Diana bodyguard: I tried to save her from cad Hewitt
JAMES HEWITT has been branded a liar and a cad after The Mail on Sunday revealed last week how he was secretly trying to sell private letters written to him by Princess Diana. Now the princess’s former bodyguard, Ken Wharfe, has told how he tried to protect her from her former lover.
‘Diana was a prolific letter writer,’ says Wharfe, who guarded the princess for seven years from 1987. ‘I told her repeatedly, as did other close friends of hers, that those letters to Hewitt were hostages to fortune, and in her position she had to be careful.’
Wharfe, also warned Hewitt, now 57, that his relationship with Diana was not going to end well.
‘James seemed more in love than she was, and he believed Diana would divorce Charles and they could live happily ever after on a farm in Devon,’ says Wharfe. ‘I told him that wasn’t going to happen. I remember saying, “When it is over – and it will be over, James – just do the right thing.”’
After Hewitt’s relationship with Diana began in the mid-1980s, Wharfe saw how, if Hewitt didn’t get out of it quickly and graciously, it could ‘wreck his career, his life and his family’s life’.
‘Sadly, he didn’t listen, and now it has all unfolded pretty much exactly as I feared,’ says Wharfe.
The bodyguard accompanied the Princess on the early heady weekends she spent with Army officer Hewitt at his mother Shirley’s cottage in Devon. ‘It was a traditional oak-beamed cottage, and every member of his family was aware of their relationship.’
In 1991, Diana ended the relationship during a phone call. ‘James was in a real state of depression after that,’ recalls Wharfe.
‘With Diana’s encouragement, I had dinner with James in Kensington and again emphasised the need to withdraw graciously for his and Diana’s sake. I could see any attempt by him to revive such a liaison would be catastrophic. I said, “You’ve been in a relationship with a princess. Many would say that’s madness or a great privilege – either way you have to live with your memories, be thankful and leave it at that.”’