Debunking Prince Harry’s doubts about the identity of his father

As Prince Harry is grilled in a London courtroom, one particular statement leaps out as implausible

This is an unusual Royals Extra post, offering perspective on a rolling story being covered live in the High Court in London, where Prince Harry is waging his war against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGM), publishers of several tabloids, insisting that they used illegal methods such as phone hacking to write stories that hurt him.

The Telegraph led its coverage today with the following eye-popping headline:

Prince Harry court case live: James Hewitt stories 'designed to oust me from Royal family'

In his 55-page witness statement, Harry claimed that for many years he believed rumors printed in the tabloid press that Army officer James Hewitt was his biological father. In her explosive 1995 interview for BBC’s Panorama program, Diana admitted she and Hewitt had an affair: “Yes, I adored him. Yes I was in love with him.”

Harry cited press reports in 2002 about efforts to steal a sample of his DNA to determine his parentage—stories that “were hurtful, mean, and cruel.” He asked, “Were the newspapers keen to put doubt into the minds of the public so I might be ousted from the Royal family?”

But the jaw dropper in his statement was that he only learned in 2014 that his mother met James Hewitt after he was born.

This question of paternity has come up frequently over the years, based only on rumors. When I’ve given talks about my books, I’ve often been asked to address it.

In my 1999 book Diana In Search of Herself, I covered Diana’s affair with James Hewitt in detail, based on conversations with people who were with the princess at the time, as well as other sources. It was crystal clear that the affair began in 1986, two years after Harry’s birth. This was also reported in other places, long before 2014. It’s difficult to believe Harry was unaware of the real story.

Some salient excerpts from Diana in Search of Herself:

In November 1986, Diana invited a cavalry captain named James Hewitt to dine with her at Kensington Palace. She had met Hewitt in the late summer at a London cocktail party, and over the following four months, he had been giving her riding lessons in Hyde Park. At twenty-eight, Hewitt was three years older than Diana, who had an admitted weakness for men in uniform.

…Diana had found Hewitt attractive, charming, and sufficiently sympathetic to tell him about her fear of horses dating from a childhood fall. When she asked if he might help restore her confidence on horseback, he said he could arrange lessons down the road from Kensington Palace at the Knightsbridge Barracks, where he was in charge of the stables for the Household Division of his regiment, the Life Guards. Only days after their meeting, Diana called to accept his offer.

Accompanied by Hazel West, a lady-in-waiting who was an accomplished horsewoman, Diana rode with Hewitt in the early mornings once or twice a week. Hewitt patiently instructed Diana, and afterward they had lengthy talks over coffee in the Officers’ Mess.

Before long, Diana unburdened herself to Hewitt, telling him that she and Charles had drifted apart and were now living separate lives. As she confessed her marital unhappiness and her childhood insecurities, Hewitt responded with comforting words. When she returned home, she called to thank him for being supportive, and afterward phoned him whenever she needed cheering.

She invited him to dinner following the royal couple’s state visit to the Middle East. Diana and Charles had successfully toured Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, and when Diana left for England, Charles had continued on the Britannia through the Suez Canal to Cyprus—which is where he was when James Hewitt arrived at Kensington Palace.

Having dismissed her staff for the evening, Diana asked Hewitt to open a bottle of champagne, and she served him from a buffet laid out in the dining room. They talked about the Middle Eastern trip, and after coffee in her sitting room, Diana first sat on Hewitt’s lap, then led him by the hand to her bedroom, where they became lovers. “It wasn’t a typical seduction scene with me as the big white hunter going after a princess,” Hewitt later said.

Thus began a five-year affair that remained secret for a surprisingly long time. Diana reached out to Hewitt because she needed attention, but she was also reacting to her husband’s behavior. It was the traditional aristocratic solution to a troubled relationship: With three in the marriage already, Diana made it four. Diana showed little sign of guilt, either with Hewitt or her friends who knew of the relationship. “Charles was involved with Camilla, and she felt that what was good for the goose was good for the gander,” Hewitt recalled.

In the spring of 1987, Hewitt was promoted to the rank of major and moved to the Combermere Barracks near Windsor Castle. Diana continued to ride with Hewitt there, and brought William and Harry, then aged four and two, for a tour of the barracks. When Charles was away, Diana and Hewitt had assignations at Kensington Palace and Highgrove. These were risky encounters, since William and Harry might easily have come into Diana’s room during the night

I addressed the persistent rumors about Harry’s fatherhood again in my 2017 biography, Prince Charles, with even more specific sourcing about what I had written in 1999.

Anne Beckwith-Smith, her lady-in-waiting, was aware of the affair “quite soon” [in 1986] because Diana “couldn’t stop talking about him.” Hewitt bolstered the princess, tried to make her feel better, and gave her a good time. “She was happy with him,” added Beckwith-Smith, “and happy is not a word you can use about her often.”

In the years after the Hewitt relationship was first revealed in the early 1990s and confirmed in Diana’s Panorama interview, it was often suggested that he was the father of Prince Harry. Troublemaking tabloid editors placed photos side by side to suggest the resemblance of their coppery hair. Hewitt himself played coy, sometimes suggesting that he and Diana had known each other as early as 1983. Anne Beckwith-Smith categorically denied this, though. “Hewitt was not on the scene until well after Harry’s birth,” she said.

With books such as mine, not to mention the availability of eyewitnesses such as Anne Beckwith-Smith who spoke to me, Prince Harry had plenty of sources who could have reassured him that James Hewitt was not his father—long before he supposedly confirmed the truth in 2014.