Diana--A Closely Guarded Secret by Ken Wharfe Read Free Book Online Page A

Protection Department in 1986 I had become party to many of Diana’s most intimate secrets, passed to me semi-officially. A handover was arranged in the kitchen at Highgrove; nobody else was present as Chief Inspector Graham Smith, Diana’s senior police protection officer, and I sat down and chatted over a cup of coffee. What he told me was of no real surprise;indeed, gossip being what it is, I had already heard much of it at second or third hand. The principal subject of our conversation was the Princess’s love affair with Captain James Hewitt. Graham spelt out the situation calmly and clearly. The wife of the heir to the throne was having an affair with an officer of the Household Cavalry, and it was not for us, as her police protection officers, or for me in particular, to moralise, or even to have an opinion about it. Our job was simply to ensure above all that she remained safe, which in turn meant that the affair had to remain secret. Graham told me that in his professional view Hewitt would never compromise the Princess’s security. He was co-operative, sensible and happy to be guided by the police; moreover, he fully accepted that the safe houses in which he met his lover had all to be checked for security and rated as being safe, before an assignation could take place.
     
    The Princess first met James Hewitt in London in the summer of 1986, a few months before I joined the department, at a party thrown by her lady-in-waiting, Hazel West. For Hewitt, it clashed with a dinner engagement and he almost did not go – in which case, one of the most celebrated love affairs of the latter part of the twentieth century might never have started. Diana later told me of this first meeting, and although the sadness that followed their eventual parting tainted the telling of it, it was clear that she always adored Hewitt. She said that their first conversation was completely natural, and it was this that first attracted her to him – he helped to make the whole experience of meeting and talking more enjoyable, and they got on famously from the start.
    At some point during the conversation Hewitt told her that he was a riding instructor; when she in turn spoke of her long-held fear of riding, he offered to help her overcome it. As a result, another meeting was arranged, and before long what has become one of the most notorious affairs in recent royal history had started. At this time, although nobody ever confirmed it to her, Diana knew in her heart that Prince Charles was still seeing Camilla Parker Bowles. Shattered by her husband’s betrayal, the Princess was ready for an affair. Hewitt, a natural womaniser, appreciated her emotional and physical needs. From the first, he gave her the attention and affection she relished, and would later provide the passion she yearned for.
    The private friendships of both Charles and Diana were common knowledge to those on the inside, but not to the public. Of course, there had been murmurings in the press, but no one had come close to exposing either of them. At this stage I did not have to cope with the added tension of covering Diana’s tracks; that responsibility fell to Graham Smith (or ‘Smudger’, as I called him), who headed up her security until he fell ill with the cancer that eventually killed him. But throughout 1987, while I was overseeing security for Princes William and Harry, ‘Smudger’ called on me to assist her protection team, and I stood in for him as senior officer on a number of occasions. I suppose it was a natural transition, as my duties with the young princes meant that I was in daily contact with Diana, and we had already established an easy rapport. When acting as her protection officer, my duties varied from carrying out reconnaissance for her police team ahead of her official visits, to accompanying her on engagements. These ranged fromfilm galas in London’s West End (occasionally with Prince Charles) to the more mundane opening of a civic centre in