idea he speak out’