The mystery man pictured with an 18-year-old Lady Diana Spencer has been unmasked as aristocrat Adam Russell.

Old Etonian Mr Russell, the great-grandson of former Tory prime minister Stanley Baldwin, is shown relaxing with the future Princess of Wales during a group ski holiday in Val Claret in the French Alps in 1979.

The Daily Mirror, which bought the photo two days after Diana’s engagement to Prince Charles was announced in February 1981, wrote NOT TO BE PUBLISHED in crayon on it.

The photo is now being auctioned in the US.

Oxford student Mr Russell is said to have had a ‘galumphing’ crush on Diana. Nothing, however, happened between them.

According to royal author Andrew Morton, Mr Russell went travelling for a year, and when he returned to the UK in 1980 and told a friend that he liked Diana, he was told: ‘You’ve only got one rival, the Prince of Wales’.

He tactfully decided not to pursue her, but the pair remained great friends.

Mr Russell later said he initially thought Diana was a bit of a Sloaney ‘giggler’ but got to like her when both were injured skiing.

He found her ‘bubbly, giggly, but not in a vacuous way, and lacking in self-confidence’.

Mr Russell, who is now a deer farmer in Dorset and married to gardening expert and TV presenter Ali, declined to comment.

The picture shows Diana lying on a bed in a chalet with Mr Russell, who is resting his book on her shoulder. On the window ledge behind them is a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky.

The identity of the photographer is not known.

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(Agencies)