Play Reignites Rumors About Harry's Real Dad

Says Diana started affair 18 months before prince's birth
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 29, 2014 10:29 AM CST
Play Reignites Rumors About Harry's Real Dad
Britain's Prince Harry speaking at 100 Women in Hedge Funds Philanthropic Initiatives, of which he is patron, at a gala dinner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London, Oct. 16, 2014.   (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, Pool)

It's long been speculated that James Hewitt, the former British cavalry officer who had an affair with Princess Diana, is Prince Harry's real father—and a controversial new play is set to bring those rumors back to the forefront. Truth, Lies, Diana, opening in London's West End on Jan. 9 after a run in New York, features the Hewitt character telling a journalist, "Diana and I started our relationship more than a year before Harry was born. Now, that doesn't prove that I am his father. It's just the inconvenient truth." According to the Telegraph, playwright Jon Conway says Hewitt really did admit his relationship with Di started 18 months prior to Harry's birth and allowed the play to use this information, during two years of interviews with Conway.

Hewitt has also confirmed he was interviewed and said he thinks the play is "accurate," but he says he's never read the script. In the past, however, he's staunchly denied fathering Harry and said he didn't even meet Diana until Harry was a toddler. One more royal rumor, plus one fact:

  • A new book called Backstairs Billy, about a servant to the queen mother, claims she adored him "mostly because he made her gin and tonics just the way she liked them, nine-tenths gin and one-tenth tonic." (The book also claims that during the last two decades of her life, "she was dotty to the point of lunacy.") Hilariously, the queen mother's niece and former lady-in-waiting's rebuttal to the "disgusting" rumors, as offered to the Express, includes this line: The queen mother "never drank a gin and tonic, not ever. ... She preferred a gin martini mix, which she usually made herself."
  • Sir James Dyson, the billionaire vacuum inventor, has now surpassed the queen in English land ownership. His recent purchase of a 3,000-acre Lincolnshire estate puts his total English land portfolio at 25,000 acres, the Telegraph reports; the queen's sits at 20,000.
(More British royals stories.)

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