New play suggests that Prince Harry was fathered by James Hewitt

A new west end production about Diana will suggest that  James Hewitt is the father of Prince Harry.

The Telegraph reports: A controversial new play about Princess Diana will reignite rumours that Prince Charles is not Prince Harry’s father.

The West End production – Truth, Lies, Diana – will suggest that former Household Cavalry officer James Hewitt fathered the third in line to the throne during his affair with Princess Diana.

Writer Jon Conway claims Hewitt personally admitted his relationship with Diana started 18 months before Harry was born, and backed the play by allowing the revelation to be used.

The explosive scene sees Hewitt tell 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.”

The subject is raised again when Hewitt’s character is asked if he knows who Harry’s dad is, replying: “Of course I do”.

The play, which has already had a successful stint in New York, is due to open at the Charing Cross Theatre in London’s West End on January 9 and play until mid-February.

Mr Conway said he had spent two years interviewing Hewitt, 56, and had elicited some “remarkable” admissions during their conversations.

“There is a startling revelation that James Hewitt makes and he has allowed me to make it in the play”, he said.

“This is the fact that his relationship with Diana started 18 months before Prince Harry was born.”

The rumour, which has dogged the Royal Family for years, first emerged in the mid-1990s when Diana’s affair with Hewitt became public knowledge for the first time.

Royal commentators have repeatedly rebuffed the claim, saying the affair did not start until 1986, two years after Prince Harry was born, and the claims drove Diana “wild with fury”.

Penny Junor, the author of a new biography of Harry, says Hewitt was not on the scene in 1984, and points to a negative DNA test conducted by the News of the World in 2003 on a strand of Harry’s ginger hair.

“If Harry had been shown to be James Hewitt’s son, you can be sure we’d have known”, she said.

Neville Thurlbeck, the News of the World’s former chief reporter, dismissed it as a “conspiracy theory” that had been “killed by Fleet Street years ago”.

The play follows an investigator as he tries to uncover the truth behind Princess Diana’s death in a Paris car crash with then-lover Dodi Fayed in 1997.

Mr Conway based his script on a series of books by investigative journalist John Morgan, and drew on interviews with Hewitt and Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, as well as transcripts of the inquest into her death.

He said audience members will be able to decide themselves whether Hewitt’s revelation is true, and whether they believe his public denials about fathering Harry.

Hewitt confirmed he had been interviewed for the play and that he believed it was “accurate”, but denied having read the actual script.