Twenty-four years ago, as a desperately ill baby, James Whetton was cradled by the Princess of Wales during a secret hospital visit.
WATCH: Princess Diana breaks protocol to race other mums at sons’ school
Now James has revealed how he believes being cuddled by Diana could have helped his health battle.
“She was so heartwarming, so maybe that’s what helped me to keep on fighting. She may have passed on a little bit of her love and got me through it, who knows?” he told The Mail on Sunday recently.
At the time James, who was born with an enlarged heart, was a patient in the same London hospital where Diana’s heart surgeon lover Hasnat Khan worked.
James believes his care was likely overseen by Hasnat.
The photograph of Diana and baby James, which he still keeps on his phone, was taken in January 1996, when he was just six days old.
His grandfather took the photo and later told James that the princess was “lovely and acted like a normal person”.
Diana frequently visited the Royal Brompton Hospital where she spent hours comforting patients and even observed Hasnat as he performed surgery.
Diana’s relationship with the Pakistan-born heart and lung surgeon lasted two years but ended just two months before her death.
Royals author Walter Olesky tells New Idea how Diana and Hasnat wanted to marry.
“They were really deeply in love,” says the author of Princess Diana 2020: A Quest for Love.
“But he was a very private man and finally broke off their relationship because he feared that the media’s obsession with her would make a public marriage impossible for him.”
For more, pick up the latest issue of New Idea. Out now!
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