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Music photographer Denis O’Regan has claimed that Kensington Palace held back his picture of Princess Diana with David Bowie after a 1987 London concert because she went to the show with James Hewitt
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The late Princess Diana and British Army officer had an affair from about 1986 to 1991, overlapping with her marriage to the future King Charles
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O’Regan claimed that the palace buried his picture of the princess so as not to further “fuel the fire” about her involvement with Hewitt
A photographer has claimed Kensington Palace buried his picture of Princess Diana with David Bowie because the snap was captured after a concert she attended with Army Major James Hewitt during their affair.
On May 10, The Telegraph published an interview with Denis O’Regan, where the music photographer made the buzzy claim. The outlet also published the photo of Princess Diana and the rocker, which O’Regan said was taken after one of Bowie’s June 1987 Glass Spider shows at Wembley Stadium in London.
The shot showed the late Princess of Wales and the Ziggy Stardust icon smiling together, where Diana looked a little starstruck. Both wore casual clothes, and a sign behind them read “Dressing room.”
O’Regan said the picture came to be after Princess Diana asked him if the singer would want a photo with her, recalling that the royal (then 25) was “so sweet.” However, he alleged that the palace did not want the picture getting out amid rumors of her affair with Hewitt, whom Diana was involved with from about 1986 to 1991.
“So the next day, my agent got a call from [the] palace, saying don’t use the pictures because word had gone out about James Hewitt. So that’s when it kind of erupted,” O’Regan told the Telegraph. “It was interesting, on a number of levels.”
The photographer made the revelation in a conversation about his new book David Bowie by Denis O’Regan, which will be published in the U.S. on Aug. 5. The upcoming text from Bowie’s official photographer features pictures from more than 200 of the late star’s concerts, and he said Diana attended that particular show with Hewitt.
They just didn’t want Diana in the press,” O’Regan told the Telegraph about why courtiers didn’t want the picture out there. “It was really [that] they didn’t want to fuel the fire.”
“So the more pictures that weren’t out there, the better, because someone would have said: ‘This is her at the show that she turned up to with James Hewitt, even though I didn’t get the multi-million dollar shot of the two of them together, because no one knew who he was,” he continued to the Telegraph, summing the story up as a “a tiny moment in history.”
Princess Diana Archive/Getty
Princess Diana and David Bowie at Wembley Arena in London for the Concert of Hope on World AIDS Day on Dec. 2, 1993.
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The Princess of Wales was photographed meeting Bowie a few years later at the Concert of Hope on World AIDS Day in December 1993, and he sat in the same box as her and the future King Charles at the Live Aid Concert at Wembley Stadium in 1985.
While the world was captivated by Diana and Charles’ royal romance and fairytale wedding in 1981, they both reportedly began having extramarital affairs around 1986. Then-Prince Charles reportedly rekindled his romance with Camilla Parker Bowles, and Diana became acquainted with Hewitt after he offered to give her horseback riding lessons.
Their affair allegedly went on for five years, but they broke off the romance well before her death in 1997 following a car accident in Paris.
‘I see it as a duty to help those less fortunate than we are.’
James Hewitt describes how emotional he was when delivering aid to Ukraine and how important it was to team up with John Lawler, founder of Operation SafeDrop, to help those in need. pic.twitter.com/azfd1pz57p
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) February 25, 2025
The retired British Army officer made a rare media appearance on Good Morning Britain in February to discuss his humanitarian work with Operation Safedrop in Ukraine, where he shared his thoughts on what Diana would think of the rift between her sons Prince William and Prince Harry today.
“I think any mother would be worried and concerned about such a rift, as you put it. And she’d do her best to try and get them together,” Hewitt said then.
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