Princess Diana and Prince Charles pictured with Oliver Hoare & his wife Diane At Guard’s Polo on 17 June 1986. COURTESY PHOTO
Oliver Hoare, a man reported to have been one of the lovers to Britain’ Princess Diana has died of cancer France at the age 73.
Diana and Hoare’s relationship was a scandal-filled one as he was married and 16 years older than the princess. He was also a close friend to Diana’s husband Prince Charles (now married to Camilla).
It is alleged that Diana had five lovers but Hoare, an art dealer, was the most charming which is why she was infatuated with him and told one of her confidantes that she ‘daydreamed of living in Italy with the handsome Hoare’.
Diana smuggled him into Kensington Palace in the boot of her car and security staff once found him half-naked and hiding behind a bay tree as he tried to sneak out after a fire alarm went off in the middle of the night. Their relationship flowered in the early Nineties, although he never publicly admitted to it.
Diana admitted in the infamous Panorama interview with Martin Bashir in 1995 that she had sometimes called Hoare (Hoare pictured in west London in recent years)
However, Hoare, a father-of-three, was not inclined to leave his wife, French oil heiress Diane de Waldner. After he tried to cool the relationship in 1994, Diana bombarded his Chelsea home with nuisance telephone calls.
On his wife’s insistence, Hoare contacted the police and some of the 300 calls were traced to the Princess’s private line in Kensington Palace, others to telephone boxes in the Kensington area. The police later announced the inquiries had been ended ‘at Mr Hoare’s request’.
Diana admitted in a 1995 interview that she had sometimes called Hoare. ‘Over a period of six to nine months, a few times, but certainly not in an obsessive manner.’
Royal biographer Lady Colin Campbell controversially claimed that Diana was overcome with grief at the time, as she had found out she was pregnant and had to have an abortion.
Hoare was an art history student at the Sorbonne before joining Christie’s in 1967. He later became a specialist in Islamic art.
News of his death was broken by the Daily Mail.
Oliver Hoare was sixteen years Princess Diana’s senior. He died in France at the age 73.
DIANA’S OTHER LOVERS
James Hewitt
James Hewitt showered Diana with the attention she craved during her marriage to Prince Charles, and she showered him with gifts in return.
However he betrayed her trust by assisting Anna Pasternak on her 1994 book Princess In Love, which revealed their five-year relationship and Diana never forgave his actions.
In a 1995 TV interview she said: ‘Yes, I adored him. Yes, I was in love with him. But I was very let down.’
James Gilbey
James Gilbey was far more loyal than Diana’s previous suitor, the pair have always denied their affair but they had a close relationship.
Following her engagement to Charles she still used to iron his shirts, with their relationship making the press following their “Squidgygate” scandal in August 1992.
This emerged when a soppy phone call emerged between the pair where Gilbey referred to Diana as ‘Squidgy’ 14 times, during the height of Charles and Diana’s marriage crisis.
Will Carling
England Rugby Union legend Will Carling and Diana became close after meeting at a fitness class, and pursued her despite being warned by his friend Gary Lineker that she was ‘trouble’.
Like Gilbey, he has always denied a romance with Diana, claiming that the pair were very good friends and nothing more.
However his marriage to TV host Julia Carling ended after rumours of a tryst with the princess.
Dodi Fayed
A month after her breakup to another of her lovers, heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, Diana rebounded with Dodi Fayed.
After vacationing on his family’s yacht in the French Riviera, the new couple were en route to London when they both lost their lives in that fatal Paris car crash.
Additional reporting by Daily Mail
