Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 5, 1994 TAG: 9410050098
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Hearst Newspapers
DATELINE: ARIS LENGTH: Medium
Fact or fantasy, a new book purporting to relate details of a former British army officer's affair with Princess Diana may spell the demise of that much-admired character, the English gentleman.
Britain's royal clan was already awash in sexual scandal before this week's publication of ``Princess in Love,'' an account of an alleged five-year liaison between the estranged wife of the heir apparent to the throne and ex-Captain James Hewitt, written with his full cooperation.
Royal officials denounced the book as ``grubby and worthless.'' Diana, whose private life seems to attract a sizzling new controversy every other week, has denied that she ever had sex with Hewitt, who met Diana in 1986 when he gave her horseback-riding lessons.
Members of Parliament and even most of the British media - usually avid to exploit the royals' personal troubles - laid into the book as trash.
The attacks didn't prevent the first edition of 100,000 copies from being sold out on its first day in the bookshops Monday - a British publishing record.
What has enraged many Britons and caused dismay among Anglophiles elsewhere is not the book's contents. Far more upsetting to them is the fact that someone as uppercrust as Hewitt could no longer be relied on to behave like a gentleman.
The 36-year-old former officer went to a ``good'' public (that is, private) school and served in the elite Life Guards regiment.
``There was a time when such a background would have inculcated a sense of honor, of decency, of what is done and not done by a gentleman,'' insisted political columnist Niall Ferguson in the London Daily Telegraph.
Ferguson conceded that for those who still believed in gentlemanly standards, consolation could be drawn from the army's refusal twice to promote Hewitt to the rank of major. But Ferguson added ominously, ``Even majors can't be counted on nowadays.''
Like several others commenting on the episode, Ferguson seemed to suggest that Hewitt's real offense was against the old school tie and the honor of the regiment.
Hewitt, released by the army because of defense spending cuts following the 1991 Gulf War in which he fought, apparently decided to peddle his story because he needed money.
by CNB