Princess Diana was heartbroken over tabloid rumor that claimed Prince Harry‘s biological father was James Hewitt, her riding instructor and not King Charles, Diana’s hairdresser Richard Dalton told Fox News. He said the rumors were triggered because of Harry and Hewitt’s ginger hair and freckles. “But it was not possible,” Dalton said adding that Harry was already born before Diana’s relationship with Hewitt.
Dalton now has a new memoir ‘It’s All About the Hair’ which details many unknown aspects of Diana’s life.
“Harry and the Spencer family have red hair. Charles, Diana’s brother, had bright red hair when he was (in) college. And I used to cut his hair then. (Diana’s sister) Sarah, has bright red hair. (Diana’s other sister) Jane was more or less the same coloring as Diana,” Dalton said.
Diana used to get very upset with any kind of insinuation that Harry was not Charles’s son. The red hair was a trait from the Spencer family, he said.
Diana first met Hewitt in 1986, two years after Harry was born. Dalton wrote thar Diana and Hewitt had an affair that lasted from 1980 to 1991 and Harry was born long before that.
Princess Diana didn’t like riding horses so when she started taking riding lessons from Hewitt, Dalton was confused. Later, he understood that the young princess longed to be truly loved.
Princess was giddy when she talked about Hewitt
Dalton said he did the princess’ hair every day and knew nothing about her affair but she obviously was giddy when she talked about Hewitt. “I knew nothing about their affair and was not involved with any of the rendezvous, other than maybe unwittingly doing Diana’s hair each day,” Dalton wrote. “She was certainly giddy at times when she talked about him because it was all new to her; however, we need to remember the context in which this all took place.”
“Diana was starved of affection and intimacy from her husband, the man she loved,” he wrote. “She was also an heir-making machine for Charles and was coming to terms with the betrayal within her marriage.”
But James Hewitt too….
Dalton said Hewitt too saw his relationship as a matter of conquest and not love, as clear in the tell-all book that Hewitt wrote. “… It saddened me to see James Hewitt, by virtue of his tell-all book, clearly signal that this relationship was a conquest and not a matter of love at all. He got her at her most vulnerable and, for her, he was just the first man who rolled along – a twist of fate, time and place. If it had not been him, it would have been someone else.”
When Harry addressed the gossip
In 2023, Harry sued the Daily Mirror for gossips on his life and during the trial, he talked about the longtime tabloid rumor that he was not the biological son of his father. “Numerous newspapers had reported a rumor that my biological father was James Hewitt, a man my mother had a relationship with after I was born,” Harry wrote. “At the time of this article and others similar to it, I wasn’t actually aware that my mother hadn’t met Major Hewitt until after I was born.”