Princess Diana’s former love interest, James Hewitt, has spoken out about the icy tensions between Prince Harry and Prince William, and has claimed she would do one thing to end it

Prince William and Harry’s relationship remains strained, but the late Princess Diana would have tried her absolute best to bring them back together, according to her former lover.

Since leaving his life as a working royal behind, the Duke of Sussex has been candid about his icy dynamic with William, with whom he was once seriously close.

William however has remained tight-lipped about the state of his relationship with his younger brother – but there are few signs that the pair might be poised to reconcile any time soon.

A once-close confidant of their mother, the late Princess Diana, has claimed that if she was still alive, she would likely have tried to bring the once inseparable pair back together.

James Hewitt, 66, recently appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, where he was asked by host Richard Madeley if he thought the late Princess would have been able to bring her sons to reconcile. He said: “Any mother would be grief-stricken over the separation we’ve seen between Harry and Wills. Do you think she would have been able to make a rapprochement possible?”

James answered that in his view, Diana would have put her best foot forward in trying to bring about a reconciliation. “I think any mother would be worried and concerned about such a rift, as you put it. And she’d do her best to try and get them together,” he said.

James Hewitt met Diana at a party in 1986, thrown by Diana’s lady-in-waiting Hazel West, and the pair quickly got on “famously”, the Princess’s former bodyguard – Ken Wharfe – has said in his book Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, per Town and Country. “He told her he was a riding instructor and, when she confessed she was afraid of horses, offered to help her overcome her fear.”

Mr Hewitt has always denied scurrilous rumours he is Prince Harry’s real father. ( 
Image:
Daily Mirror)

Prince Charles (left) plays polo with James Hewitt who had an affair with Charles’ wife, Princess Diana ( 
Image:
Rex)
After becoming her riding instructor, sparks flew between the pair and they began an affair – with Diana’s marriage to Charles already pretty strained due to his own infidelity with then-Camilla Parker Bowles.

For several years, the pair were romantically involved, before James’s military career took him abroad. Ken Wharfe claims this left Diana feeling “betrayed” because “he had chosen his career over her”.

Things seemingly fizzled out between James and Diana, but in 1994 he cooperated with author Anna Pasternak on a book about his affair with the late Princess of Wales, causing a major scandal.

The following year, Diana admitted the affair during her infamous sit-down with BBC’s Panorama, saying: “Yes, I adored him. Yes, I was in love with him,” adding that she “was very let down,” by his cooperation with the tell-all book.

Things have been icy between William and Harry for years ( 
Image:
POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

For many years, unfounded rumours plagued Prince Harry that James Hewitt was really his father, not King Charles. Harry addressed this gossip in his memoir Spare, “Never mind that my mother didn’t meet Major Hewitt until long after I was born, the story was simply too good to drop,” Harry wrote.

Hewitt has always categorically denied the gossip too, and the Duke of Sussex also said in a witness statement submitted to the High Court in 2023, that the rumours were “hurtful, mean, and cruel”.