A photographer has claimed that Kensington Palace made the decision to hold back a picture he took of Diana, Princess of Wales with singer David Bowie after in 1987 as she went to the show with Major James Hewitt. The Princess and Major Hewitt famously embarked on an affair which reportedly lasted for around five years, from 1986 until 1991.
After The Telegraph published an interview with music photographer Denis O’Regan, it was said that the palace blocked the image, which was taken after one of Bowie’s June 1987 Glass Spider shows at Wembley Stadium in London.
The shot is said to show the late Princess of Wales and the music legend smiling together in casual clothes, with a sign behind them which reads “dressing room.”
O’Regan said the picture happened after Diana, who was 25 at the time, asked him if the singer would want a photo with her, recalling that the royal was “so sweet.” However, he went on to add that Kensington Palace did not wish for the picture to get out following rumours of her affair with former Household Cavalry officer and tank commander, Hewitt.
“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.”
Diana confirmed the couple’s relationship in her 1995 BBC Panorama interview. They are thought to have met at a cocktail party in 1986.
The photographer made the revelation while promoting his new book, David Bowie by Denis O’Regan. The upcoming book features more than 200 pictures from the late Ziggy Stardust 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 paper about why royal staff didn’t want the picture in the public domain. “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, describing the story up as a “a tiny moment in history.”
The Daily Express has contacted Kensington Palace and Denis O’Regan for comment.
