Diana herself confessed in 1995 to having an adulterous affair with Hewitt, a former Army captain, in an interview for the BBC's Panorama program, which launched a media frenzy against the royal family in what became known as the "War of Wales." Her primary target was her husband, Charles, who days earlier had admitted, also on national television, to being unfaithful with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Immediately, rumors arose that Hewitt was the prince's real father. The striking resemblance between the two fueled these suspicions. Both have reddish hair and share a similar chin and smile.
However, those close to Diana, such as her butler, Paul Burrell, maintain that this version is false. Her bodyguard and confidant, Ken Wharfe, who witnessed the affair firsthand and recounted how he heard them making love in a cottage in Devon, shares this view in his book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret.
For her part, Harry's biographer, Penny Junor, revealed that the News of the World obtained a strand of the prince's hair for a DNA test, "and if it had turned out to be Hewitt's son, we would surely know by now." An expert in hereditary traits, author of a forensic study of Harry and Hewitt's faces, apparently commissioned by the royal family, confirmed to the Daily Star that Harry is a Windsor and that he doesn't look that much like James, if you look closely: He's not a redhead like him, but rather "strawberry blonde," he explained, and his hair isn't straight but curly, a trait as Scottish as his great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
He emphasized that while the prince has blue eyes and blond eyelashes and eyebrows, the former military officer's are brown. He also recommended looking at his maternal uncle, Earl Spencer, to find out where he gets the gene for saffron hair. The specialist asked not to be identified and pointed out that the key is the teeth.
Hewitt has large, very British-looking canines, while Harry's upper teeth and canines are small, like those of his grandfather, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, a descendant of the royal families of Greece and Denmark. "The only thing the prince really has in common with Hewitt is his chin," he concluded.
Royal spokespeople point out that Harry was born in 1984 and Diana met James in 1986. James himself has stated this publicly, and he tried to sell the letters the princess wrote to him for nearly $12 million.
However, journalist and playwright Jon Conway noted in his play Truth, Lies, Diana that the former officer told him: "Diana and I began our relationship more than a year before Harry was born. That doesn't prove I'm his father. It's just an inconvenient truth swept under the rug." Hewitt never objected to Conway. This loose end, along with the fascination of comparing photos of the three, suggests the rumor will never die. For example, a recent Daily Star poll found that 50 percent of Britons believe Hewitt is the father, compared to 34 percent who voted for Charles.
