Diana, Princess of Wales would be trying to reunite her sons if she was still alive, her former lover has said.

Army Major James Hewitt, who had a five-year affair with the late Princess from 1986, was asked in a rare television interview if he thought she may have been able to engineer a rapprochement between the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex, who have barely spoken in five years.

“I think any mother would be worried and concerned about such a rift, as you put it,” he said. “And she’d do her best to try and get them together.”

Major Hewitt, who now devotes his time to aid work in Ukraine, told Good Morning Britain the last time he had spoken to the late Princess was “just after” her BBC Panorama interview with Martin Bashir in November 1995, during which she admitted to their affair.

He described the conversation as “distant” and admitted that the interview did “create problems” for him from which he was “trying to move on”.

The Princess was asked by Mr Bashir whether she had been unfaithful to the then Prince Charles with Major Hewitt, her riding instructor at the time. She replied: “Yes. I was in love with him. But I was very let down.”

Major Hewitt had collaborated on an unauthorised biography and the late Princess said it was “very distressing” for her that someone she had trusted had used their connection to make money.

The former Life Guards officer was swiftly cast as a “love rat” by the tabloid media and found his reputation in tatters.

“It was a stitch-up job,” he said of the Panorama interview on Tuesday. “It was appalling of Bashir to [have] inveigled, lied to her, criminal activity, absolutely appalling.

“As I’ve said, I hate bullies and bullying and arrogant people and I think it’s appalling.”

The 66-year-old is now involved in Operation Safedrop, which is delivering humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

He has previously denied claiming to have been a “father figure” to the princes but has said that he “played with them, swam with them, taught them to ride”.

In 2017, he directly addressed rumours that he was the Duke of Sussex’s biological father, telling an Australian television channel that he was not.

The Duke has since addressed such speculation himself, admitting that he once feared the stories were designed to oust him from the Royal family.

In his June 2023 witness statement outlining his hacking claim against Mirror Group Newspapers, he said the “numerous” stories “felt very damaging and very real to me”.

He told the High Court it was only in 2014 that he actually discovered his mother had not met Major Hewitt until after he was born.

The Duke pointed to an article published in The People in 2002 concerning a “plot to steal a sample of this DNA” to test his parentage, which he described as “hurtful, mean and cruel”.

He added: “I was always left questioning the motives behind the stories.

“Were the newspapers keen to put doubt into the minds of the public so I might be ousted from the Royal family?”

The Duke also addressed the “sadistic” rumour in his memoir, Spare.

He said that the King made light of the cruel speculation by joking, “Who knows if I’m your real father?” but added that he felt the rumours were designed to turn him into a “laughing stock”.

He wrote that “one cause of the rumour was Major Hewitt’s red hair, but another was sadism”.