There was a tabloid rumor that made Princess Diana heartbroken.
For years, some speculated that her riding instructor, James Hewitt, was Prince Harry’s biological father, not King Charles. Harry and Hewitt both have ginger hair and freckles.
“That’s impossible,” Princess Diana’s hairdresser Richard Dalton told Fox News Digital. Dalton has published a new memoir, “It’s All About the Hair,” detailing their friendship.
“It was tough,” Dalton admitted. “Harry was already born shortly before her relationship with Hewitt. And I don’t think that’s possible.”
“But that’s not the case,” he stressed. “Harry and the Spencer family have red hair. Princess Diana’s younger brother Charles had bright red hair when he was in college. And I was cutting his hair at the time. (Diana’s sister) Sarah (Princess Diana’s other sister) Jane had more or less the same skin tone as Princess Diana.
He also said in the book that Princess Diana was “often upset” by tabloids claiming that Hewitt was Prince Harry’s father.
“Red hair was a hallmark of the Spencer family,” he writes.
According to reports, Princess Diana first met Hewitt in 1986, two years after Prince Harry was born in 1984. Dalton wrote in his book that Princess Diana and Hewitt had a “romantic relationship” that lasted three years, from 1989 to 1991. He was born “long before Princess Diana met James Hewitt.”
It has long been speculated that James Hewitt is Prince Harry’s father. Ron Daswell / Shutterstock
When Diana began taking horse riding lessons from Hewitt, Dalton was confused and thought that “Diana didn’t like horse riding.” But he understood that Diana was a young woman “desperate to be truly loved.”
“I knew nothing about their affair and was not involved in any of their meetings, other than perhaps unwittingly doing Princess Diana’s hair every day,” Dalton wrote. “Sure, she was giddy sometimes when talking about him, because it was all new to her. But we remember the context in which all this happened. I need it.”
“Princess Diana starved for love and intimacy from the husband she loved,” he wrote. “She was also an heir-making machine for Charles and was coming to terms with the betrayal within their marriage.”
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“…I was saddened to see James Hewitt, thanks to his tell-all book, clearly show that this relationship was a conquest and not a matter of love at all. To her, he was just the first man who fell into her life through a twist of fate, time, and place. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else.”
“He certainly wasn’t the love of her life at the time. Charles wasn’t. There’s no question about that at all,” Dalton added.
Renae Plant, curator of the Princess Diana Museum, collaborated with Dalton on his book. “It would have been terrifying for Princess Diana to face the ongoing rumors,” she told Fox News Digital.
“She hasn’t come out and said anything, but there are all kinds of rumors going around,” Plant said. “…She was suffering from the press and all these articles chasing her.”
Plant pointed out that Princess Diana admired someone like Dalton’s friend, British broadcaster Anne Diamond. She had a public platform to convey any news to the public.
“(Anne) was doing breakfast TV,” Dalton told FOX News Digital. “Princess Diana used to say, ‘Oh, I wish I could be like your friend when something hurtful is written about her.’ She can translate that directly onto TV. ” But that wasn’t the case. ”
“She had to deal with everything internally,” Plant exclaimed.
In 2023, Prince Harry sued the Daily Mirror newspaper, accusing it of using illegal methods on an “industrial scale” to obtain the scoop on his life. He became the first senior member of the British royal family to testify in more than a century.
During the trial, the Duke of Sussex admitted that years of tabloid rumors speculating that the king was not his biological father had caused him “damage” for years. In a written statement, the 40-year-old cited a 2002 article, “The plot to steal Harry’s DNA,” in which the royal family speculated that it was Hewitt’s child.
“Many newspapers reported rumors that my biological father was James Hewitt, a man my mother had an affair with after I was born,” Harry wrote. “At the time I wrote this article and others like it, I actually didn’t know that my mother hadn’t met Major Hewitt until I was born.”
Prince Harry said rumors about his paternity persist in several articles.
“I was 18 at the time and had lost my mother exactly six years before, so stories like this were very damaging to me and felt very real,” Harry admitted. Ta. “They were hurtful, mean and cruel. I always questioned the motives behind the stories. The newspapers planted doubts in the public’s mind that I might be kicked out of the royal family.” Was that what you were trying to do?”
In late 2023, Harry won a phone hacking lawsuit against Mirror Group Newspapers. He won more than $180,000 in prize money.
In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry spoke about how his 75-year-old father once made a “sadistic” joke about the painful gossip. To Harry, it was no laughing matter.
Prince Harry wrote in his book that even King Charles joked about Hewitt’s gossip. Tim Graham Photo Library (via)
“Dad loved to tell stories and this was one of the best in his repertoire,” Harry wrote. “He always ended with a philosophical outburst…’Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales?’ Who knows if I’m your real father?” Do you have it?
“He was laughing his ass off. It was a completely unfunny joke, but then I thought about the rumors going around that my real father was one of my mom’s ex-boyfriends, Major James Hewitt. ” said Harry. “One of the reasons for this rumor was Major Hewitt’s fiery ginger hair, but another was his sadism.”
“For some reason[the press]just couldn’t get enough of this ‘joke,'” Harry recalled. “Maybe the fact that the young prince’s life was funny made them feel better about their own lives.”
In 2002, Hewitt himself addressed this gossip.
The rumors became tabloid fodder. S.W.N.S.
“We’ve known for some time that Prince Harry’s paternity issues have been a hot topic,” Hewitt told People magazine. “There is absolutely no chance that I am Harry’s father. I understand the interest, but Harry was already walking when his relationship with Diana began.”
“I do have red hair and people say I look like me,” Hewitt said. “When I look at the photo, I think he’s a much more handsome person than I am.”
He addressed this speculation again in 2017 when he appeared on an Australian TV show. When asked if he could be Harry’s father, Mr Hewitt insisted: “No, I am not.”
“We’re selling paper,” Hewitt said of the rumors. “It’s going to be much worse[for Harry]poor guy.”
James Hewitt said the rumors were completely false and that he sympathized with Prince Harry. Getty Images
Dalton met Diana when she was just 17 years old and continued to style her hair for more than a decade. He hopes his book will introduce new sides to the late Princess of Wales, including her sense of humour.
“She always kept fake vomit and kept it in her private secretary’s briefcase,” he told FOX News Digital about the 1985 Royal Tour of Australia. “And there was dog poop, all kinds of stuff.”
The two got away with playing pranks behind the palace doors. Dalton explained how Charles banned all aerosol sprays from Kensington Palace to protect the environment.
The secret to Princess Diana’s royal mane was Elnet hairspray.
“We traveled a lot with it,” Dalton said. “…I got to the palace and said to the princess, ‘There’s a hole in the ozone layer.’ She said, ‘Really?’ What does it look like? I said, “It’s about the size of the dressing room.” And it comes right out – that’s Elnet Hairspray. ”We laughed about it. ”
“We stuck with it,” he said. “I don’t think[Charles]knew anything about it…We ran away. I’m not in the Tower of London.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
